Reading how great Hopper/Joey are, but wife is ready to break our contract!

[dlmcmurr]

Help! We've been a Dish customer for just over a year. The first couple of months were a little rocky, but the software improved, we learned how to use it better, and we warmed up to it. Most of that changed since 11/18 and S418. You can read my postings over on the dish support forums Hopper/Joey forum under the same username. I've always found the DIRT folks to be responsive in the past, but they seem to have left the building now. Nearly all the help is coming from other users now.

Basically, we're seeing live TV switch channels where the Hopper ends up watching what the Joey is watching even though the banner on the Hopper shows a different channel. Happens most often when both are watching live, but sometimes when the Hopper is watching a recorded program. Usually happens when some event timer expires. Happens at least every other day, sometimes every day. Only a red button reset will fix it.

One of the wife's recordings switched channels when the recording was about 80% complete. So the recording had about 50 minutes of one show and 10 minutes of another show. Another day the daily schedule says it recorded a program for an hour, but the recording was only 12 minutes long.

It's something every day and nobody will tell me anything. Do I need to replace the Hopper again? I would hate to try to move 600 programs, especially when I read how well that has been going lately. These don't seem to be the same problems others are reporting with S418.

I would feel much better if DIRT would at least respond. I've kept my postings reasonably cordial, I believe, unlike some others. If I can't come up with something soon, we'll probably break our contract and switch back to the competition to help them debug their Genie. I know U-Verse won't meet our needs and we have no viable cable options available in our area.

Thanks for listening and maybe someone will offer a suggestion.

Dave

 

[lucky86]

Do you ever see signal issues? This all started with the last software release?

 

[bwexler]

Having two Hoppers may help some.
I just upgraded ?? from 2 Hoppers to two HWS. My timing was bad since the fiasco with transferring to EHD with the latest update.
I WILL be talking to the customer retention folks about retaining the old Hoppers at NO CHARGE until the transfer to EHD can be completed.

I think that those of us with anoying problems should call and allow the customer retention folks shoulder our annoyances so we don't need to be bothered. Maybe they can get through to the programmers easier than we or DIRT can.

I know I talked to a second level tech support person the other day and after an hour he clearly got annoyed with me and suggested I should not allow my problems to pile up. Of course they had all piled up since last Thursday When I connected my first HWS, and was at least my fourth or fifth call.
I simply had a lot of things in the transition that either did not work or were new to me and I did not know how to use them or a combination of both.
For example my internet browser of choice is Firefox and Dish anywhere will not run on my home computer running Firefox. It will run in IE and Chrome. It took 20 minutes of troubleshooting to determine that.

 

[Tron2012]

I truly think one of the best ways to get our point across is to write a good old fashioned letter. Professional, matter of fact details, suggestions for improvement but not a argumentative and complaining tone may get someone's attention. I had a terrible customer service experience a couple of years ago and did just that. Thought the letter went into the circular file, but about a month later someone from Dish was trying to contact me directly to discuss my issues (but not the actual person I sent the letter to!). Unfortunately our schedules kept crossing and I never completed the follow up.

Here is the page with leadership:
http://about.dish.com/company-info/leadership

And it looks like Vivek has the user experience responsibility and product management among other things. "...he oversees the development and execution of product roadmaps, strategy, pricing and the user experience."
http://about.dish.com/leadership/senior-leadership/vivek-khemka

Either he or maybe Mike McClaskey may be the two people who have product development and engineering under them or know who does.

 

[DWS44]

I can't say I've had the same issues as the OP, but I will say that since this latest "update" my Hopper (the original, not a HWS) has had more strange issues happening quite frequently. Before the update, I felt like I had a very stable receiver...very rarely were there any sort of issues. Since the update, its seems very unstable. I never know when it might spontaneously reboot. Over the weekend, I wanted to record the remainder of a show in progress...each time it went to the timer conflict screen, I would select something to skip recording to resolve the issue, screen would go blank, sit dead for 5 minutes or so, then reboot. Lather, rinse, repeat. After the third time trying to record the program and going through this loop, I gave up. Next day, conflict resolution was working fine again. Random crap like that. I'm scared to even turn on my EHD anymore because there are several recordings on there I don't want to loose. Not to mention the aforementioned loss of the "protected" icons. That one bugs the hell out of me. :rant:

I'll have to say that this has been the worst single "update" I've seen in the 10 years I've been with Dish between loss of stability AND loss of features for no apparent reason...and not one peep out of them on the subject that I've seen.

 

[KaptainRandom]

I was having mystrious problems similar to those posted above,
Please try 3 things...

1. Be sure only 1 Hopper is directly connected to internet.
2. Turn on bridging.
3. Run 'switch test'

These 3 things have resolved all the mystery program sharing, timer and tuner issues I had.

 

[dlmcmurr]

Do you ever see signal issues? This all started with the last software release?

Thanks for the reply, lucky86. One thing I didn't mention is my installer came out about a month ago and relocated the dish to a pole when I put a new roof on the house. What are good transponders on the eastern arc to benchmark the signal levels? I'm not sure what it takes to be a good signal.

I was having mystrious problems similar to those posted above,
Please try 3 things...

1. Be sure only 1 Hopper is directly connected to internet.
2. Turn on bridging.
3. Run 'switch test'

These 3 things have resolved all the mystery program sharing, timer and tuner issues I had.

Thanks for the reply, KR.

1. My installer hooked both Hoppers up to my network a year ago. I've removed #2's connection just now. That must have not been causing a problem before, though.
2. I had never looked at bridging until earlier this week when my wife complained her Joey could not get the Weather Channel app to work. I turned on bridging on my Hopper and that fixed her Joey. Her network apps had always worked before this last update. All four devices still have internet as of right now through Hopper #1.
3. Switch test passed.

Thanks to the others that replied, too. Looks like DIRT has started responding again on their support forum after my goading.

I'll see if the networking change affects anything and looking forward to gauging my signal levels, too, when someone tells me what to look for.

Stay tuned,
Dave

 

[lucky86]

What are the levels for 119 ts19, 110 ts16, 129 ts21?

 

[dlmcmurr]

What are the levels for 119 ts19, 110 ts16, 129 ts21?

I'm on 61.5, 72.7 and 77 so I need transponders for them.

 

[lucky86]

Try transponders 21 and 29, I believe.

 

[dare2be]

Try transponders 21 and 29, I believe.

Those wouldn't work for 61.5, since those are spotbeam transponders?

 

[3HaloODST]

I always use 14/15/16/21 for 110/119 and 19/20/29/30 for 129. For 61.5 I use 5/7/10/12, 72.7 12/16/17/21 and 16/17/20/21 for 77.

 

[Barry Erick]

I have one/hopper, 3 joeys and never had this problem. Maybe because of the 3 things the other user says to make sure of, I already have. Love the hOPPER/jOEY is the best system DIS ever had and beats the Directv systems I've seen.

 

[lucky86]

Transponder 29 is the home transponder for 61.5.

 

[KAB]

I had an hour program recorded that only was 12 minutes long Tuesday night. However, it has happened a few times before, prior to S418.

 

[dlmcmurr]

I always use 14/15/16/21 for 110/119 and 19/20/29/30 for 129. For 61.5 I use 5/7/10/12, 72.7 12/16/17/21 and 16/17/20/21 for 77.

Using your transponders as well as those listed in the threshold spreadsheet I found on this site, here are some values:

61x5 49
61x7 48
61x10 60
61x12 46
61x14 63
61x29 0
61x31 0

72x12 48
72x15 48
72x16 48
72x17 52
72x19 48
72x21 53

77x13 n/a
77x16 70
77x17 68
77x20 70
77x21 68

Thanks,
Dave

 

[satnewb]

Transponder 29 is the home transponder for 61.5.

They took 29 out awhile ago. It's now 10.

 

[3HaloODST]

Yes 61.5 used to be 10/14/29/31 but now it's 5/7/10/12

 

[lucky86]

Touche

 

[dvrexpander]

Apparently a new software update hit the hoppers/joeys over night. I'd wait a while and give it time for the technology to settle in and for bugs to get worked out, these are still by far the better equipment than what other companies offer even if a few things are not working 100% yet. I tell people I install these for all the time to give it time a good 3weeks + for them to settle down and then be prepared for random software updates and just be patient if they find issues rather than complain to Dish or whatever.