CNET Votes DISH Hopper with Sling Best Of CES

dish-ces-booth

As they do each year, CNET convened to determine the Best of CES. From Editor-in-Chief Lindsey Turrentine:

Last week, about 40 members of the CNET editorial staff met in the CNET trailer in the parking lot of the Las Vegas Convention Center to vote on our official Best of CES winner. […] Ultimately, we chose the Dish Hopper for our Best of CES award because of innovative features that push shows recorded on DVR to iPads.

Of course there’s tons of compelling new technology at CES and whittling it down to a single show representative is quite challenging. Yet, having spent time with the DISH Hopper, we too came away impressed… as it’s quite possibly the most powerful and most versatile DVR ever produced. And it’ll surely end up in more homes than our CES favorite, the Lenovo Table PC.

The new DISH Hopper with Sling builds upon the success of their highly regarded first gen Hopper, retaining consumer-friendly features of automagically recording prime time network programming and then skipping commercials during playback — it’s got the studio’s panties in a wad and may cost DISH dearly when it’s time to renegotiate those carriage contracts. But they seem to relish a good fight. And perhaps that’s why they’re showing no fear in further risking the wrath of content providers by incorporating Slingbox technology…

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Digital Antenna Delivers Broadcast Television To Roku

With a show as ginormous as CES, it’s safe to say lesser staffed outlets (such as yours truly) will overlook a number of interesting technologies. Fortunately, our readers have us covered and Jeff G. turned us onto the VOXX Digital Antenna with Roku. Wha?! While we did encounter Roku a number of times Vegas, all … Read more

TiVo iPad App Tells You “What To Watch”

UPDATE: The TiVo 3.0 iOS app is now live. The second screen invasion is upon us. And TiVo continues to iterate on their very fine companion app. Next up is a reformulation of content discovery. While both the TiVo Premiere and current iPad app provide curated Collections, TiVo tells me the engagement hasn’t been as significant … Read more

Slingbox Client Comes To Netgear NeoTV Streamers

Among Sling Media and Netgear’s various CES announcements is news that Slingbox streaming is coming to the NeoTV line of streamers. Of course, we’d probably expect a repurposing of the original Flash-based Logitech Revue SlingPlayer for the new (and slightly bulkier) NeoTV Prime running Google TV. But the more Roku-esque models, including the NeoTV MAX we … Read more

Vizio Costar To Receive Google TV 3 Update

I briefly swung by Vizio’s CES suite for an update on their small form factor streamer. And came away quite please to learn existing Vizio Costar units will beging receiving a Google TV 3 update within just a few weeks. While our initial Costar impressions weren’t the most favorable, there’s still quite a bit of … Read more

The Second Screen Invasion Is Upon Us

Content remains king, with television programming and mobile device interaction converging at a rapid pace. So-called “second screen” apps were everywhere at CES, integrating all sorts of functionality. And companies are clearly pumped. Heck, Cisco & Cox invited Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman in to witness the unveiling of their upcoming iPad app.

2ndscreensummit

In conjunction with CES festivities, I was invited to the 2nd Screen Summit — “a deep-dive into the latest business opportunities, creative case studies and technology innovations related to the creation of supplementary, synchronized and social TV content featuring speakers from Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley.” Given a tight schedule, I was only able to attend the keynote and a discussion of content discovery via the second screen… which quite frequently wandered well beyond the confines of a tablet device, once again reinforcing content consumption interconnectedness. And, with my somewhat irreverent style, I fired off several “second screen” tweets of my own from the sessions (reproduced below).

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Lenovo Goes Big with 27″ Horizon Table PC

Lenovo Horizon Table PC 3

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the Microsoft Surface table. And while the Redmond giant is no longer shipping product, Lenovo is stepping up to the plate with the new IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC. It’s a 27″ Windows 8 tablet, and it is by far the coolest thing I’ve seen at CES this year.

At last night’s CES Showstoppers event, Lenovo execs demoed two of the Horizon products by setting them up as gaming surfaces. With a multi-user interface, these giant tablets work for everything from air hockey to dice games to shoot-em-ups. Use your fingers, or grab a joystick, puck or die to get started. The accessories pair with the Horizon surface and bring back that retro feel of playing Pac Man at the Pizza Hut on one of their 1980s game tables.

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Verizon 6 Tuner Media Server DVR Arriving "Soon"

First shown about a year ago, Verizon formally pulled the wraps off their upcoming FiOS TV media server here at CES. The “VMS” hardware, produced by Motorola, sports 6 tuners and 1 terabyte of storage, and is effectively Verizon’s third generation platform – evolving into a true whole-home DVR hub and client model, as we’re … Read more