There have always been people willing to explore the possibility of combining different technologies. Television itself was originally a combination of older radio technology and a cathode ray tube. Now computers have been combined with virtually everything to make them function better. Cars have had computers built into them for years, and the newer ones often have several computers that perform different functions. Digital cameras are essentially computers connected to optical devices, and even digital watches are computers. Now, Dish Network has begun an experiment with adding digital video recording technology onto portable video devices in the form of the two higher end models in its PocketDish line.



These two models of the PocketDish- the AV500E and the AV700E- both have the ability to record video from anything that will play it over compatible output jacks. This makes a wide variety of electronic appliances including TV's, VCR's, camcorders, computers, cable boxes, satellite receivers, and DVD players sources of video for the AV500E and the AV700E.

The AV500E and the AV700E record video from these sources in the sophisticated MPEG-4 compression format which means that their hard drives can hold enormous amounts of video. The AV500E with a thirty gigabyte hard drive can store up to one hundred and twenty hours worth of video and the AV700E can store up to one hundred and sixty hours worth of video on its forty gigabyte hard drive. This makes either of these units great choices for anyone who wants to shoot video on a long trip and needs a repository for that video. Both the AV500E and the AV700E can serve this purpose and even allow video enthusiasts to review their work by playing it back on the units' full color built in LCD screens. The fact that the AV500E and the AV700E both have 16:9 aspect ratio screens means that they can even display video filmed in wide screen format although there's a chance that wide screen format will decrease the number of hours that the units can store.

Besides the fact that the AV500E and the AV700E have built in digital video recorders, PocketDishes in general are distinguished from other portable video devices by the fact that they download their video programming from Dish Network digital video recorders rather than from the Internet. This makes them a lot more convenient than competing models that don't have this advantage. Getting video from Dish Network digital video recorders also has the benefit of being able to download video at a rate of roughly one hour of video for every five minutes of download time, versus the fact that video can only be acquired in real time when using the digital video recording feature built into the PocketDishes. The disadvantage of downloading video from a digital video recorder is that all of the downloaded video is in MPEG-2 data compression format, which means that the unit can only store about a quarter of the number of hours of video as if it was in the MPEG-4 that the PocketDish records in.

That said, Dish Network's PocketDish is an extremely versatile portable video device which will give the competition a real run for its money.