Dish’s Hopper customers can look forward to some nice upgrades in the coming months. At CEDIA 2015, Dish previewed the new 4K Joey boxes announced earlier this year at CES and a nicely refreshed UI for Hopper and Joey.
The new 4K Joey will offer Dish subscribers with Hopper the latest Ultra HD content. It’s unclear what, if any, satellite content will be available in Ultra HD at launch, but we know that some video services, including YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon are already making 4K content available for streaming.
The logical question might be, “but can the Hopper support 4K?” The answer is no, but it doesn’t have to. Since the Joey can act as a full extender for Hopper functionality, you can relegate your Hopper box to a “legacy” HD TV or even the wiring cabinet.
Meanwhile, it looks like all Hopper customers will soon benefit from a welcome UI refresh. The new Hopper UI, for all Hopper and Joey boxes, will include a new focus on what’s on—a popular, though perhaps inefficient way of finding something to watch now. But perhaps more importantly, it gives Dish customers a better set-top box experience thorugh a cleaner interface design.
