With all of the different portable media devices on the market these days it can be tough to tell which one is the best. That's because so many of them have such similar features. For example, all portable media devices have color LCD screens, compact hard drives with high storage capacity, and operating systems that are intuitive to use. All of these devices can also play digital music and digital video, and display digital photographs. Most can plug into the input jacks of full sized TV's so that their users can watch the video on a larger screen.
Now there's a device that differentiates itself from all of the others. This devices is marketed by the satellite TV company Dish Network and is called the PocketDish. The PocketDish is different because it has the ability to download video from Dish Network digital video recorders rather than the Internet. This system takes advantage of the fact that digital video recorders are a great source for video for a number of reasons. For one thing, there's really no faster way to get video into your home than over a satellite TV connection. All of the hundreds of channels of TV provided by Dish Network are streaming down from space on electromagnetic waves just waiting to be picked up and turned into images and sounds by a satellite receiver. Digital video recorders then promptly turn those images and sounds into digital video files that are stored on a hard drive. All of this takes place much more quickly than video can be downloaded over even a high speed Internet connection. Plus the video is there on the hard drive ready to be downloaded to a portable device. All of this really comes from a fundamental difference between satellite TV and the Internet: the Internet wasn't designed to stream video but satellite TV was. That alone makes a satellite TV service like Dish Network a much better source of video than the Internet under any circumstances.
In addition to being quick, downloading video from a digital video recorder to a PocketDish is convenient in a number of other ways. For one thing, all of the TV shows and movies that you'd ordinarily watch at home are available to record and take with you on the PocketDish. If you rely on the Internet for TV shows, you might have trouble finding some of the more obscure ones for download. Also a lot of the video that you download from the Internet requires a special download fee. While individually these fees aren't very expensive, they can really add up in a hurry if you're downloading a lot of videos. By contrast, the videos that you download to the PocketDish are already paid for by your Dish Network subscription.
PocketDishes also have a few other distinguishing features. For example, they can also download special video games from Dish Network and serve as gaming platforms. These games include brain teasers and some in role playing and action adventure genres. The two most advanced models of the PocketDish can also function as digital video recorders which really opens up the number of potential sources of video for these devices. In any case, the PocketDish is clearly something special when it comes to portable media devices.
