How Cool Would That Be?
Today I was screwing around at my office and typed in an address I haven’t been to in a long time that address was www.dishonline.com. I am not sure why I thought of that address or why I typed it in, but what I saw surprised me.
On the page was all of the content I expected to see and more.
A few things stood out at me as strange, first was a picture of the front of the upcoming Slingloaded 922 DVR advertising the SlingGuide service that lets you remotely program and watch your Dish Network DVR’s over the internet. (Note to watch via the internet your Dish DVR must be hooked up to a Slingbox.)
But seeing a picture of the front of the unreleased 922 isn’t what caught my eye, what caught my eye was underneath it was a big HD Movies logo and next to it was the download from iTunes logo. Next to that was another “download from iTunes” logo advertising the NBC Show 30 Rock.
It confused me that a site that was setup to primarily sell Dish Network pay per view was telling Dish Network customers to download their movies from Apples iTunes.
Now honestly I know of no deals between Dish Network and Apple, but seeing the push to get Dish Network customers to download their content from iTunes set my imagination running wild.
If you have ever seen screen shots of Dish Network’s upcoming Slingloaded ViP 922 HD DVR you might have noticed that the menus and on screen icons look a lot like the icons found on an iPhone.
Now if you go on that, how cool would it be if the Slingloaded ViP 922 HD DVR also had built in AppleTV support? That would turn the 922 into one of the most ultimate media centers on the market.
When the 922 was announced Dish mentioned that they were going to let people create their own applications for the 922, imagine if you could access and use the thousands of applications which have already been designed for the iPhone/iPod touch?
Imagine if you could access your entire iTunes library from your 922 plus have the ability to download content from the iTunes store to your 922.
If you have been watching the tech blogs such as Engadget or Gizmodo you might have seen a lot of talk about the AppleTV product over the past week. Many folks are wondering what the future of the AppleTV is. Apple this week stopped selling its 40 gigabyte model. Some folks were saying that this could be a sign that AppleTV might be coming to an end, but others are saying good things are coming to the AppleTV. or Gizmodo you might have seen a lot of talk about the AppleTV product over the past few weeks.
Many folks are wondering what the future of the AppleTV is. Apple this week stopped selling its 40 gigabyte model. Some folks were saying that this could be a sign that AppleTV might be coming to an end, but others are saying good things are coming to the AppleTV.
Imagine if Apple announced a partnership with Dish Network that would let the Dish 922 take advantage of the AppleTV foundation, plus in exchange current AppleTV’s in use out in the field could be software upgraded so that you could use them as Slingboxes to enjoy your Dish Network service anywhere. That would rock!
Now I will admit that I have been beta testing the 922 for the past few months and other then the icons looking like iPhone graphics I have seen no indication that there is any plans to bring the AppleTV platform onto the 922. It could just be that Apple purchased the space on DishOnline.COM, but imagine how great it would be if they combined these two products together. How cool would that be?
Steve Eaton commented:
I was excited about the 922 in January, was still excited going into the summer. No I am fed up and disappointed. I mean it is now FALL 2009, no 922, not even a release schedule, not like you could believe it. I was going to ditch my 522 for a 922, now they have taken so long I am starting to think of media center setups or something that exists that I can get my hands on. Knowing dish I will have to pay for the sling feature service.
Btw if you look at the CES clips the sling tuner is supposed to be internal, it could then serv up sling content without a sling box ?
Keith commented:
WHEN is the 922 being releases????
Jayn_j commented:
Yes, but how else is DISH going to be able to effectively compete with Comcast style Video On Demand?
They need this agreement.
Jon Pennington commented:
Well, that would cover most of the content. With lots of Blu-ray players and even networked TVs supporting Netflix and Amazon, ViP+iTunes means that a Dish customer with a broadband connection has access to ALMOST ALL of the digital content available in the US. Wouldn't that be cool? Yeah! Am I holding my breath? No.