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.