YouTube Now Available on Dish Hopper Set-Top

Dish Network has become the only nationwide U.S. pay-TV provider to offer access to YouTube — a big step forward for the satcaster’s aim of becoming the one-stop-shop for all video viewing on living-room HDTVs.

No money is changing hands under the distribution pact, according to a YouTube rep. YouTube is not paying a fee to Dish, and the video service will be free to the satcaster’s subs for no additional cost. The deal does not cover Sling TV, Dish’s over-the-top TV service.

YouTube joins other internet-fed services on Dish’s Hopper, including most significantly Netflix under a 2014 deal, as well as Pandora, Vevo and the Weather Channel.

It’s not clear how helpful access to YouTube’s hundreds of millions of videos might be for Dish to stanch the unprecedented subscriber losses it has experienced the last few quarters in its traditional satellite TV business. For the second quarter of 2016, Dish lost a net 281,000 satellite TV and Sling TV customers, its worst quarterly subscriber loss to date, to stand at 13.6 million total.

In the U.S., Verizon’s Fios regional pay-TV service has offered access to some YouTube content for years. YouTube apps are available for Roku, Chromecast, iOS, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, TiVo, Android, iOS and BlackBerry devices; game consoles including Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Wii; as well as internet TVs from LG, Sony, Vizio, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba and Panasonic.

The YouTube app launched Friday on Dish’s Hopper 3 DVR, via a software update pushed to the set-top boxes Thursday night. Dish customers with a Hopper 3 can now search, browse and play videos, as well as log into their YouTube and YouTube Red accounts directly from the set-top.

“We designed Hopper 3 to be much more than a conventional set-top box,” said Niraj Desai, Dish’s VP of product management. “By aggregating apps like YouTube and Netflix with live linear television, Hopper 3 is capable of serving as a household’s comprehensive entertainment hub.”

The YouTube app on Dish’s Hopper 3 can be accessed from channel 371 or by selecting the “Apps” button on the remote control. Customers can also use the YouTube app on mobile devices to cast videos directly to the Hopper.

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Reinaldo Massengill

Update: 2024-07-01

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