Dish Network Hopper 3 Unveiled at CES 2016; Release Date and Price; Seven Times More Powerful Than Hopper 2

By Mark Rollins

Dish Network has a tremendous presence every year at CES with their giant kangaroo mascot outside Las Vegas' Convention Center.  This year, as they have in previous years, the company unveiled the Hopper 3.  The Hopper 3 is a big leap (kangaroo pun intended) from Dish Network's previous iteration, and the set-top box could be the most powerful on the market.  This is everything known about the Dish Network Hopper 3 including its release date and price. 

Dish says that the Hopper 3 is the most powerful set-top box on the market, and seven times more powerful than the Hopper 2.  The speed of the set-top box is due to its being powered by a Broadcom 7445, a quad-core Arm processor.  The Hopper 3 set-top box has 16 tuners, which means that the user can record up to 16 shows at one time.  Also, one Hopper can easily support up to 7 TVs without a hassle.  

It has 2 Terabytes of internal storage, which is good enough for 500 hours of HD content.  It is also the first DVR to use USB 3.0 connectivity for external storage expansion, allowing for faster transfer speeds at 10 times the usual rate. 

The user also has the option of playing four channels on a single screen at the same time, which is called "Sports Bar Mode".  The issue is that you have to have a 4K television, but it might work on a 1080p television with lower resolution on each screen.  By the way, if you want to pause on one screen, a few screens, or all screens, you can do that.  So, even though Back to the Future II gave us 2015 where users watch six channels at once, it appears that 2016 is beginning to catch up. 

Hopper 3
Hopper 3 and HopperGo at CES 2016. Mark Rollins

In addition to the Hopper 3, Dish Network is going to make more content available to its users with HopperGo.  HopperGo is a Wi-Fi portable hard drive with space for 100 hours of recorded shows and movies, which can be taken anywhere and used to stream with other devices. 

Streaming services like Netflix is also available along with its 4K content, as well as a universal search option for finding the latest in content.  YouTube will be coming later this year, and Sling TV is going to be a part of Dish's content plans.  In fact, Sling is in the process of re-designing its service so that users can discover all the things available on the platform. There is also a new user interface that is made to be "more intuitive than ever", and the remote has a very great illuminated touchpad.    

This includes sorting by category, easier searches, and digging through on-demand archives very quickly.  The result is a set-top box where the user watches what he or she just wants to watch, period. 

The Hopper 3 is slated to ship "early in 2016", and there doesn't seem to be a more definite release date, according to CNET.  The service for the Hopper 3 starts at $15 a month, and the HopperGo will cost $99.  

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