Pocketdish is a Breath of Fresh Air in a Stale Market

There are so many electronic gadgets, devices, and tools out there, that consumers have to learn in order to get not only what they , but also what they need. The designers of all portable video devices have tried to make sure that they have something that sets them apart from the others, but some of these features work better than others. For example, the Video iPod has the distinguishing feature of being made by Apple computer. Besides the fact that video and music downloaded from Apple's on line store- iTunes- will only play on devices made by Apple, there's really nothing to distinguish the iPod from its competition. This strategy seems to work well enough for the iPod though. But when Microsoft recently released its answer to the iPod in the form of a device it calls the Zune, its efforts fell flat.

Other eletronic devices have tried to distinguish themselves in more substantial ways than just brand loyalty and an elitist online video and music store. Some go for raw power- like the model that has a massive 180 gigabyte hard drive. Others go for maximum portability with tiny screens and measly 2 gigabyte hard drives. One has built in wifi capability for surfing the Internet, acts as a digital video recorder, can be turned into a camcorder with the addition of a digital camera, and can be plugged into a car stereo system or a home stereo for listening to digital music. While this is an impressive list of features, it's easy to suspect that a device that claims to do all of those things probably doesn't do any of them very well.

Then there's the PocketDish from Dish Network. The PocketDish is a portable video device that has all of the features of its competition, but rather than a bunch of superfluous features that don't really amount to much of a difference, it has a feature that makes a big difference in how easy it is to use. This feature is an ability to download video from a Dish Network digital video recorder. While this might not sound that impressive at first, once the implications of the idea sink in, it's easy to see the benefit of such a feature. Since other portable video players download their video from the Internet in general and online stores in particular, the ability to get exactly the video that you want through an interface that you're familiar with is an enormous advantage. That's because the Internet is a frustrating place to get video from. It can be difficult to find the video that you're looking for, there are format compatibility problems to be aware of, and most downloads require you to pay a small fee. None of that is a concern with the PocketDish.

As an added bonus, the PocketDish is also a portable digital video recorder which means that you can get video from almost any video device in addition to Dish Network's digital video recorders. The only disadvantage is that the PocketDish can only record video this way in real time, but that's offset by the advantage of being able to store up to four times as much video recorded this way as the same unit could download from Dish Network.

These features make the PocketDish stand out among all of the other portable video players on the market.