Earlier last week at CES, Dish Network announced its new Hopper DVR set top box, which was capable of recording six programs simultaneously on a three-tuner box. This had us scratching our heads a bit, and further confusing the issue was Dish’s disclaimer that this was only true during prime time!
We stopped by Dish’s booth and asked for a demonstration and explanation of this tuner wizardry. The answer is rather ingenious: you can set up your Hopper DVR to automatically record the four major networks’ prime time lineup—every night. The Hopper pulls all four networks through one transponder, leaving you with two tuners during prime time hours to record anything else. At any other time of day, all three tuners are available for use.
This feature, called PrimeTime Anytime, keeps eight days’ worth of programming on a separate drive partition, so it doesn’t impact the available space for your own recorded shows. If you can’t watch one of the PrimeTime shows within the eight days, you can save it to your Recorded TV. And if you choose not to enable PrimeTime Anytime, you can use all three tuners at any time of day.
PrimeTime Anytime will be available on Hopper boxes at no additional cost.
Watch the PrimeTime Anytime walkthrough below or on our YouTube channel.
Be sure to check all of our CES coverage at The Digital Media Zone.
I think the Hopper is truly amazing. I am going to love the PrimeTime Anytime since all of my recording conflicts are usually with those shows. With it only taking up one tuner, it will leave the other two tuners available for my husband and kids. I always end up using all the DVR’s in my house, so this will make my husband happy when we are able to purchase this receiver. A co-worker and I at DISH were able to check it out a few days ago and I really loved the remote finder as well. My kids are always losing the remote and with the remote finder, it will beep until you can locate it. I cannot wait to purchase this receiver.
I want one!
[…] eight days’ prime time content from the four major local network affiliates. We dove into the specifics of this feature earlier this year and posted a PrimeTime Anytime video demonstration on our […]
I finally got the Hopper installed in my home and I absolutely love the PrimeTime Anytime feature! My boss at Dish told me about a recent update and added on features. They added on Pandora and Auto Hop, which is what I was excited about. What this feature does is, with most PrimeTime Anytime shows, you can enable Auto Hop right before the show begins and it will skip the commercials for you. You have to wait until the next day after the show airs, and it you still want to watch the commercials you can rewind back to them. I love this feature because I hated how I would have to fast-forward and rewind to get to the exact spot of the next scene.
[…] TVs throughout a home. We were particularly intrigued by Hopper’s innovative, new feature, PrimeTime Anytime, which optionally allows consumers to automatically record nearly all primetime shows every night […]
[…] were eager to see how they expected to top that. Hopper introduced multi-room viewing and control, PrimeTime Anytime, and the consumer-loved but industry-reviled AutoHop commercial […]
[…] How Dish Records Six Programs with Three Tuners […]
[…] eight days’ prime time content from the four major local network affiliates. We dove into the specifics of this feature earlier this year and posted a PrimeTime Anytime video demonstration on our […]