After looking at all of the features that are built into it, Dish Network's new PocketDish portable video device is clearly one of the most sophisticated and user friendly portable video devices on the market right now. The user friendliness of the PocketDish is due largely to the fact that it downloads video from Dish Network digital video recorders rather than the Internet like most other portable video devices.
In order to understand why the ability to download video from a digital video recorder is such an advantage over downloading video from the Internet, you need to know what both processes are like. First, when you download video from the Internet, you have to go through the process of finding the video that you want. The search for video, especially more obscure TV shows and movies that may or may not be on the Internet at all can be frustrating. Then, when you do find what you're looking for it will often be on an on line store which will require you to pay a fee in order to buy or rent the video. If you rent the program, it will self destruct after a certain number of viewings or days, whichever comes first. Whether you rent or buy the video, individually they're not very expensive, but if you're trying to fill up a thirty gigabyte hard drive those fees can add up to a small fortune in a hurry. Another possibility is that you might find the video you're looking for outside of an on line store. If that's the case, it's probably free or at least costs less, but you're opening yourself up to the potential for legal problems and virus problems if you go ahead and download it. Some portable video devices are only capable of downloading video from their proprietary on line stores which saves you the trouble of hunting the video down all over the Internet, but it also severely limits your choices.
The PocketDish works much differently when it comes to downloading video. Because it downloads video from a Dish Network digital video recorder, it can download as much video as you want without having to pay anything besides the fees for your Dish Network subscription and of course the purchase price of the PocketDish itself. The fact that you can program you Digital Video Recorder to download the programs that you want to watch on the PocketDish means that finding that programming is no different from selecting what you would watch anyway with the help of the Dish Interactive Electronic Program Guide. This also means that all of the programming that you would watch at home will also be available to watch on the PocketDish.
Another beneficial feature that sets the PocketDish apart from its competitors is the fact that it will also function as a stand alone digital video recorder. All you need to do is plug the PocketDish into the video out jacks on another device that's playing video and tell it to start recording. This is an incredibly versatile feature that's only limited in uses by the imagination of the PocketDish's owner.
All of these features go a long way toward making the PocketDish a superior portable video device.
