Amid all of the portable video devices on the market these days, there's a relative newcomer that's putting a lot of it's competition to shame by offering a practical way to get video. This device is the PocketDish and it's marketed by the unlikely company Dish Network.
The fact that Dish Network would market a portable video device seems unlikely until you look at the fact that, as a TV service provider, Dish Network is up to its armpits in video. Dish Network even has a good way to record video- in digital format no less- so that it can be downloaded to the PocketDish.
The system that Dish Network has devised to provide its PocketDishes with video is actually quite ingenious. The owner of the PocketDish would presumably also have a subscription to Dish Network and a Dish Network digital video recorder. This person would scroll through the Electronic Program Guide to decide what he or she would like to watch on the PocketDish and then tell the digital video recorder to record it. Once those videos are recorded, the owner of the PocketDish would then plug the PocketDish into the digital video recorder's USB 2.0 Port and tell the machines which video files to download to the PocketDish. The transfer would than take about five minutes for every hour of video to be downloaded, and then all of that video content would be available to watch on the PocketDish.
This process has a lot of advantages over the method that most portable video devices use to get programming. That's because the competition's devices get their programming from the Internet. Tracking down a specific TV show or movie on the Internet can be a frustrating experience, and even if you find what you're looking for, you'll probably have to pay to download it. With the PocketDish, the process is quick, reliable, easy, and perhaps best of all: free.
In order to give you exactly what you want in a portable video device, Dish Network actually provides three different models in the PocketDish line. There's the super compact and economical AV402E, the middle sized AV500E, and the deluxe AV700E. The AV402E is about the same size as a man's wallet, but packs a twenty gigabyte hard disk and a two point two inch color LCD screen into that small package.
The AV500E is larger with a four inch LCD screen, a thirty gigabyte hard disk, and built in speakers. As an added bonus the AV500E also functions as a portable digital video recorder.
The AV700E is a larger version of the AV500E with a seven inch color LCD screen (which is especially big as these devices go) and a forty gigabyte hard disk. The fact that both the AV700E and the AV500E are portable digital video recorders is a great bonus because that feature opens up a lot of other options for acquiring video. With this feature just about any TV, VCR, DVD player, cable box, satellite receiver, computer, camcorder, and numerous other devices suddenly become potential sources of video.
Occasionally a product comes along that does just about everything right. In this case the PocketDish is that product.
