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Dish Hopper shuts down every night between 1:20 and 1:30 AM. The Hopper will shutdown to download updates and the guide. You get about a 30 second warning to stop it, or it shuts down and takes 3 - 4 minutes to reboot, and still needs to be manually turned back on.
If you are not watching, but listening, or ignoring because a commercial is playing, it shuts down. As a night owl, I am typically watching TV and it is a PIA to say the least.
I've called and complained, and they say they get lots of complaints about it, but the clear message is they don't give a damn, nor is there a way to choose the time this should happen. I guess not enough people are watching at 1:20 - 1:30 AM.
With the exception of this one issue, I'm happy with Dish, and have no regrets about dumping Charter 6 months ago.
My buddy has Dish and a Hopper and he has complained about this before. He's been a Dish customer for a long time and said you used to be able to set the update time on the older models. However, the Hopper is hardcoded for that time and despite Dish promising to change it for a year now, they still haven't.
The work around is to have it actively recording during that time. It will still check for the update at 1am, but won't perform the update and reset if you are actively recording something. As soon as the recording is finished though, it will do the reset. So, setup a recording to happen every night from 12:30 am to whenever you know you won't be watching. As soon as the recording is done, it will then do the update. Just make sure you delete the recording each day to save space.
That "update" was one of many reasons I dumped Dish, even though I had the older receiver that was able to change the time. I had a stand alone tivo, and unless I remembered to turn the P.O.C. receiver on in the morning, the tivo wouldn't be able to record anything. I never saw the "update" do anything but turn the thing off. I strongly suspect it was there because the owner of Dish wanted to force customers off tivo and onto his system. Read online the stories about him. He is a piece of work.
We are working on a software update for the Hopper system to where customers can change the update time.
No ETA on when it will happen, but your complaints are being heard and considered. We are doing our best to be a more progressive, forward-thinking company.
DISH sent me a thick envelope yesterday filled with all kinds of offers and freebees. Why? Inside the 'We value you as our customer and appreciate your business' card, it states 'programming package price will be increased by $5 starting in February.
I can do basic math. $5x 12 million subscribers= $60 million more revenue per month. I'm finding it hard to believe that channels have to charge more because of their cheap to produce reality programs.
I get late night shut down once in awhile. Not for program updates as I own [as in purchased] my receiver 15 years ago. Have saved $800 so far. The shut down is to validate the smart card that you are paying your bill.
"We are working on a software update for the Hopper system to where customers can change the update time."
Of course no other respectable software developer requires a complete reboot of their software on a daily basis. My Commodore 64 could do days at a stretch running a program.
"Hello, Houston? We are going to do the daily reboot of the I.S.S. at 1:40 AM rather than 1:20 AM. Have those rocket scientists down there figured out how to do that yet?"
"Hello, Fandango? Why can't I buy a movie ticket between 1:20 and 1:30 AM?"
"Hello Microsoft? Why does Windows shut down every night?"
We are working on a software update for the Hopper system to where customers can change the update time.
No ETA on when it will happen, but your complaints are being heard and considered. We are doing our best to be a more progressive, forward-thinking company.
It's the 21st century ... you should be able to figure out how to perform non-disruptive updates by now.
We are working on a software update for the Hopper system to where customers can change the update time.
No ETA on when it will happen, but your complaints are being heard and considered. We are doing our best to be a more progressive, forward-thinking company.
As I said, my buddy has Dish and he is a pretty tech savvy guy. This "issue" has existed for over a year. At that rate you guys are making Comcast and Time Warner look "progressive".
Common sense would have told Dish to make this update user friendly. Instead, they make people hate it and regret getting it. It should only do updates when there actually is an update. You can't honestly sit and say there is always updates every single day at 1:00 - 1:30 am, if this is the case, then it must be the biggest pile of junk on the planet. I like the Hopper other than this issue. However, if it wasn't for being roped into a 2 year contract, I would have ditched it after the first week over this.
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