Satellite 129 Issues

[Josh.M]

llokey and Hipcat say what you want, but I do take issue in your comments. Bottom line is a customer that is not notified to a change that will cause and outage to them is un excusable.

A customer should not have to do web searches and belong to forums to prevent their PAID services or learning about situations that will cause their services to go down. I know Dish has no problems deducting my account for my bill. How about and email? "Oh buy the way, you going to have and issues BECAUSE..." They know I have 922 as well as many others. Even the Dish tech I spoke with said the transistion from 129 to the other satellites was not handled well. I guess you both will say its my fault because I don't have a hopper.

If you wish to go out of your way to point out what I have posted is incorrect I submit, so be it, my service went down, I wasn't notified. What I posted is info on the web much from industry analyst.

End of story. I resolved the problem with my actions, not Dish... I don't live my life on this forum and don't plan to. I expect my service provider to keep me informed as long as I pay for their service and use equipment they originally provided.

Lets talk about technology. Just because technology changes it doesn't mean its better or worth the effort to implement. Nor does it mean if you have something that works that you should just go blow your money on something you really can't justify. Not me, its got to be cost effective and make my life better to some degree before I drop coin or re-invent the wheel for it. Anything else just makes no sense to me.

There is a big difference between an technology upgrade and innovation or functionality improvement. As many of you have gone out of you way to tell me the Hopper is superior and I acknowledge that. Other then some menu upgrades and the ability to record 13 shows it really does nothing else for me other then having to spend more money every month and totally tear apart my existing. No Thank you. If you feel that make me less of a person or a customer Dish no longer wants so be it. Good for you.

I apologize you feel like the communication was lacking from our end - bottom line is you're one of a very few that is still using the 922. We're not going to dedicate resources to developing and releasing software to auto check switch 1200 receivers that have not been supported through software updates for 5 years at this point...it just doesn't make sense from an engineering resource perspective. If it were up to me your receiver would have been deactivated two years ago and you would have been forced to upgrade to something we support so you wouldn't have had to go through this in the first place. A little bit of pain in the past would save pain in the future, but that is all hindsight.

I definitely understand that you're satisfied with your current setup, and I'm glad everything is working for you. The agent that helped you may have felt like it was not handled well, but I can tell you the fallout that did happen was completely miniscule based on the potential failures that could have occurred. This was an incredibly complex undertaking, and if you had equipment that was still being supported through software updates you wouldn't have noticed anything other than maybe an auto check switch pop-up one morning.

 

[Altitudinous]

I apologize you feel like the communication was lacking from our end - bottom line is you're one of a very few that is still using the 922. We're not going to dedicate resources to developing and releasing software to auto check switch 1200 receivers that have not been supported through software updates for 5 years at this point...it just doesn't make sense from an engineering resource perspective. If it were up to me your receiver would have been deactivated two years ago and you would have been forced to upgrade to something we support so you wouldn't have had to go through this in the first place. A little bit of pain in the past would save pain in the future, but that is all hindsight.

I definitely understand that you're satisfied with your current setup, and I'm glad everything is working for you. The agent that helped you may have felt like it was not handled well, but I can tell you the fallout that did happen was completely miniscule based on the potential failures that could have occurred. This was an incredibly complex undertaking, and if you had equipment that was still being supported through software updates you wouldn't have noticed anything other than maybe an auto check switch pop-up one morning.

Thank you for your contributions to this community, expressing interest in and taking ownership of issues that arise with subscribers.

I've had a Hopper 3 since starting with Dish around 2017. This receiver has been "supported" this entire time. My receiver has been connected to power and internet the entire time. During the lead-up to the 129 changeover, the receiver had ample opportunity to be updated as needed in preparation for the changeover. Since I peruse this site, I usually request the updates rather than wait for them.

I was out for a few hours and came home to a non-operational Hopper 3 at the changeover time. I posted about it here Hopper is screwed in response to another Hopper user having problems. At no time leading up to the changeover did Dish send an email notifying subscribers about the impending change. Not everyone is an enthusiast who peruses forums like this one.

So if the implication is that problems only happened to people with "unsupported" receivers, that is just not accurate. My situation was not "maybe an auto check switch pop-up".

Thanks again for your efforts and willingness to communicate.

 

[tjboston5676]

Thank you for your contributions to this community, expressing interest in and taking ownership of issues that arise with subscribers.

I've had a Hopper 3 since starting with Dish around 2017. This receiver has been "supported" this entire time. My receiver has been connected to power and internet the entire time. During the lead-up to the 129 changeover, the receiver had ample opportunity to be updated as needed in preparation for the changeover. Since I peruse this site, I usually request the updates rather than wait for them.

I was out for a few hours and came home to a non-operational Hopper 3 at the changeover time. I posted about it here Hopper is screwed in response to another Hopper user having problems. At no time leading up to the changeover did Dish send an email notifying subscribers about the impending change. Not everyone is an enthusiast who peruses forums like this one.

So if the implication is that problems only happened to people with "unsupported" receivers, that is just not accurate. My situation was not "maybe an auto check switch pop-up".

Thanks again for your efforts and willingness to communicate.

The difference is that any supported receivers that experienced issues almost all auto corrected themselves within an hour or so or just needed a simple reset or check switch.

 

[Altitudinous]

The difference is that any supported receivers that experienced issues almost all auto corrected themselves within an hour or so or just needed a simple reset or check switch.

My Hopper 3 had a good old fashioned complete "snow" screen. I could not even access Hopper functions at that point. If I had been away for a month, would the snow screen have still been there after a month without manual intervention or would it have auto-corrected?

 

[Josh.M]

Thank you for your contributions to this community, expressing interest in and taking ownership of issues that arise with subscribers.

I've had a Hopper 3 since starting with Dish around 2017. This receiver has been "supported" this entire time. My receiver has been connected to power and internet the entire time. During the lead-up to the 129 changeover, the receiver had ample opportunity to be updated as needed in preparation for the changeover. Since I peruse this site, I usually request the updates rather than wait for them.

I was out for a few hours and came home to a non-operational Hopper 3 at the changeover time. I posted about it here Hopper is screwed in response to another Hopper user having problems. At no time leading up to the changeover did Dish send an email notifying subscribers about the impending change. Not everyone is an enthusiast who peruses forums like this one.

So if the implication is that problems only happened to people with "unsupported" receivers, that is just not accurate. My situation was not "maybe an auto check switch pop-up".

Thanks again for your efforts and willingness to communicate.

Absolutely. I am here to help!

The Hopper 3 issues with the 129 removal were in two buckets, one required a check switch and a reboot and the other (smaller) group required an entirely new software version to be pushed to their receiver over the weekend.

As soon as we identified there was an issue with how Hopper 3's were handling the removal the team worked around the clock to identify and communicate fixes - the team continues to work on improving in house testing, but to be completely frank it is VERY difficult to simulate the removal of an orbital even in our test environments (there is much more to in than just unplugging a coax connection as there are data tables, downloads etc that happen in the background on your receiver based on orbital connection).

The most important thing to understand is we had been preparing for this change for a year and we thought we had it figured out (clearly we missed something) so we didn't send any communication because the expected customer experience for 99% of hopper 3 customers was an auto check switch in the morning and then you watch tv like normal, maybe a missed recording here or there.

What we didn't do was prepare for the 922, 311, 322, etc as the models are not intended to work anymore and are no longer being supported though software in any capacity. We don't know what the expected behavior was for these outside of the very likely possibility that they won't work anymore and many efforts have been made by other groups to communicate the end of life of the model and the need to upgrade.

If you have one of the above receivers that is not supported and you call in for literally anything you are supposed to be basically forced to upgrade. They have been more lenient with 922 customers but I've led a project that will ultimately kill the ability for the receiver to be RA'd as it is eventually going to just stop working and people should really do their best to upgrade.

I understand the frustration with the equipment malfunctions during the outage, and I don't want to minimize how it affected your viewing experience - but what I will say is when we removed 77 we had an entire family of VIP receivers just rebooting constantly and experiencing black screens for weeks - luckily that population was much smaller than the amount of people looking at 129. Obviously we would want our customers to experience ZERO issues, but unfortunately our customers were impacted, we worked around the clock to get it fixed and the fix communicated, and now we move on to the next project.

Hope that clears some stuff up - sorry if my language comes across casual. I am a pretty laid back guy just trying to help some folks out on what we view to be a valuable forum for feedback.

Thanks!

 

[Altitudinous]

Absolutely. I am here to help!

The Hopper 3 issues with the 129 removal were in two buckets, one required a check switch and a reboot and the other (smaller) group required an entirely new software version to be pushed to their receiver over the weekend.

As soon as we identified there was an issue with how Hopper 3's were handling the removal the team worked around the clock to identify and communicate fixes - the team continues to work on improving in house testing, but to be completely frank it is VERY difficult to simulate the removal of an orbital even in our test environments (there is much more to in than just unplugging a coax connection as there are data tables, downloads etc that happen in the background on your receiver based on orbital connection).

The most important thing to understand is we had been preparing for this change for a year and we thought we had it figured out (clearly we missed something) so we didn't send any communication because the expected customer experience for 99% of hopper 3 customers was an auto check switch in the morning and then you watch tv like normal, maybe a missed recording here or there.

What we didn't do was prepare for the 922, 311, 322, etc as the models are not intended to work anymore and are no longer being supported though software in any capacity. We don't know what the expected behavior was for these outside of the very likely possibility that they won't work anymore and many efforts have been made by other groups to communicate the end of life of the model and the need to upgrade.

If you have one of the above receivers that is not supported and you call in for literally anything you are supposed to be basically forced to upgrade. They have been more lenient with 922 customers but I've led a project that will ultimately kill the ability for the receiver to be RA'd as it is eventually going to just stop working and people should really do their best to upgrade.

I understand the frustration with the equipment malfunctions during the outage, and I don't want to minimize how it affected your viewing experience - but what I will say is when we removed 77 we had an entire family of VIP receivers just rebooting constantly and experiencing black screens for weeks - luckily that population was much smaller than the amount of people looking at 129. Obviously we would want our customers to experience ZERO issues, but unfortunately our customers were impacted, we worked around the clock to get it fixed and the fix communicated, and now we move on to the next project.

Hope that clears some stuff up - sorry if my language comes across casual. I am a pretty laid back guy just trying to help some folks out on what we view to be a valuable forum for feedback.

Thanks!

Thanks for the additional insight about this. I made out fine with a call-in and some manual intervention. Kudos to Dish for having the recording play on the line encouraging the customer to go run a check switch, etc., and for the follow-up email with the procedure for changing Tuner 0 to Tuner 1, and verifying 110 and 119. Fortunately this type of change doesn't come around too often!

Regarding the unsupported receivers...tough call between cutting people off and forcing an upgrade vs. a best effort situation with or without disclaimers. And there's always the red recording light presence or absence to consider.

Appreciate your efforts and clarity.

 

[NYDutch]

I'm curious about the issues some experienced, when as a fulltime RV'er that relocates frequently and switches between the EA and WA quite often, why I never saw those problems with my H2 when one of the EA sats, usually 61.5, or a WA sat, usually 129, weren't viewable and the H2 didn't even hiccup when running a check switch. All I got was a message that there were fewer sats than before and did I wan't to save what I had. Other than swapping a lot of HD channels for the SD version, there was little difference programming wise. When 77 went away, it was no different, except for not losing the HD channels of course. I guess I'm not clear on why the loss of 129 is so much different for the H3 folks. The few 922's still in service, are so far out of date that problems there are not a surprise.

 

[Bobby]

I'm curious about the issues some experienced, when as a fulltime RV'er that relocates frequently and switches between the EA and WA quite often, why I never saw those problems with my H2 when one of the EA sats, usually 61.5, or a WA sat, usually 129, weren't viewable and the H2 didn't even hiccup when running a check switch. All I got was a message that there were fewer sats than before and did I wan't to save what I had. Other than swapping a lot of HD channels for the SD version, there was little difference programming wise. When 77 went away, it was no different, except for not losing the HD channels of course. I guess I'm not clear on why the loss of 129 is so much different for the H3 folks. The few 922's still in service, are so far out of date that problems there are not a surprise.

I think the H3 is considerably more complicated than the H2. Couple that with, when you had an H2, we probably had the old user interface which was fairly basic.

 

[NYDutch]

I think the H3 is considerably more complicated than the H2. Couple that with, when you had an H2, we probably had the old user interface which was fairly basic.

I still have and use my two H2's. Both are fully updated to version H258.

 

[Bobby]

I still have and use my two H2's. Both are fully updated to version H258.

But your H2s, as well as the H3s, are now on the CUI. That was an entirely new operating system that includes all kinds of bells and whistles that weren't available previously.

 

[telstar_1]

Telstar_1 there is some disagreement in the ranks of Dish experts, some say the 922 was a newer version, and some say the 722 was. Either way the 722 is a dinosaur in functional comparison to the 922. I can say this first hand as I have had both.

The 922 menu system, guide and interface is similar to the newer receivers, see for yourself:
View attachment 164310View attachment 164311
Plus the way it records into specific folders rather then just putting everything in one menu also makes it much easier to record and file your favorites.

I did read somewhere that Echostar and Dish was sued by TiVo over the interface used in the 922 and simply abandon the platform keeping the 722 as the premier DVR. Honestly after having a 922 I could never go back to the 722k. And to me its better then the Wally as it does not have all the Dish advertisement crap on it either. I imagine the Hopper is probably the same way or very similar to the wally.

Yeah, now I'm remembering more, like that GUI. But I didn't actually find the thing any more user-friendly, and now of course who knows what's not going to be supported or fixable. The 722 (also) auto-sorts same-name shows into separate "folders," and I believe you can sort further into groups but I've never done that.

 

[navychop]

And there's always the red recording light presence or absence to consider.

 

[Josh.M]

I'm curious about the issues some experienced, when as a fulltime RV'er that relocates frequently and switches between the EA and WA quite often, why I never saw those problems with my H2 when one of the EA sats, usually 61.5, or a WA sat, usually 129, weren't viewable and the H2 didn't even hiccup when running a check switch. All I got was a message that there were fewer sats than before and did I wan't to save what I had. Other than swapping a lot of HD channels for the SD version, there was little difference programming wise. When 77 went away, it was no different, except for not losing the HD channels of course. I guess I'm not clear on why the loss of 129 is so much different for the H3 folks. The few 922's still in service, are so far out of date that problems there are not a surprise.

H3 just had a bad line of code that basically told the receiver to forget an entire orbital when 129 went away. This only affected people on the newest software which at the time was only ~10% of connected Hopper 3s.

Otherwise the fix just didn't save the results as it should have on any H3 that may have had a weather event or weaker signal on 110/119 during the auto check switch. Basically a bunch of preventative measures that we have implemented to help identify customers with signal loss (and then proactively roll a truck to get them corrected) actually ended up hindering the 129 fix for some customers. The Hopper 3 was trying to be too smart if that makes sense.

 

[NYDutch]

H3 just had a bad line of code that basically told the receiver to forget an entire orbital when 129 went away. This only affected people on the newest software which at the time was only ~10% of connected Hopper 3s.

Otherwise the fix just didn't save the results as it should have on any H3 that may have had a weather event or weaker signal on 110/119 during the auto check switch. Basically a bunch of preventative measures that we have implemented to help identify customers with signal loss (and then proactively roll a truck to get them corrected) actually ended up hindering the 129 fix for some customers. The Hopper 3 was trying to be too smart if that makes sense.

Thanks Josh! That explains it and clears up my confusion. Yesterday was the first time I've set up my portable dish on the WA to use for the next two weeks, And as expected, my triple LNB worked just fine. I had tested it previously, but nothing longer term as I'm doing now. I have a fairly narrow view between the trees here, and only needing to "see" 110 and 119 made aiming a lot easier. The WA elevation here near the Canadian border in NY is just 22.5 degrees, adding a little more challenge to finding that "sweet spot".

Thanks again!

 

[Altitudinous]

Every now and then I go check the RV that has a Wally and the Dish (Winegard) Playmaker. Several times, I turn on the TV to reveal that the Wally/Playmaker are stuck at the beginning of a Check Switch. I unplug the Wally, wait a bit, plug it back in, and I choose Hybrid (61.5, 110, 119) and it eventually comes up and acquires signal. I assume what is happening is the unit restarts due to any kind of power outage (I have no UPS on the Wally currently) to my AC supply to the RV. The default choice is still WA (110, 119, 129) at startup. I assume that after the power outage restart, after 5 minutes, it eventually tries to scan for Western Arc and hangs on that process.

I've left the unit powered since June to see if the issue gets resolved. The Wally software level is W542, and will not update past that if I try to force an update (says it's the latest).

I'd like to find out whether an update to the Wally would fix this restart situation where intervention is required every time. Anybody else run a Wally/Playmaker or Tailgater that has received a later software version that W542?

 

[Josh.M]

Every now and then I go check the RV that has a Wally and the Dish (Winegard) Playmaker. Several times, I turn on the TV to reveal that the Wally/Playmaker are stuck at the beginning of a Check Switch. I unplug the Wally, wait a bit, plug it back in, and I choose Hybrid (61.5, 110, 119) and it eventually comes up and acquires signal. I assume what is happening is the unit restarts due to any kind of power outage (I have no UPS on the Wally currently) to my AC supply to the RV. The default choice is still WA (110, 119, 129) at startup. I assume that after the power outage restart, after 5 minutes, it eventually tries to scan for Western Arc and hangs on that process.

I've left the unit powered since June to see if the issue gets resolved. The Wally software level is W542, and will not update past that if I try to force an update (says it's the latest).

I'd like to find out whether an update to the Wally would fix this restart situation where intervention is required every time. Anybody else run a Wally/Playmaker or Tailgater that has received a later software version that W542?

That's the current Wally software - there's a known issue with our software and mobile antennas not cooperating since the removal of 129. If you have the option to check hybrid on your mobile setup screen that is going to be the best workaround currently - we are working though solutions in a future software update but it doesn't look like its going to make it in to production this football season (I could be wrong but its blocked at the moment in dev).

 

[Altitudinous]

That's the current Wally software - there's a known issue with our software and mobile antennas not cooperating since the removal of 129. If you have the option to check hybrid on your mobile setup screen that is going to be the best workaround currently - we are working though solutions in a future software update but it doesn't look like its going to make it in to production this football season (I could be wrong but its blocked at the moment in dev).

Thank you Josh. I don't suppose there's a way to get the Wally to remember that at each restart, I want it to start with the Hybrid option, is there? Also, I see the option for what time I want the Wally to do the nightly restart, but I do not see an option to tell it not to do a nightly restart. Maybe I'm missing it?

 

[Josh.M]

Thank you Josh. I don't suppose there's a way to get the Wally to remember that at each restart, I want it to start with the Hybrid option, is there? Also, I see the option for what time I want the Wally to do the nightly restart, but I do not see an option to tell it not to do a nightly restart. Maybe I'm missing it?

So you can technically force your receiver to stay on by disabling the inactivity timeout and then changing the reboot time to a time when you're watching and you can manually override it (in the power settings, menu->settings->power).

Your receiver will eventually force a reboot, but it usually takes 3 days. So every 3 days vs every day - up to you!

 

[Altitudinous]

So you can technically force your receiver to stay on by disabling the inactivity timeout and then changing the reboot time to a time when you're watching and you can manually override it (in the power settings, menu->settings->power).

Your receiver will eventually force a reboot, but it usually takes 3 days. So every 3 days vs every day - up to you!

Thanks for that tip. I checked it again today, (after its automatic 4 am reboot) and it was up and running. So it looks like the Wally remembers my Hybrid arc selection during a soft reboot, but not on a power cord pull or power failure. So this way, the Wally lets me know that there has been a power blip of some kind. It's an alert system to cause me to go check the other things that are running on AC, like the fridge and battery converter!