SatelliteGuys "Best In Show" Award

[Scott Greczkowski]

Everytime I go to one of Dish Networks shows where they showcase new technology I always award one product or idea as the "SatelliteGuys.US Best In Show" Award Winner.

Last September the "SatelliteGuys.US Best In Show" winner was the Dish 522 DVR, the Dish 522 was selected because of its new interface, becauseof its agile stereo modulator and becauuse of the fact that you could serve 2 rooms from one receiver.

While the software has taken awhile to make the 522 into the world class receiver it really is, I am still very proud to have picked it as last years "SatelliteGuys.US Best in Show" winner.

This year at Team Summit we saw a lot of great thing, and for the first time ever we saw a lot of working concepts. These concepts may or may not ever see the light of day, while some concepts such as Name Based Timers will see the light of day other ideas such as "The Best of Dish" deserve to die a quick death.

As the founder of SatelliteGuys.US I am proud to introduce the winner of this years "SatelliteGuys.US Best in Show" award winner, the "MP3 & JEPG Feature"

I enjoyed the MP3 & JPEG Feature concept which was shown at team summit not just because you can store photos and music files on your DVR's hard drive, but because of the fact that this feature can be added to equipment you already own.

I don't like calling this exciting upgrade the "MP3 & JPEG Feature" so from now on I will refer to this upgrade as "The Dish Multimedia Center"

While demoed on a Dish 522 Receiver the Dish Multimedia Center could work on any Dish DVR which has a USB port. To transfer files to the Dish Multimedia Center you need a Portable USB storage device such as the Lexar Jumpdrive (shown below)

These cards can be purchased anywhere. I picked up a 128 MB Lexar unit a few weeks ago at WalMat for $29. They work like external hard drive, you just plug them into your computer, copy your MP3 and Picture files to them and then you can unplug the portable drive from your computer, and now you have your files stored on your keychain.

When the Dish Multimedia Center software is released you will notice a few new items on your main menu. (as shown below)

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These new features include USB Storage (which lets you copy files from your USB storage device), Image Viewer (which lets you view images stores on your USB sotrage device or from the DVR's hard drive) and a MP3 player which again will play off the USB storage device or the DVR hard drive.​

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If you go to USB storage, without a USB storage device inserted you will get a blank screen as shown below.​

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When you insert a USB storage device the DVR will automaticly give you a list of compatable files found on that storage device. (It will accept MP3 audio files and most picture formats except for GIF picture files) When it is inserted a screen will pop up which looks like the one below.​

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You can now select the songs you want to copy to the DVR hard drive and click process, this will copy the files to the DVR.​

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Once copied you can make your own playlists, and you can also have your own slide show while the music is playing! The slide show will change slides at an interval which you select. You can make many playlists and choose the list your in to mood for.​

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When pictures are displayed they are resized to fit your TV. For looking at high quality photos on a standard NTSC Television, I was impressed how good the demo pictures looked.​

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When you are in a playlist you can select specific songs or click play them all.​

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The audio sounds great, of course it works best if you have your DVR plugged into your stereo system, at the show they were demoing the DishComm powerline audio sending unit with this feature. With Dishcomm you can listen to your MP3 (or Sirius from Dish) in any room in your house, the audio is sent over the power lines in your house.​

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While currently this feature is planned for the 522, they hope to bring it to other DVR models as well such as the 508 and 510. I REALLY hope this bring this feature to the 921 and 942 as well. Imagine having a LCD or plazma scarrn on your wall, and while you are not watching TV your favorite photos are being displayed on the HDTV in full resolution! When not in use your HDTV could be like a big picture frame. ​

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Let's hope this product goes from CONCEPT to release! And imagine if you would that this idea could be expanded upon, if the Multimedia center had support for Windows Media, you could actually transfer and display family movies and more to the Dish DVR and be able to watch them whenever you want from your EZ Chair!​

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So there you have it, this years "SatelliteGuys Best In Show" award winner the Dish Multimedia Center Upgrade!​

 

[maddawg]

Man, if this ever gets release it will be awesome.

 

[dlsnyder]

While demoed on a Dish 522 Receiver the Dish Multimedia Center could work on any Dish DVR which has a USB port. To transfer files to the Dish Multimedia Center you need a Portable USB storage device such as the Lexar Jumpdrive (shown below)

While currently this feature is planned for the 522, they hope to bring it to other DVR models as well such as the 508 and 510.​

How will they do this if those models do not have a USB port? Is there some way they can attach a device to the expansion port that will emulate a USB port?​

 

[dlsnyder]

It is looking more and more like the 721 is a really good deal. It should be able to run these new apps just as well as the 522.

 

[gpflepsen]

That is a great concept! Just do it, Dish.

Would the 721 be in the possible upgrade list? When someone stated recently that the 721 was at it's development end, does this mean they will stop adding features to it?

 

[mikew]

What would make more sense is to use the streaming capability of Winamp. Have some "easy" to set up server software for a PC and play the stream on the box.

 

[dfergie]

Sounds like E*is getting ideas from Replay

 

[dlsnyder]

Similar functionality was also demoed on the MOXI prototype a couple of years ago. If an idea is good and Dish can charge extra for it it doesn't matter where it came from

 

[SummitAdvantageRetailer]

I have a hunch that they'll enable this feature AFTER they make the 522 available to customers without a lease. If not they'll cause a ruckus with customers who'll want to OWN the 522.

More and more HDTV's are going to support the JPEG viewer. DVD players can do it now as long as you burn it in a readable disc. I suppose USB or home networking will be easier than having to burn a disc and play it back in a DVD player though.

 

[bcshields]

How about connecting the computer via USB to play a playlist through your home entertainment center?

 

[Ddavis]

I think this is really nice and hope it does come to the 721. However, I just have to ask, if they can read from the USB device, shouldn't they be able to write to it to? Just curious.

 

[WeeJavaDude]

I think this is really nice and hope it does come to the 721. However, I just have to ask, if they can read from the USB device, shouldn't they be able to write to it to? Just curious.

Actually depends on the driver used and what devices are connected to it. Not all USB devices are created equal. Just because you can read/write to a USB flash device does not mean you can read/write to a USB Drive.

 

[Ddavis]

Actually depends on the driver used and what devices are connected to it. Not all USB devices are created equal. Just because you can read/write to a USB flash device does not mean you can read/write to a USB Drive.

My question is because the Media Center described above appears to only be able to read from the USB flash device.

 

[GaryPen]

Similar functionality was also demoed on the MOXI prototype a couple of years ago. If an idea is good and Dish can charge extra for it it doesn't matter where it came from

The current Digeo Moxi has that capability via ethernet. Play MP3's, JPG's, etc. from any PC, or other networked device, right through your home theater via the Moxi. I believe it's two-way, as well, but I could be mistaken.

That's much better than this Dish USB thing. Perhaps Dish will someday consider enabling their receivers for ethernet.

 

[SimpleSimon]

... That's much better than this Dish USB thing. Perhaps Dish will someday consider enabling their receivers for ethernet.

It's easy enough to use a USB-Ethernet adapter - as long as the receiver supports it!

 

[WeeJavaDude]

The current Digeo Moxi has that capability via ethernet. Play MP3's, JPG's, etc. from any PC, or other networked device, right through your home theater via the Moxi. I believe it's two-way, as well, but I could be mistaken.

That's much better than this Dish USB thing. Perhaps Dish will someday consider enabling their receivers for ethernet.

I have seen this device. I actually thought about getting it but I don't have any HD video inputs left on the TV. It would be nice to be able to hook up a camera into your receiver and be able to slide show the pictures at 1080i. Or be able to plug your MP3 players into your receiver and play MP3 files. What would even be cooler would be to get access to your MP3 stream files.

I am not sure the Moxi has storage cababilities. If I recall it was designed to only read and present data. The Moxi, though cool, has a different set of features. From my take it looks like Dish is trying to add some of what Moxi provides into their receivers. I agree with you that ethernet/wi-fi should be added. That is why I brought up the point that it should be the communication mechansim instead of power comm.

 

[WeeJavaDude]

My question is because the Media Center described above appears to only be able to read from the USB flash device.

My guess is that will be the case.. I thought you were eluding to a USB drive and offline storage. I don't think this is what they are trying to acheive and that USB is physical transport layer.. Like Simon said.. (been dying to say that ) if the driver supports it. There will be a limited set of functionality on the USB port and most likely it will be for reading things like flash drives, MP3 players, and possible digitial cameras. I don't think the plan here is to allow one to suck off video content from the USB port.

 

[dlsnyder]

Now if they could take that one step further...

Assuming they could enable true Ethernet networking through the USB port as Simon suggested, they could allow the sharing of MP3 files, pictures, programs, whatever across the LAN with other similarly enabled Dish devices. There are other devices that are designed to read content like that on a network and play them. One that I have been looking at is the Onkyo NC-500. Hopefully they will allow networked devices like this to work with it.

 

[WeeJavaDude]

Now if they could take that one step further...

Assuming they could enable true Ethernet networking through the USB port as Simon suggested, they could allow the sharing of MP3 files, pictures, programs, whatever across the LAN with other similarly enabled Dish devices. There are other devices that are designed to read content like that on a network and play them. One that I have been looking at is the Onkyo NC-500. Hopefully they will allow networked devices like this to work with it.

Want to make things clear. It is not just a matter of placing a USB Ethernet driver into the Dish Receiver. You have to have a TCP/IP stack and there has to be support for the file system mechansim.. Somewhy for the box to read a windows share. I am running a USB ethernet card on my PC and they work nicely. Rather cool little device, but I did have to install a driver on my windows box. A PC is a lot different than a Receiver and I am sure any expansion would be a very limited subset of what we get for our PC.

Onkyo device looks like a cool little device.

 

[Stargazer]

I think they will be able to suck off video content from the usb port and I will tell you why. The new LCD portable DVR was supposed to be able to retrieve the DVR Events from the receivers into that unit, so I think it is possible.

The jumpdrives (some call them thumbdrives) will just keep getting cheaper and cheaper and be able to offer more and more memory. I have a 256 MB Lexar Media jumpdrive. They have a 2.0 Pro version that is able to retrieve the data much quicker, and I have even seen them available up to 1 GB now although those are about $250-400, somewhere in that price range, cannot remember the pricing of it.