Video/audio freezing on Joey when connected to a specific hopper

[Mike_H]

I have two hoppers with sling and one joey. I've had them for about a year or so and they have been working well all that time.
Yesterday when my wife was watching a live show via the Joey in our bedroom, the show would play for a few minutes and then freeze (audio and video). Then it would play for some more time and then freeze.

I tried rebooting the hopper it was connected to. Same problem occurred.
I tried rebooting the joey itself. Same problem occurred.
Tonight I checked and the joey was still having shows freeze. So I had it connect to our other hopper and it no longer was freezing. Video plays without the freezing. I connected it back to the other hopper and it started doing the freeze thing again.
Playing recordings from the hopper also freezes on the one hopper, but not the other.
The moca shows all bars green for signal for both hoppers.

So what could be wrong with only one hopper to cause this? Time to call Dish?

 

[thomasjk]

A bad Hopper. Contact DIRT.

 

[ChadT41]

Bad hopper... Bad MOCA connection. Those would be my first two guesses. I would also assume the hopper was messing up and I just hadn't seen it yet.

 

[lucky86]

Disconnect coax from that Hopper and then try to play back dvr content. Is it still messed up? Are both hoppers connected to the Internet?

 

[Mike_H]

Both Hoppers are on the internet. the one with the problem is connected directly to a switch. The one without a problem is connected via wireless.
Joey doesn't pause during playback of DVR content when connected to either hopper.
Joey pauses only during live viewing from one of the two hoppers. Before I get in touch with dish I will try to pause live television on the Joey when connected to the bad hopper. And then see if watching the buffered content (pause it for like 10 minutes) has the problem or if it is only when the joey is trying to display what is "live" content. If so it may be the problem is with the hopper it's ability keep up with the live stream.
I will also disconnect all coax cables at the receiver and the wall for both the joey and suspect hopper and reconnect those cables to make sure they all have a good connection.

 

[lucky86]

So one major problem right off the bat, two IP connections. Easiest way to solve that, unplug the ether cable. Then make sure bridging is turned OFF on the Hopper you removed ethernet from. Then go and make sure bridging is ON, on the wifi Hopper.

 

[Mike_H]

Been like that for nearly 6 months. I highly doubt that is the issue, but I can try. Hopper with issue is now exhibiting other slow issues. Pressing button for guide sometimes pops it up immediately, sometimes it just sits there and ponders life a bit before popping up the guide. Really any interaction with the hopper can randomly take longer as it just sits and thinks for up to 30 seconds. I've been lazy and not really home, so I'll contact dish after the weekend.

 

[Martinash]

Most likely it is bad moca between joey and hopper.
On hopper hit Menu twice. Go to Linked Joeys, Moca Summary, Moca Details.
Dots in the array show Moca quality between receivers. All should be green. Selecting a dot will show details about this connection.
Post your findings.

 

[Mike_H]

No time to look at that, but I did see a new problem.
So I am getting ready to contact Dish. I went to the item that shows the status of the system (green for each source). Then I went to the joey and reconnected it to the problem hopper. And then I found the problem wasn't happening. so I went to check and see if the problem happened with a dvr'd show. what, all the DVR epsiodes disappeared.
No timers show up.
I reboot the hopper (using the option on the menus).
Hopper comes back up: Message 311 Hard Drive Failure.
Hmm, I guess it needs to be replaced.

 

[Mike_H]

Most likely it is bad moca between joey and hopper.
On hopper hit Menu twice. Go to Linked Joeys, Moca Summary, Moca Details.
Dots in the array show Moca quality between receivers. All should be green. Selecting a dot will show details about this connection.
Post your findings.

So, Unplugged the hopper, waited 10 seconds, plugged it back in, it came back up and now can see it's hard drive. So I did your test.
I've got green dots for MOCA connections to from the bad hopper to both the joey and the other hopper.
to the problem joey, Send/Receive Mbps is 291, 0 Errors, -16 Receive Signal Strength, SNR 39.

 

[Mike_H]

Received the 311 error again today. Unplugged the receiver and plugged it back in. Still getting 311 error. Called dish. First person transferred me to advanced techical support (whatever that is) and that person determined I needed the box swapped out.
I'll be curious to see what I get, if it is a regular hopper or Hopper with Sling like my current box.

 

[thomasjk]

HWS. It is like for like usually.

 

[ChadT41]

Unless they don't have any in stock, you would get like for like. And considering the H2K is no longer being manuf. you would likely not get one. Plenty of HWS in stock.

 

[scottts]

I saw this exact symptom as the hard drive in my HWS was failing. After the drive failed for good, the video to attached Joeys paused for about 5 seconds every 30 seconds or so.

I think the Joey video is very dependent on buffering by the hard drive for smooth playback. If you've ever watched the same show on the the hopper and an attached Joey, the Joey is always 5 seconds or so behind which indicates to me that lots of buffering occurs.

 

[Mike_H]

Hopper with Sling arrived today. A refurbed unit out of India according to the stickers. The call queue took long enough for me to get my laptop fired up, logged int mydish.com and activate the receiver through the website. Though it did hang during authorization so the tech on the phone (they picked up about 3 minutes into the activation wait) said to just pull the plug and restart the unit after waiting on the phone with me for 13 minutes. When it came up, the refurb unit showed authorized and was running. Lucky for my wife, all her timers were saved in the remote. Love these remotes.

 

[ChadT41]

Hopper with Sling arrived today. A refurbed unit out of India according to the stickers. The call queue took long enough for me to get my laptop fired up, logged int mydish.com and activate the receiver through the website. Though it did hang during authorization so the tech on the phone (they picked up about 3 minutes into the activation wait) said to just pull the plug and restart the unit after waiting on the phone with me for 13 minutes. When it came up, the refurb unit showed authorized and was running. Lucky for my wife, all her timers were saved in the remote. Love these remotes.

They do make life easier. The 20.x/21.x remotes did it to, but was more difficult to get to work. The Hopper atleast does it automatically every so often.