After all the controversy at the CES awards, DISH thumbs its nose at CBS and decides to release the Hopper with Sling Nationwide anyways. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the controversy, CES, who offers awards for Consumer Electronics was planning to offer an award to DISH, until CBS stepped in, and said “no way”. The Consumer Electronics Association ended up giving them the award anyways, despite the DISH/CBS lawsuit, and now this new Hopper is being distributed nationwide.
The main thing that’s so great about this new Hopper, (and that’s also causing all the controversy), is the fact that you can not only record all your favorite TV shows, and skip past the commercials, as before, but now, you can also download these shows to other devices, such as your iPhone, iPad, or Personal Computer. This will basically allow users to watch television, commercial-free, on any “on-the-go” device that they want.
This new DVR, is capable of recording up to two thousand hours of SD video content, or even five hundred hours of High Definition content. If people had an easy time getting commercial-free TV content before, it’s now gotten even easier, despite major networks’ efforts to curb this trend. It’s Napster all over again, except this time, it’s TV that’s getting targeted, instead of music. And as with Napster, I think we can come to expect a similar result… The major networks can only hold this free-sharing trend off for so long, and then, it’s bound to become free for everyone, which begs the question, how is TV going to be sponsored? Can we expect much lower quality Television shows, as advertisers start to back out, and focus on other avenues of advertising? We’ll just have to wait and see.
The fact that DISH seems to be winning, is evidenced by the fact that not only are they already out there selling this new Hopper nationwide, but also, CES, was actually willing to cut ties COMPLETELY with CNET, in order to award this new Hopper its Prestigious “Best of Show” Award for the 2013 competition.
This new Hopper just seems to be the next step in how the Information Age is revolutionizing the way we interact with our entertainment, and what devices we have to do it. It seems that advertisers will have to find other avenues to work with, as TV commercials are soon going to be off the table. We’ll have to see how this whole thing plays out, but we know one thing for certain, whatever Hopper has done here with Sling Media, has changed the way we watch television for better, and for always. Now grab your tablet, it’s time for some commercial free TV fun.