Continuing the theme of this year’s CES, which is “Google Assistant all the things”, Dish Network has announced that Google’s AI assistant will be coming to customers in the first half of 2018.
“Throughout 2017, DISH took major strides toward building a suite of voice control options for our customers, including a new DISH voice remote,” said Niraj Desai, DISH vice president of product management. “We’re pleased to be working with the Google Assistant to offer our customers the ability to control Hopper’s video experiences through the Assistant on speakers and phones.”
Assistant will be coming to three specific Dish devices: Hopper DVR (all generations), Joey client (all models), and the Wally single-tuner HD receiver. Users will be able to use Assistant when it is paired with a Google Home or their phone.
Once it is available, customers will be able to use Google Assistant to control a wide range of features on their tuners and DVRs. These will include things like:
- Changing channels by name
- Changing channels by channel number
- Searching for a specific show
- Playing a specific show or movie
- Rewinding, pausing and resuming the content you are watching
There is no firm timeline provided by Dish on when Assistant will be landing on their hardware other than the broad window of “the first half of 2018”, nor is there in indicator of which devices will receive it first.
