Dish's Hopper 3 DVR uses 4K to watch four HD games at once

Dish has been pushing its placeshifting and ad-skipping Hopper DVR for a few years now, and now it's ready to unleash the biggest upgrade yet. The Hopper 3 is ready for 4K -- there's already a Joey 4K, introduced last year -- and it has 16 tuners, which should be enough to end channel conflicts forever. Its 4K support is not just there for watching video on-demand downloads, as it also has a "Sports Bar Mode" that lets owners watch four regular HD channels at once on their Ultra HD TV. That way they don't have to reduce resolution at all, and on game day it could come in handy.

The improvements don't end there however, as the Hopper now integrates Netflix into its search results (this will also come to the older Hopper 2), streams Netflix in 4K, and there's a YouTube app on the way "in the coming months." Dish is touting the power of its new DVR, with 64GB of RAM and a quad-core Broadcom 7445 CPU tied to a 2TB hard drive that can save 500 hours of HD. That gives it the oomph to drive up to six Joey multiroom boxes at once, as well as its new HopperGo. According to Dish, the Hopper 3 will be a free upgrade for "qualifying customers," with a service fee of $15 per month and it's launching this month.