Archos partnership with EchoStar DishNetworks

[Charbax]

In December 2004 the news was first announced. Recently the first PocketDish devices were released in the USA. They connect digitally with a specific digital video recorder that a portion of the Dish Network satellite TV viewers have, and will be compatible with all the upcomming the set-top-boxes.

The PocketDishes are basically the same as the Gmini402, AV500 and AV700 with integrated Mpeg-2 playback support and Echostar's DRM.

Ideally you can record a show from Dish Networks satellite TV very easilly, by easilly browsing to the specific show you want to record and clicking record and it should be recorded. Depending on if you want to use a currently available Mpeg-2 DVR box, you can digitally transfer the Mpeg2 recordings to the Archos device using the usb2 connection on the DVR. Other currently available set-top-boxes that don't have Mpeg2 recording onto harddrives and usb2-host plug, will probably be made compatible in the way that the Archos device can work as the Portable video recorder and thus record the TV shows in Mpeg-4 in real-time.

Next-Generation set-top-box technology will probably involve Mpeg4 high definition harddisk recorder set-top-boxes. For standard definition Mpeg4 thus shows will be transfered in tens of seconds. For high-definition support, maybe the Archos and the Echostar engineers are working on a way to be able to play them back on the first generation PocketDishes, or else the next generation Archos devices will be the ones to wait for for having high definition playback.