[dboreham]

Will Dish let me self-install a Hopper/Joey deployment? (I'm an existing customer, and an electrical engineer, and I prefer to install gear myself). In the past I bought receivers outright and installed them myself with a dpp44 but with the reports of hardware failures on the Hopper I'd prefer to rent from Dish. Is that allowed under their rules, with a self-install?

Thanks!

 

[P Smith]

If you has an account and will buy own H/J for upgrade then yes.
Else they will force you accept their own installation procedure.

 

[James Long]

Agreed ... it seems that it does not matter who one is, their experience or their length of service. DISH does not do self-installs of leased Hoppers.

BTW: Repair cost of an owned Hopper is the same as a leased Hopper ... the main savings in leasing is not paying the larger up front cost (which goes beyond the cost of Hoppers and Joeys). Installation includes nodes, cabling and all parts needed and can include a replacement dish. My issue with a "professional install" was scheduling. I'm not home during their install hours during the week so I got my equipment on a Saturday.

 

[Stewart Vernon]

I typically prefer to do my own work as well... although I made an exception for the actual dish installation because I do not like heights, and it went on the roof of a two-story house. I am happy to let installers do that work for me... so I live somewhat with the rest of the requirement since it gets the part I dread most done.

James brings up a good point too... since nodes and switches required beyond the normal equipment for traditional receivers can be pricey if you had to buy everything to install yourself.. so having them install and throwing in that extra necessary equipment pays for itself in the long run.

 

[dboreham]

Thanks. Not the answer I was hoping, but at least I know now.

My dishes are mounted on a 10ft high mast.

Apart from the scheduling issue, I want to use Cat5/Ethernet to interconnect the Hopper withe Joeys (not Coax). My place has Gigabit Ethernet all over, but not much Coax -- I already run Component Video from a receiver to a remote TV via Cat5 for example. I have a hunch the installer will not be at home to this idea.

 

[Stewart Vernon]

Apart from the scheduling issue, I want to use Cat5/Ethernet to interconnect the Hopper withe Joeys (not Coax). My place has Gigabit Ethernet all over, but not much Coax -- I already run Component Video from a receiver to a remote TV via Cat5 for example. I have a hunch the installer will not be at home to this idea.

You should be aware too that while the ethernet connection does work for connecting Joeys... it is not the officially supported method by Dish... so if you rely on it, you could be rudely surprised one day to find they disable that functionality.

It is a byproduct of the way they are interconnecting the Hoppers/Joeys that allows this connection via Cat5... and they don't seem eager to embrace it, so I'm expecting them to disable it at some point.

 

[P Smith]

The method working pretty well and shouldn't be disabled.
Why need to be expected for the odd move ?
There is no one reason to do that.

 

[dboreham]

I would guess their biggest concern would be with MPAA/rights holders who don't want their content on "normal" network infrastructure. e.g. you could Ethernet bridge the traffic to the other side of the world. Presumably they're checking latency to prevent that. You could sniff the traffic and potentially decrypt it to extract the content. I think they like the Ethernet transport option technically but are scared the media owners will push back if they make too much noise about it. So it works, but is "unsupported". It'll be turned off if the movie studios sue to get it turned off.

 

[P Smith]

Pure fictional reason - video on demand, BB movies transferring via Internet - no concerns at all. Actually all that aspects of protection was implemented and test long before we start discussing the ficsionado.

 

[dboreham]

I'll defer to your greater knowledge of the contracts between Dish and the rights holders..

Another reason would be fear of clueless customers bridging via WiFi and other network QoS problems. Mandating clean coax between boxes mostly works around such evils.

Anyway, I think I can have an installer deploy the units at locations which are coax-connected, then move them myself to where I want them after he/she leaves.