Lately, the Locals channel change is seldom more than 5 minutes.

  On 6/5/2018 at 10:55 PM, Mark and Dale Bruss said:

Lately, the Locals channel change is seldom more than 5 minutes.

I'm curious, does that 5 minutes mean you are starting with the satellite dish up and receiving the non-local channels and within 5 minutes the old local channels in the "guide" are gone, the new locals are there and you have the new program guide ready to start selecting local programming to record?

I have had a few times that the old locals have shown as no longer available in the guide within 5 minutes(sometimes within 2 minutes, but it always takes my receiver much longer to get the new program guide.

The dish is up and we are receiving non-Locals.  Locals say you are out of service, which is the only reason we are changing the Service Address.

The new Locals channels are present in less than 5 minutes.  The building of the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) takes some time.  In fact, since we doing this after arriving at a new location in the afternoon, we have to insure that the new Locals are set to record even without the EPG.  You can record a time slot without the EPG program.  It seems that PTAT needs an hour or so for the EPG being filled in before it will schedule the DVR.

Before the evening is done, the EPG will be filled in. One disadvantage of the Hopper 3 is that unlike previous receivers, forcing a Switch Check will not cause the EPG to be filled in any faster.

Tks.  Good info.

I had to chat with Dish yesterday to get our locals changed to our new location.  Once that was done, the rep asked if there was anything else, so I asked why I can't make the change on the App.  She came back in a little bit and said that even though we are Full time RVers and otherwise meet all the criteria, we are not on a Pay ahead type account?, but they are working to eventually get all of us in the system to be able to use the App to make the changes.  She said she does not know how long that will take.

Below is a quote from an email exchange with Dish.com.  Apparently I need to be on a "Pay-As-You-Go account.

 
Quote

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly. Due to DMA restrictions in place be Neilson and the FCC, only Pay-As-You-Go accounts at this time are able to use the MyDISH to update the locals. You do have the option to chat with an agent through the app to have your locals updated if you prefer, instead of having to call in.

Another option that is available to you, is an over the air antenna. This would pick up locals that can be scanned into your receiver for the area you might be located in. One other option available is our Distant Networks, these are the four major networks based our of Los Angeles.
  
If you would be interested in the Distant Networks, please let me know. I can go over the requirements with you.
 
Brian A., Advanced Account Support
Survey Response Team | Christiansburg, VA
9:00AM - 8:00 PM EDT Tues/Wed/Thu/Sat

I talked to Brian a couple of days ago.  The DMA reason was not brought up.

I had assumed that using the app, the geographic location was derived from the smartphone locator.  If that is the case then there should be no concern of using the wrong DMA.

For those of you that have the app capability (Dutch), does the app ask for you to enter where you are or is it assumed?

I just changed locations using the app for the first time yesterday.  I am NOT a pay as you go customer, but I am a full time RVer, and do not have home service.  A month or so ago, when I was talking with a rep on the phone about changing my service location, she said my account was showing up as a home service account.  I asked her to change it to a Dish Outdoors account.  She did, and shortly afterward, after a My Dish app update, the ability to update the service address appeared on my app.

The service address update on the app pulls my location from my phone.  I don't have to enter a street address.  Then, I had to enter a code from a screen on the TV.  You have to tell the app which receiver you are using (I have two receivers). To get the code, you press the menu button twice.  The code changes every 5 minutes, so you have to do the update while the code is active.  Once that is done, the locals are updated within a few minutes.  This time, it took about 5 minutes to switch from the old locals (Atlanta), to the new ones (Greenville, SC).  The program guide didn't download fully for the locals immedietly, though.  It was there for everything after the overnight update.

  On 6/9/2018 at 7:22 AM, chindog said:

I just changed locations using the app for the first time yesterday.  I am NOT a pay as you go customer, but I am a full time RVer, and do not have home service.  A month or so ago, when I was talking with a rep on the phone about changing my service location, she said my account was showing up as a home service account.  I asked her to change it to a Dish Outdoors account.  She did, and shortly afterward, after a My Dish app update, the ability to update the service address appeared on my app.

The service address update on the app pulls my location from my phone.  I don't have to enter a street address.  Then, I had to enter a code from a screen on the TV.  You have to tell the app which receiver you are using (I have two receivers). To get the code, you press the menu button twice.  The code changes every 5 minutes, so you have to do the update while the code is active.  Once that is done, the locals are updated within a few minutes.  This time, it took about 5 minutes to switch from the old locals (Atlanta), to the new ones (Greenville, SC).  The program guide didn't download fully for the locals immedietly, though.  It was there for everything after the overnight update.

Thanks for this very informative update.  Do you own your receivers?

  On 6/9/2018 at 7:22 AM, chindog said:

The service address update on the app pulls my location from my phone. 

So, you can't request certain locals?

When we head south for the winter, we change to the Tucson locals once we hit a certain area in Nevada (we can receive Tucson locals as far north as Pioche and as far west as Pahrump).  Going back north in the spring, we change to our home locals once we reach a certain area.  If the app gives you locals only from your current location based on the location from the phone, that would totally screw up our system.

Of course, for us, it's a moot point since we are not fulltimers any longer and have a home account, not a Dish Outdoors account, so wouldn't be able to use the app, anyway.  However, I find using Chat to be quick and easy.