My Partially Successful Install Experience

[tbradshaw]

Thought I'd throw my experience out there as another data point. My tech was from the local Dish office, not a retailer. I was his first Hopper install. He seemed well trained...he knew to get the Hopper fully operable before touching either of the Joeys. It took us a little time in the basement to straighten out the years of various cables that poked through the floor. He then had to replace the LNB on my dish, saying that one of the ports was bad. The Hopper balked on first startup but he was able to get it running relatively quickly after that (I'm not sure what he tweaked at that point).

Once the Hopper was working with live TV he started on the Joeys...and that's where the fun ended. He could never get either one past the "Looking for a Hopper to connect to" message. Tried both Joeys. Brought in the third Joey he had in his truck. Same story. I eventually ran out of time to deal with this...4.5 hrs. since he first arrived. I was given the number for the local Dish office and told to reschedule directly with them at my convenience. I got the feeling that they were eager to get me set up. No complaints with the service.

He left the Joeys with me and I spent some time last evening running through the reset procedures listed in a few threads here. No luck although I was able to see each of the Joeys, at separate times and listed as unconnnected, on the Hopper Whole Home Network setup screen. Is this a solid indication that the cabling between Hopper & Joeys is OK?

Now I need to find some time to get away from work and have them finish this. I'll update accordingly.

 

[mdonnelly]

May not be the same problem, but on my install the Joey wouldn't see the Hopper either. The manager came out and found the Joey connection to the Solo node wasn't right. After he did something there, it came up quickly.

 

[tbradshaw]

Update: Success! I came home today and ran through the reset procedures and, somehow, it has worked. The first Joey is up and running and the second is downloading memory now. Is it possible some of these units need the Hopper to be in operation for some number of hours before the Joeys will connect? I'm gonna call this a win for now.

I did notice that my NHL CenterIce channels are not available. Have to call Dish about that. Also, my Blockbuster & OnDemand that did not work from the Hopper last night appear to be operable now.

 

[tbradshaw]

It can never be that easy, can it? After having everything off for a while my Hopper cannot acquire a sat signal. The tech on the phone ran through his diagnostics with no luck. They want to send someone out. Pulling hair...

 

[jawxx]

I'm a tech for the local Dish office here. A lot of the Hopper units out of the box are not downloading the proper software that lets them accept clients. Putting the Hopper into standby (screen saver) mode for about 20 minutes allows the Hopper to check for another update. If the tech is consistently leaving the Hopper on it won't do this. This update has the missing piece of software that lets the Hopper (host) accept clients (joeys).

At night your Hopper likely downloaded this update. Then when you retried the Joeys, voila!

 

[JamesC]

Jawxx is correct. Needs two sets if software. One for hopper and one for joeys. Software is downloaded to hopper and then distributed to joeys. You can tell if it has been downloaded by going into network setup, tests, view counters, then page down close to the bottom of page. If you don't see client id within one or two page ups, it hasn't downloaded it yet. Put it back in standby.

 

[tbradshaw]

Thanks, guys. The Hopper-Joey connections appear to be OK and I was able to figure out the "acquiring satellite signal" issue (poor cable connection at the node). It does seem that it all required time that the tech wasn't ready for. Still missing the CenterIce channels as of this morning but the rest looks like it's working.

 

[Dishman1978]

Thanks, guys. The Hopper-Joey connections appear to be OK and I was able to figure out the "acquiring satellite signal" issue (poor cable connection at the node). It does seem that it all required time that the tech wasn't ready for. Still missing the CenterIce channels as of this morning but the rest looks like it's working.

Your programming may have accidentally dopped off your account at the time the work order was completed. A simple call to a CSR should remedy this situation.