DISH Prepping Slingbox-Powered ‘Hopper Go’

While we’re not exactly fond of Sling Media’s business practices, we remain enamored of their placeshifting technology which remains best of breed. Similarly, the DISH Hopper offers one of best DVR experiences out there. Indeed – the latest, greatest Hopper includes Slingbox capabilities to catch your content around the house or beyond via smartphone, tablet, computer, or streaming box. So it’s quite curious to see the Slingbox-powered Hopper Go pass through the FCC today (under the Echostar banner).

Is this a companion product, perhaps something akin to the TiVo Stream, to bring placeshifting capabilities to less full featured DVRs? Related, could this imply the DISH Hopper 3 doesn’t natively transcode and stream content? And given the “Go” designation, could this also provide video offload capabilities to catch that recording on a subway or plane without connectivity?

4 thoughts on “DISH Prepping Slingbox-Powered ‘Hopper Go’”

  1. Why doesn’t sling make and sell to the public, who doesn’t have dish a tivo
    Competitor. Or make a slingbox that could be used with a cable card

  2. Considering Dish has had the Sling Adapter (one just plugs it into the ViP or first Gen Hoppers for Sling/streaming capabilities, but no off loading capabilites) for many years, it seems to me that the Go will be about the ability to off-load content onto mobile media, which the first Gen Hoppers and ViP’s can NOT do because they lack the more powerful chip that makes the trans-coding possible. I can only glean from the name “Hopper” Go that this will not be a device for those of the ViP boxes, but only for the 1st Gen Hopper users. For some time now, Dish had ceased installing Hoppers and ONLY installing HWS for all new installs or upgrades from legacy equipment, so this seems a way to get the HWS experience to those people without requiring a switch-out. I really don’t know, just guessing. We’ll have to see.

    Also, Dish is will no longer be offering its Virtual Joey, according to a press release, because a “new” soon to be offered/downloaded feature will “preclude” it. I believe Mr. Dave did report on here that Hopper 3 would have some type of Mirro-casting capability. The press release seem to suggest that current Hopper and HWS users would also get the new feature. We shall have to wait and see on both fronts.

  3. Also, Dave, did you not get the email form Sling stating that they will allow current users who have the paid Sling Player app to KEEP THEM AD FREE? I found it a bit confusing. Are they saying that if we do install the new app, we would lose our ad free experience or not. Perhaps you can figure it out or talk to them and clarify it.
    Here is the text of the email below:

    Slingplayer: free and ad-free for all existing users

    So, what we said last week about not supporting your paid version of Slingplayer after October 1? We realized that we could make things easier for everyone by just leaving things as they are, so the paid app will continue to be available and you don’t need to download the new, free Slingplayer app if you don’t want to.

    But you should still download the new free app! It has great new features you don’t want to miss, and starting October 1, current customers who previously paid for the Slingplayer app will continue to have an ad-free experience. (As long as you download the free app from the same app store account you used to buy the original Slingplayer app)

    We hope you enjoy,
    The Slingbox Team

  4. Also a little more ctliificaaron on my previous post, I want to stream the HD slingbox content from my Verizon FIOS HD content (I have Series 3 HD tivo receiving the FIOS signals) to the MacMini (using either the slingbox web interface or using the slingsoftware on the MacMini), so the HD content would all be on the local network (I have everything running through ethernet at home).HD streaming out of the house isn’t that important, as I’d be watching on my iPhone or a computer on the road. I think I have the upstream bandwith as my fios is 25 down and 5 up. I’m actually excited to try streaming the HD Tivo box content because I have Netflix on my TIVO. So I’d be receiving the downstream from Netflix, running it through the Slingbox and then streaming it out to my iPhone on the road. I’m planning on getting an iPad and seeing how that solution works as well. Kind of a work around until Netflix decides to deliver a streaming app on the iPhone/iPod/iPad platform.

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