We want to hear how about your ordering experience!
Was on the list (page six I think) for having DIRT contact me. I checked in the morning on Saturday to see how much progress DIRT was making going through the list and again at noon (PST). I estimated that if I waited, it would be later that evening (Saturday) or probably the next day to be reached at my queue point. Understanding that it would be a while, I elected to use the chat feature at the Dish website to schedule an install.
Chat CSR said computers were running slow and by all appearances they were, but in about 15 minutes, all details hammered out and an install was scheduled. I had reached chat CSR at around 3 pm on Saturday, install was to be between noon and five pm on Sunday.
I was initially told I would pay a $95 tech visit fee, but I pressed for a free install due as I have been a Dish customer for 20-ish years, pay by autopay, customer in good standing. The CSR took about 2-3 minutes, but got approval to install for free (H3, 3 Joey 2.0)
We want to hear about your install how did it go?
Got an email around 10:15 am saying installer would be out between 11:45 and 1 pm. Got another email at about 12:20 changing the estimated arrival time to between 2:15 and 3:30. Then got a phone call at about 12:40 saying installer would be out in 30 -40 minutes and he arrived about 30 minutes after that.
Install went good, installer asked about locations, did a quick look-see in the house and told me he would change the LNB, then run a new cable (room I wanted 4k in did not have a cable), then install H3, then joeys. I requested he run the cable in the crawl space, said he would if he could, otherwise it would go through exterior wall. He did run it through crawl space, so I was grateful for that.
We want to hear what the Techs did and upgraded at your house!
Installer changed LNB, ran cable to a new location and set up all boxes and programmed tvs and soundbars (like others, the H3 seemed to stall at the 180 of 192 check, but after 2 tries, finished). In one of the rooms with a joey, I also had my cable internet going to that location, so he set up a splitter that would carry both signals that was then separated with another splitter in the room. I went from two H1s and 2 joeys to an H3 with 3 joeys.
We want to hear your thoughts on the Hopper 3!
It is definitely faster than the H1, the new UI is good, will take some getting used to, but I can see it getting comfortable pretty quickly. After changing from the 52 remote to the 40 remote, the color button options showed up on screen. It appeared to me the picture quality and color was better than what I got from the H1, I'm curious if anyone else thought so too.
I started to use EHD to transfer content back and the USB 3.0 is faster than my H1 transfer speed, it was approximately 50% faster, so while an improvement, not as fast as I would have thought. I did use a powered EHD that is USB 3.0.
We want to hear what you would change about the Hopper 3?
Like others have said, presently, I prefer to have programming upon start and not the menu screen, perhaps Dish will allow for a setting to change that.
I asked about pairing the 40 remote and installer said it would not work. I initially used the 52 remote and the first thing I missed having was the color buttons, the second was the little ridges on buttons that help find your place on the remote without looking at it. After using the tv for about an hour, I started to consider all the timers that would need to be created. Although the installer had said it would work, I wanted to check to see if the 40 remote would pair as I would much prefer restoring timers than recreating them. The tech did let me keep old remotes.
I pressed sys info on front of box, Sat on remote and it paired. I went through settings menu to remote and then selected the restore option. It took 3 times to get it to restore (first time H3 put up an error code that said could not restore), second time, it acted like it restored (to include an H3 reboot), but did not restore. Third time it restored/rebooted and had my previous timers/settings transferred.
Because the remote was paired to a tv from a different room, when it restored, it changed the setting on the remote to the old tv. When I worked through the settings to change it to the new tv and soundbar, on both changes, after I had hit the finish button, it put up a message (I don't have the exact words) saying the changes were being made and to wait. After a minute, I just hit cancel (the message didn't leave) and for both times it happened for both devices. It did update the remote, just didn't clear the message without hitting cancel.
With all that, so far it looks like this was a great upgrade and while I expect a couple snags/bugs, none of the bugs I've seen so far would be considered showstoppers for me and I'm glad to have made the change.
