Echostar Unveils 7100 Tuner w/ WebTV

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, EchoStar announced a new set-top satellite tuner for Dish Network customers: the Model 7100. This incorporates Microsoft’s WebTV technology, a 56kb modem, an infrared wireless keyboard and an 8.6 gigabyte hard drive.

Dish subscribers with the 7100 can elect to subscribe to WebTV service. This allows them to surf the Web and receive e-mail through their TV sets. While Web surfing, viewers have the option of keeping their TV selection playing through a movable picture-in-picture-type window. In the current model, the Web pages are received through the modem.

In future upgrades, it will be possible for Dish to download the most popular Web pages from its satellites at high speed. WebTV service is typically available for 24.95/mo., but WebTV offers a discounted rate for those who already have an Internet Service Provider.

The 7100 offers some remarkable TV-viewing capabilities aside from the WebTV service. It is the only EchoStar device that can receive 7 days of program listing through its electronic program guide (epg). Other EchoStar tuners offer no more than 48 hours. Further, the hard drive in the 7100 allows for VCR-type control of live TV programs. As with RePlay TV’s virtual VCR, the 7100 allows the viewer to pause a live program-say to get some chips-and restart it from that point. The hard drive spools up to 4 hours of the program while the unit is placed in pause. This also allows viewers to rewind portions of the show, replay scenes, fast forward and skip over ads. The 7100 will be available in the Spring for around $499. Free software upgrades later in the year will enable the user to program the 7100 to record programs to its hard drive from clicks in the WebTV electronic program guide. Larger hard drives will also become available later in the year. The current 7100 does include IR blasters for controlling VCRs to record programs. The epg and recording capabilities of the unit do not rely upon WebTV access to work. Conversely, a user can browse the Web without subscribing to Dish Network programming (he’d still get his local channels off the air).
-Stephen Muratore