DISH Hopper Lets You Watch Just Super Bowl 49 Commercials
Sometimes all it takes for an idea to be great is to take an already great idea and turn it on its head. DISH did that this week when it told customers they would be able to record this Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIX game and then go back and skip the game, watching only the Super Bowl 49 Commercials! Existing users of the DISH Hopper DVR system can enable the “Reverse AutoHop” feature, letting the, watch only the commercials the day after Sunday’s big game. That means DISH customers get the ability to use their AutoHop feature in reverse, allowing their Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR to skip straight to the year’s most popular commercials instead of skipping over them.
The idea came up when DISH realized that it actually has several clients running Super Bowl XLIX ads this year. Since DISH has the ability to program the AutoHop feature, the company figured enabling it in reverse would allow more people to see these entertaining Super Bowl 49 commercials. This essentially makes these creative ads available for easy consumption and review after the game, so that these brands get front and center placement for an even wider audience. It’s a great idea, and a big win for both advertisers and consumers who may have either missed an exciting ad, or who simply want to see several of them again (for me that would be the movie trailers and anything involving explosions or car chases).
“This day is about two things: football and commercials, and for good reason — both are entertaining and our customers love them. We’ve decided to flip our user-enabled ad-skipping feature on its head so customers can watch the ads uninterrupted the next day when everyone is talking about them.”
Vivek Khemka, DISH senior VP of product management
DISH customers will be able to enable the “Reverse AutoHop” feature on Monday, letting them literally skip over the football game and watch just the Super Bowl 49 commercials back-to-back. One caveat is that Hopper customers will need to have the PrimeTime Anytime feature enabled for NBC prior to the game. Of course, if you want to re-watch the game, you can do that as well (despite the NFL’s rather terse language against “rebroadcasting” the game).
