Dish unveiled its Voice Remote today that offers voice recognition, a clickable touchpad and backlighting. It controls navigation, search and content selection on Hopper 3 and 4K Joey boxes.
“Voice Remote is simple to use, affordable and, most impressively, operates with incredible speed and accuracy,” Vivek Khemka, Dish EVP and CTO, says. “Leveraging modern navigation paradigms like touch and voice, this remote represents a complete reinvention of the outdated remote control customers have come to expect from cable providers.”
The operator says the remote is roughly half the size of a traditional one, and compares it to the size of a smartphone. Dish reports it designed the remote to interpret natural language, populating search results based on program title, actor or genre, and building contextual searches to narrow options, as desired. It also utilizes voice commands to control basic functions of the receiver, including recording and changing channels.
It also has two touchpad modes: default displays a blank touchpad allowing navigation tasks, while the numeric mode illuminates a keypad when channel or password entry is preferred.
New and existing Hopper 3 and 4K Joey customers can purchase it for $30.