Monday, July 9, 2018

Dish Hopper devices get Google Assistant functionality

After promising up the feature for the better part of a year, Dish’s Hopper line just got Google Assistant functionality. The feature brings hands-free control to the receivers, allowing for the standard array of functionality like play, pause, fast forward and rewind, along with content search.

Here are a handful of examples from Google,

  • “Turn on my Hopper”
  • “Tune to channel 140”
  • “Show me home improvement shows”
  • “Open Game Finder on Hopper”
  • “Rewind 30 seconds” “Pause” and “Resume”
  • “Record Game of Thrones on Hopper”

You get the idea.

Dish announced the feature back at CES — I’m not sure eight months qualifies as “soon” in terms of software updates, but there you go. The feature works with Hoppers that are paired with Assistant-enabled devices like Google Home smart speakers and Android handsets. Apparently the company rolled the feature out to about one-percent of users last week as a kind of large scale test. 

Dish has supported Alexa for some time, on the other hand. Last May, the company brought the hands-free skill to Hopper, and added support for its Joey receivers back in October. Amazon’s assistant also added DVR recording capability for Dish, TiVo, DIRECTV and Verizon this March.



Source: TechCrunch http://j.mp/2L5AoOo

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