Well, the install went surprisingly good. It did take longer than expected (5 hours start to finish), but it was his first one, and he also installed a new dish, and ran a new cable run to my office. When he was done he had no complaints, and actually was glad his first install was a video geek like me, so he said he learned enough to make it worth the time.
His tip a coworker had given him about installing the Hopper first, letting it update, activating all units, then installing the Joey's seemed spot on. Each unit came online, updated, rebooted a few times, and worked perfectly out of the gate.
I will say, when you first plug in either a Hopper or Joey, they appear dead for a good 5-10 minutes, so just leave them alone. The Hopper took about 20 minutes to do it's firmware updates, the Joey's less. The remotes all linked up first try, and the system wizards on each unit to setup worked flawlessly; the Joey's found and connected to the Hopper automatically, and without issue. It's probably my imagination, but the picture quality coming out of the hopper seems better than the 922, but that's probably not actually true, lol.
The interface is like the 922's, but much better IMO. The whole unit is faster, and it switches channels and transponders a lot faster too.
Really the only issues we ran into was when we went to connect internet. First thing we discovered is the Hopper does not have Homelink built in. 2nd, if you connect internet to a Joey's ethernet port, that Joey shows connectivity, but it does not share it with the other units.
It boils down to (at least for now), you have to have an internet connection to the Hopper via ethernet or optional USB wireless, or insert the HIC box, which he didn't have. In lieu of the HIC, he gave me the USB wireless key for free, and it works great actually. It's plugged into the Hopper. Interestingly, if you go to Broadband setup on the Joey's, it shows no internet connectivity, but they share the Hopper's connection in that they can view Dish on Demand or Blockbuster through the Hopper.
It would make more sense if the Joey shared internet to the Hopper if I plugged into the back of it, but apparently that doesn't work yet.
We also plugged a Sling adapter into it, and so far, it appears to be working as well!
So it wasn't without minor hitches, but to be honest, the Hopper and Joey's all went in without a hitch, and are working perfectly. Can't wait for my PTAT tonight!
Here's what it looks like in Dishonline with the Sling Adapter: