Dish Network upgrades Hopper DVR service with Pandora
updated 09:15 pm EDT, Thu April 19, 2012
Gives subscribers access to 900,000 tracks
Earlier today, Dish Network introduced streaming music service Pandora as an enhancement to the Hopper Whole Home HD digital video recorder (DVR) system. Either a new account or an existing account can be used with the upgrade. A persistent internet connection is required to access Pandora content.
Pandora, in conjunction with the Music Genome Project, provides users with a customized playlist streamed across the internet to various internet connected devices. Pandora was launched in 2000. Listener hours for the month of March crossed the 1 billion mark for the first time with 51 million active listeners. Over 900,000 songs are in the Pandora collection from over 90,000 artists.
In addition to Pandora access through the Hopper DVR, Dish Network subscribers have access to 109 channels of music across three levels of subscriptions, not including video networks such as MTV or VH1. Competitor DirecTV boasts 83 music channels also spread across three different tiers of service.
The Hopper whole home DVR system was released on March 15 of this year and features three satellite tuners in conjunction with a 1TB hard drive. Up to six television shows can be recorded on the Hopper simultaneously. The device and three add-on "Joey" TV tuner boxes are available for free to subscribers of the Top 200 or DishLatino Dos packages.
