said by brad152:the hopper has six tuners in it, that's how it can record up to six shows at once.
You evidently didn't do a lot of (if any) research on this...
It ONLY has THREE actual (total) tuners in the Hopper, but because it uses only ONE of those tuners to record ALL prime-time shows from the 4 major networks, that's why they advertise (in all that fine print)
record up to 6 live HD channels at once during prime-time. (all of those networks in each market are on a single x-ponder - THAT'S how ONE tuner does PTAT!)
If the majority of your TV recording/watch is prime time from the 4 major nets, that fine - but try watching &/or recording 6 different things from any OTHER channels you get at once, & watch what happens...
I assume you DO realize those "Joey" units in the other rooms have NO tuners in them at all; they have to steal one of those 3 tuners in the Hopper if you want to watch (& pause) live TV from them.
Sorry, but having 3 measly TOTAL tuners for being able to watch/record, would NEVER cut it just for myself!
Eventually, DISH is
supposed to be making it so that you can add on a 2nd Hopper unit to your setup, so that BOTH Hoppers function as a 6-tuner WHD setup -with all the Joey(s) being able to see BOTH Hopper's hard drives; unfortunately, they have NOT released a date when that's going to happen. Knowing DISH as well as I do, I would NEVER buy something from them on a "supposed to" condition, until it's actually released AND working (properly).
Sorry, but if I was going to go the route of a "media-center DVR", I would have gone w/DirecTV - at least THEY had sense enough to put FIVE actual, separate, tuners in theirs - while STILL keeping another "live" tuner in each of their version of "Joey's". Their 4-room whole-house DVR gives you 8 total separate tuners.
You might want to see some of the other limitations of this H/J thing, since you are now stuck for 2 years:
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www.satelliteguys.us/dis ··· oey.html