# New to Tivo, my experience coming from Dish's Hopper



## merccat (Sep 5, 2015)

Greetings!

About a month ago i made the switch from Dish's Hopper DVR with their Joey's to the Roamio. I was able to get in on a refurbished Roamio basic, uograded the hard drive and got two Mini's. All in all the transition has been great and I am loving my Tivo service. Here are a few obervations from my experience coming over from the Hopper.

1. There are some terminology differences but pretty minor and you adapt quickly... Hopper = Roamio, Joey = Mini, One Pass vs... Etc

2. The Tivo ui is much faster... This is a big deal for me as i can not stand a slow UI. The hopper was responsive and i would not have called it slow, also i had a first generation model so newer ones might be faster... Regardless, the Tivo is faster which is nice.

3. Love love love integration of streaming services along with my programs... If they add HBO Go it would be perfection.

4. Menu navigation is vastly better on the Tivo. It actually helps you find your programs and while not perfect i'll tske Tivo central anyday over the Hoppers menus. Especially with its superior speed.

There are a few features I realized that I gave up coming to Tivo... hope to someday see Tivo include some variation of these:

1. Dish's Joeys (mini) could control the host dvr's tuners or join a tuner. In addition to avoiding the no tuners available issue this also allowed pause in one room resume in another functionaliy. For me i set my system up so im primarily watching on minis so the ability to control the tuners woukd be very welcome.

2. Dish's Joeys (again mini) would allow you to continue watching tv in the corner while navigating menus ie when going to Tivo central.. On the primary dvr you can browse recordings during a commercial... On the mini, it drops the tuner when you go to tivo central. Again as I primarily watch on my mini's, this would be a welcome feature.

There were a couple features dish's hooper offered that the Roamio does not which i find I dont miss at all:

1. The dish dvr would eith their service on some programs automatically skip commercials. It was nice but i really dont mind skipping manually. Just wanted to mention it, not a feature i would necessarily want tivo to implelemt.

2. "Prime time anytime". When turned on the Hopper would automatically record all major networks everyday during prime time. The nice part was it would only tie up one tuner... The bad parts were that you get a ton of recordings you have zero interedt in and the ones you do like automatically dissapear after s couple weeks. I'm hoping once Tivo learns my watching patterns better the suggestions will be a far superior option.

When it comes to watching your content away from home:
- The hoppers ability to stream your recordings from anywhere was nice but required a good fast internet connection, was prone to dropping out and i never really got much use from it. While Tivo has an equivalent capability from what I read the user experience is pretty much the same. I think this is just a limitation of home internet connections.

- I have not yet tried it but the Tivo lets you download certain programs to a portable device for watching offline.... Really? Thats awesome, the hopper did not offer anything close to that.

All in all, i am very happy i went with the Tivo, especially as xfinity at my house has much better picture quality than i got from dish and the rate i pay is vastly better (saving 80/month for the same channels even after tivo's service). With the streaming service integration i feel like im actually getting a lot more for less money once i swallow the initial investment. 

Overall the Tivo in my opinion offers a superior user experience. There are a couple features lacking in the mini's that i had with the Joeys. While I would love to see them brought in, I am getting along just fine without and i understand that most people probably primarily watch on their main DVR.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

merccat said:


> - I have not yet tried it but the Tivo lets you download certain programs to a portable device for watching offline.... Really?


Only iOS devices.


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## steff3 (Sep 17, 2005)

merccat said:


> Greetings!
> 
> About a month ago i made the switch from Dish's Hopper DVR with their Joey's to the Roamio. I was able to get in on a refurbished Roamio basic, uograded the hard drive and got two Mini's. All in all the transition has been great and I am loving my Tivo service. Here are a few obervations from my experience coming over from the Hopper.
> 
> ...


Merccat, thanks so much for this. I'm in exactly the same situation with dish, which I really like but the cost difference and the internet speed with Xfinity is making me want to switch with using Tivo equipment. Your comparison answers question I was having and is great to hear your experience with the two boxes. It helps me to make a decision!


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## jonw747 (Aug 2, 2015)

My family would very much appreciate the ability to share a single tuner or better yet stream across multiple devices. That would be brilliant. 

If they offered a device that let me stream other devices to the Mini's I could eliminate a whole bunch of HDMI and Component switching equipment.

btw, the ability of Dish to record all prime time programming at once stems from the fact that all those shows are packed together on the same Satellite channel. That permits Dish to record all the shows with just a single tuner, and then demux them later as needed. TiVo won't be able to do that, but the 6-tuner capability of the Pro/Plus is a better comp.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

You could always supplement the prime time thing with Hulu. They have a version without ads now.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

jonw747 said:


> .......... btw, the ability of Dish to record all prime time programming at once stems from the fact that all those shows are packed together on the same Satellite channel. That permits Dish to record all the shows with just a single tuner, and then demux them later as needed. TiVo won't be able to do that, but the 6-tuner capability of the Pro/Plus is a better comp.


You actually may be able to do it with cable too, by putting all the networks on the same QAM channel, but if you put the big four (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) on one QAM then they each only have about 9.25 MB so the HD PQ would suffer if using mpeg2. Now once they change to mpeg4 h.264 then it'd be more feasible and will get better PQ.

That's for the great write up, OP!


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

I don't think the CableCARD could handle that. No matter how many "tuners" a device has the CableCARD can still only decrypt 6 simultaneous streams. I know that in most areas the locals aren't encrypted but they will be soon. Now that the integration ban has been lifted and MSO supplied DVRs no longer have to use CableCARDs this is something they might be able to do in those DVRs, but TiVo will never be able to follow suit unless CableCARD is replaced with something else or they increase the number of streams the cards can decrypt.


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

merccat said:


> 1. Dish's Joeys (mini) could control the host dvr's tuners or join a tuner. In addition to avoiding the no tuners available issue this also allowed pause in one room resume in another functionaliy. For me i set my system up so im primarily watching on minis so the ability to control the tuners woukd be very welcome.
> 
> - I have not yet tried it but the Tivo lets you download certain programs to a portable device for watching offline.... Really? Thats awesome, the hopper did not offer anything close to that.


On point 1, this irks me a little with the Tivo Mini as well. What would work for me is allowing the mini to cycle through the available tuners on the main Tivo, just like the Main Tivo. If that would screw up the main Tivo user, then add a function to be able to make particular tuners off limits to minis. So you could set to so the main Tivo gets 4 tuners to itself and the mini can cycle through the other 2. I doubt Tivo would bother with this but I can dream.

On the second point, while Tivo's way only does this on iOS devices(why I dunno), you can use the 3rd party utility KMTTG to download non copy protected content in a size and format that is readable by a mobile device and transfer it that way.


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## HarperVision (May 14, 2007)

Dan203 said:


> I don't think the CableCARD could handle that. No matter how many "tuners" a device has the CableCARD can still only decrypt 6 simultaneous streams. I know that in most areas the locals aren't encrypted but they will be soon. Now that the integration ban has been lifted and MSO supplied DVRs no longer have to use CableCARDs this is something they might be able to do in those DVRs, but TiVo will never be able to follow suit unless CableCARD is replaced with something else or they increase the number of streams the cards can decrypt.


I agree. I was speaking in hypothetical, if someone (cable co, TiVo or whomever) wanted to build a cable version of the Hopper and wanted that feature.

I thought I heard cablecards could do up to 8 streams now with the latest FWs?


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

HarperVision said:


> I thought I heard cablecards could do up to 8 streams now with the latest FWs?


They can.

And theoretically if you really wanted more tuners than 6 or 8, I would think that TiVo could theoretically be able to build a device with 2 CableCard slots if they really wanted to and double the number of tuners in the box.


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## humbb (Jan 27, 2014)

merccat said:


> 3. Love love love integration of streaming services along with my programs... If they add HBO Go it would be perfection.


If you have access to Xfinity On Demand through your Tivo and you're an HBO sub, you also have access to pretty much the entire HBO Go Library.

Also check out the Xfinity TV Go app - you can stream (and in some cases download) a huge amount of content to your iOS and/or Android devices. I use this often on air travel, downloading movies/TV programs for viewing offline.


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## ncted (May 13, 2007)

I moved form Hopper to Roamio OTA about 10 months ago, and, while I miss a few features of the Hopper, it isn't anything worth keeping Dish service for. If I moved to the country, and couldn't get good OTA reception, or if they turn off OTA, I would probably get Dish again, but that would be the only reason I could justify paying for linear TV service again.


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## merccat (Sep 5, 2015)

humbb said:


> If you have access to Xfinity On Demand through your Tivo and you're an HBO sub, you also have access to pretty much the entire HBO Go Library.
> 
> Also check out the Xfinity TV Go app - you can stream (and in some cases download) a huge amount of content to your iOS and/or Android devices. I use this often on air travel, downloading movies/TV programs for viewing offline.


Good Point, I do watch HBO content through the Xfinity app so its not like its not available. I just find Xfinity's app very ugly and clunky compared to the others.

Also commercial free Hulu probably is a good enough alternative to prime time anytime, but i'm perfectly happy picking just the shows I want And setting passes for them. Already subscribing to netflix and amazon prime, I don't know if I want another subscription.

*I also remembered one more point on the mini:*
The dish Joey when waking up would always remember the last station you were watching so when it grabs a tuner it goes back to that station. The Mini doesnt do this so you get whatever random station the tuner it picks happens to be on. Not a big deal but when I'm waking up in the morning i always have to re-tune my news channel.

Like another said, while the hopper has some nice features there is nothing worth the extra premium you pay for Dish, at least for me. Especially since i already had internet through Xfinity and they offered me my tv package including HBO Go for only 10 more than i was paying for i ternet already.

I'm still interested in cutting the cord completely which is why I got the basic Roamio, but for the moment I cant beat Xfinity's pricing... plus my wife was very uneasy about the idea . I don't currently see any scenario where i go back to Dish.


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## PCurry57 (Feb 27, 2012)

tarheelblue32 said:


> Only iOS devices.


Android is coming soon


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## PCurry57 (Feb 27, 2012)

jonw747 said:


> My family would very much appreciate the ability to share a single tuner or better yet stream across multiple devices. That would be brilliant.
> 
> If they offered a device that let me stream other devices to the Mini's I could eliminate a whole bunch of HDMI and Component switching equipment.
> 
> btw, the ability of Dish to record all prime time programming at once stems from the fact that all those shows are packed together on the same Satellite channel. That permits Dish to record all the shows with just a single tuner, and then demux them later as needed. TiVo won't be able to do that, but the 6-tuner capability of the Pro/Plus is a better comp.


Press record and steam the recording in progress


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

PCurry57 said:


> Android is coming soon


I've heard that before.


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## jonw747 (Aug 2, 2015)

PCurry57 said:


> Press record and steam the recording in progress


That's still independently controlled viewing. Someone at each TV has to deal with skipping commercials, and if there's some overlap in audio, it's gong to inevitably get out of sync.


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## humbb (Jan 27, 2014)

PCurry57 said:


> Android is coming soon


It's here today! 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tivophone.android


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## Chuck_IV (Jan 1, 2002)

humbb said:


> It's here today!
> 
> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tivophone.android


Nice catch. Noticed Tivo branded it with the new logo too.


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## JohnnyBnyc (Sep 9, 2015)

merccat said:


> Greetings!
> 
> About a month ago i made the switch from Dish's Hopper DVR with their Joey's to the Roamio. I was able to get in on a refurbished Roamio basic, uograded the hard drive and got two Mini's. All in all the transition has been great and I am loving my Tivo service. Here are a few obervations from my experience coming over from the Hopper.
> 
> ...


Well said and a helpful post. Thanks


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## Jakk (Sep 12, 2015)

tarheelblue32 said:


> They can.
> 
> And theoretically if you really wanted more tuners than 6 or 8, I would think that TiVo could theoretically be able to build a device with 2 CableCard slots if they really wanted to and double the number of tuners in the box.


TiVo already made a box with two CableCard slots. The old two tuner TiVo boxes needed one CableCard for each tuner. Today it wouldn't be hard for TiVo to make a box with two CableCard slots and 12 tuners. In fact we've had the ability to put together a Windows Media Center PC with 12 cable tuners for sometime now. Simply by installing two 6 tuner CableCard PCI tuner cards in the same PC. Unfortunately, Windows 10 doesn't support CableCard tuners but Windows 7 and 8/8.1 with WMC does.


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