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Dish's Hopper 3 DVR has a whopping 16 tuners, lets you watch four HD channels at once on a 4K TV

The Hopper 3, due out early this year, is arguably the most powerful and feature-packed DVR to date.

David Carnoy Executive Editor / Reviews

Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, including headphones and speakers. He's also an e-reader and e-publishing expert as well as the author of the novels Knife Music, The Big Exit and Lucidity. All the titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, Nook e-books and audiobooks.

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David Carnoy

Jan. 5, 2016 3:02 p.m. PT

2 min read

The new DVR will be available to Dish subscribers early this year.
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Dish's upcoming Hopper 3 is one turbo-charged, feature-packed DVR.

Not only does it have 16 tuners and Netflix integration in its universal search results, but there's a new proprietary "Sports Bar Mode" that allows you to play four live HD channels simultaneously on one 4K screen.

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What if you only have a 1080p TV? Well, you can still watch four channels at once but the resolution gets stepped down.

Dish says the 16 tuners in the Hopper 3, due to ship "early in 2016," is the most available in any DVR to date. Having all those tuners allows you to record multiple shows at once, watch shows in multiple rooms or view live programs remotely via DISH Anywhere, without worrying about having to manage conflicts.

The thing is fast, too. Powered by the Broadcom 7445, a quad-core Arm processor, the company says the new DVR operates at seven times the speed of Hopper 2. It's got 2 terabytes of internal storage, enough to save up to 500 hours of HD content, and is the first DVR to use USB 3.0 connectivity for external storage expansion, which allows for 10x faster transfer speeds.

Sports Bar Mode allows you to play four live HD channels simultaneously on one 4K screen.
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Like any Dish product launch at CES, the list of announcements runs long. Netflix 4K content will be available for viewing on the Hopper 3 (and 4K Joey) and a new deal with Sony Pictures brings Sony 4K content to the new DVR. Plus, YouTube is coming along for the Hopper 3 ride later this year.

That's not all. There's another bit of new hardware news: HopperGO, a $99 portable Wi-Fi-enabled "mobile video drive," allows you to take your shows with you. It's got 64GB of internal flash memory for storing up to 100 hours of content.

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You can use HopperGO to create a private Wi-Fi cloud to play back different transferred shows on up to five devices at once, meaning several viewers can be watching a different show off HopperGO at the same time. It delivers 4 hours of battery life and is also due to ship in "early 2016," according to Dish.

The Wi-Fi-enabled HopperGO ($99) has 64GB of internal memory and ships early this year.
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