There is more to TV than just three channels.

iahawkeye83 · 2026-09-24T00:05:31+00:00

My first 24 hours with the Dish Hopper has been positive. I now find myself watching more than the Weather Channel and news stations. I find it easier to find shows on the Hopper than it is to find on X1. Watched a few shows today, first was Home Improvement, second was Guy’s Grocery Games, third was Bar Rescue. I guess I like finding shows either by channel surfing or with a grid guide. And I watched the shows as they broadcast. But I had a day off of work and nothing to do (other than laundry and return the cable boxes to Xfinity).

px_eliezer_

HooRU Real creeps sicking a dog on their paper boy who they never tipped or paid.

Why did they do that ?!

HooRU

I to this day don’t know why, maybe they are sick in the head? I have never even set foot on their property; the newspaper was left in a box at the end of the driveway. They also refused to pay their bill.

HooRU

They laughed and taunted me too.

ilikeme1

iahawkeye83 I’m surprised Dish boxes still even come with a phone connection. DirecTV has not had them on most of theirs for probably the past 10+ years. We never connected the phone line for either DirecTV or Dish and they never complained.

iahawkeye83

ilikeme1 the older DirecTV receivers only had a phone line connection and the latest DirecTV receivers only have a broadband connection. The latest Dish receiver (the Hopper, which was released in 2016) has both a phone line and broadband connection.

I think the reason that satellite companies want the phone line/broadband connection is so that if you have more than one receiver they can verify that the receivers are at the same location and that you are not sharing a subscription with a buddy. The thing with satellite (unlike cable where they can shut a box down if they detect it’s on a different node than the one assigned to the subscriber address) is satellite can be received anywhere in North America (and certain parts of the Caribbean) with a clear view of the southern sky. Here the dishes point to the southwest for the Dish Western arc. So if your buddy has a clear view of the southern sky and a properly aligned dish he can get TV with an add-on receiver to your account instead of buying a separate subscription. The Genie/Hopper/X1 fixed that problem as all three systems additional TVs require the main box in the subscriber household to function. So if I give my buddy at work a Joey and he has a properly aligned Dish that Joey is going to be a paperweight without the Hopper. Same with the Genie and X1.

And the TV providers only allow one main box (Hopper/Genie/XG1) per account.

Saratoga66

iahawkeye83 The latest Dish receiver (the Hopper, which was released in 2016) has both a phone line and broadband connection.

As I told you in another thread. The phone jack is NOT used for communications. There is no internal modem. It is used to display caller id info on your TV

Zer0Cool

telcodad oh trust me i love DTV stream. i have it, and am eagerly awaiting their new box next year. plus its android so i can put all my other apps on it

Somewhat-Reticent

Saratoga66 The phone jack is NOT used for communications…
It is used to display caller ID info…

Cellular or analog?

iahawkeye83

Saratoga66 It is used to display caller id info on your TV

So basically a caller ID box on a TV. I remember when caller ID first came out in the 90s. It was a box that you plugged in between the phone and the wall (or the answering machine and the wall). I guess I’m aging myself lol.

The Gen Z kids at work probably won’t know what I’m talking about.

lesmikesell

iahawkeye83 The Gen Z kids at work probably won’t know what I’m talking abou

I think you lost them when you talked about a phone being plugged into the wall.

Somewhat-Reticent

lesmikesell For charging, right?

lesmikesell

Somewhat-Reticent For charging, right?

No, for power to the dial…

MacLeech

Who plugs phones in to anything?

iahawkeye83

MacLeech Who plugs phones in to anything?

If you refer to the 12 volt outlet in a car as a cigarette lighter port you are over a certain age as that used to hold a plug that you could light cigarettes with. Now you plug a cell phone charger into that outlet. My Tesla has charger pads you can set your phone on to charge your phone.

But the Gen Z kids at work do learn to use a landline when they are phone trained at work. Businesses use landlines. We have the Cisco IP phone system at work.

camper

Back in the 80’s and early 90’s I used to watch The Weather Channel a lot.
A lot.
It was quite informative back then.
But now, The Weather Channel seems to have changed.

Focusing upon the on-air personalities more than the actual weather.

That seemed to be emphasized when The Weather Channel decided to sell all its back-end data gathering and analyses systems to IBM, while only retaining its now vacuous Weather Channel cable station with little to sell but the on-the-air faces.

HooRU

All of the original Cable TV Networks have lost their direction. Reality TV and corporate mentality instead of the real mission are partly to blame. Name a network, almost any network.

MacLeech

HooRU Their real direction and mission has always been to make money selling advertising. Advertising money has been diluted which reduces money to pay for programming.

HooRU

I can imagine with the massive variety of media being produced in America that advertising is less profitable for some networks, but what do we actually know on the issue?

Did shows such as How it’s Made really cost more than Below Deck or whatever that show is?

I suspect that both less money for shows is a factor, but the corporate idiocy and dumbness of the new breed of broadcasters is equally to blame.

I don’t think Curiosity Stream or Magellan make big profits, but they consistently deliver fantastic content. PBS works on a shoestring and produces Frontline and Nova among other programs of extremly high quality. Let’s to be so quick to blame money on a people problem.

Somewhat-Reticent

HooRU Let’s to not be so quick

MacLeech

HooRU Did shows such as How it’s Made really cost more than Below Deck or whatever that show is?

Below Deck probably has a bigger audience and attracts more advertising dollars.

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