For the past two years, DISH Network has been wowing the CES crowd with its Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR lineup. This year is certainly no different.
The company is out at CES 2014, with a slew of new Hopper announcements. The first is the new Hopper with SuperJoey, which will allow subscribers to record more shows than ever before. The new SuperJoey client actually adds another two network tuners to be Hopper's native three tuners. In case you're bad at math, that basically means that you can now record up to eight TV shows simultaneously. With a total of five network tuners, viewers can watch and record any five shows from any network, or any four shows plus the four major broadcast networks.
SuperJoey packs in a 1305 MHz, 3000 DMIPS Broadcom BCM7346 processor, as well as two satellite tuners, remote finder functionality, and support for MoCA and Ethernet connectivity. According to DISH Network, SuperJoeys are backwards compatible for all models of the Hopper.
If you're looking to make that Joey client wireless, DISH also unveiled the Wireless Joey. Designed to go where coaxial or Ethernet wiring has never gone before, the system includes a Wireless Joey Access Point and a Wireless Joey client. Each access point can serve up to two Wireless Joey clients, by creating a dedicated 802.11ac Wi-Fi cloud within the home.
The Wireless Joey has a 900MHz 2000 DMIPS BCM7418 processor. Both the Wireless Joey and the Wireless Joey Access Point have the Broadcom BCM4360 802.11ac chip, which is operating at the 5GHz band. The system also has 3x3 MIMO with beam forming internal antennas and auto frequency selection.
"High on our customers' wish list is the ability to mount a TV on any wall," said Vivek Khemka, DISH senior vice president of product Management. "They don't want to be anchored to a coax outlet or by unsightly wire runs."
Also worth noting is that DISH just upgraded its DISH Anywhere app for iOS and Android devices. The service now includes the DISH Transfers feature, which allows users to view recorded content without a web connection. DISH also plans to release a version of DISH Anywhere for Kindle Fire tablets in the near future.
DISH also added a little something to the DISH Explorer second-screen app for iPad. It now includes voice search, which means you can belt out titles, actors or genres and then build contextual searches that can narrow results.
The most recent Hopper is 2012's Hopper with Sling, which created a ton of buzz at the 2013 CES. The Hopper with Sling has a Broadcom BCM7425 processor and a 2TB hard drive for storing up to 500 hours of HD or 2,000 hours of standard definition content.. It also includes DISH exclusives, such as the PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop commercial skipping. For more information on those features and the entire setup, check out our DISH Network Hopper with Sling Whole-House DVR Review.
The Wireless Joey should start shipping this spring. More information on the availability of the SuperJoey, the Virtual Joey apps and the DISH Anywhere for Kindle Fire will be announced sometime the first quarter of 2014.
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