Posted 18 March 2012 - 08:04 AM
The main feature of the Hopper 2000 is that is is a Whole Home DVR.The Hopper does all the recording with its three tuners. In the future a second Hopper 2000 can be coupled to have a total of six tuners. A single Hopper can support up to three Joeys
The Joeys are small client devices that get all their data streams from the Hopper using a LAN technology called MOCA (Multimedia Over Coax Alliance) that uses coax cabling only. With the Joey being logically linked to the Hopper, HD data streams can be transmitted from the Hopper to the Joey and still be legal to the DMR (Digital Media Rights). The importance is that with the Dish VIP622/722/722K satellite receivers, the TV2 output could only be SD because it was going out an open coax cable.
So in the classic RV configuration, the bedroom TV can be HD without a second receiver. with the Hopper 2000 We currently have a VIP722K for the living room and a VIP612 for the bedroom. That gives HD for both TVs but if the Boss wants to watch programs recorded on the 722 K in the bedroom, she has to use the SD RV2 feed. And nothing recorded in the bedroom can be viewed in the living room.
With a Hopper 2000, all the recording will be in a common repository and all the TVs can receive HD signals.
Prime Time Any Time (PTAT) is limited to the four major networks only and only when they are all are in HD. One of the important things about PTAT is that is only uses one tuner when it is recording the Network feeds. It starts just before the Prime Time window (8-11 ET, 7-10 CT) and ends upwards on an hour after the window to compensate for network runovers. Sports and special events like CBS Football on Sunday night will add more recording time. The PTAT is recorded in a separate partition of the hard drive and doesn't count against the 1TB of user space out of the 2TB drive. Also, because the entire data stream on all four Network channels are recorded in a stream, the screwed up timing on Network programming (late/early starts/ends) that screws up recording timers is eliminated Anything in the PTAT library can be copied into the user space for retention beyond the 8 day window of PTAT recording retention period.
It has not been determined whether the LA DNS channels will work for PTAT. I am hoping DNS West Coast will be handled by PTAT.
There are many other features like Bluetooth for headsets, compressible EPG (Program Guide), and faster operation.
For the Whole Home DVR function we are having a Hopper 2000 and two Joeys installed next Wednesday.
The main issue I see for most RVers is that the typical satellite dish installation runs one of the coax cable to the living room and one to the bed room. If you have a Winegard Trav'ler, you could use a Dish Separator to use just one cable for a dual tuner receiver like the VIP722K. The way the Hopper system is wired, two coax cable have to be connected to a SOLO bridge that is the MOCA multiplexor for the Hopper system. A Dish Separator cannot be used in this case, only two coax cables from the dish.
Since we installed a VIP622 years ago with a dish that dis not support a Dish Separator, we extended the bedroom satellite coax to the living room.. When we replaced the roof dish with a Winegard Trav'ler, we could use the Dish Separators and we could add the VIP612 in the bedroom when we upgraded to a VIP722K. So we are lucky that we have the additional coax cabling that we need for the Hopper 2000 installation.
Please Emails onlyMark & Dale
Red Rover - 2000 Volvo 770, Tige - 2006 40' Travel Supreme
Sparky II - 2012 Chevy Equinox, Living on the Road since 2006
Useful Truck, Trailer, and Full-timing Info at
www.dmbruss.com
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