I was happy with my Hopper w/sling for years, but that all changed when they released the new user interface. The new Interfaced was designed for the Hopper3 which is many times faster and more powerful than the Hopper w/sling. The Hopper w/sling just lacked the power to run it. Suddenly it all slowed down, everything I wanted to do took so much longer, press a button and wait, wait a little longer, plus all kinds of bugs started to appear that made recordings being done correctly questionable. I moved on the Hopper 3 and while it's not perfect I found it worlds better than my Hopper w/sling had become.
I can't say exactly how the Hopper with sling is right now but I would not recommend anyone signing up for one, get a Hopper 3 if you got to upgrade.
When I got the Hopper w/sling they used the existing cables in th attic, when I got the H3 (17 tuners) they had to replace those cables and the LNB but there was no charge for doing it.
Sorry but I'm not sure what type cable it was they had to replace,
Hopefully someone from Dish will jump in and give you a better answer.