Thomas Hawk has a report from CES about the Dish Network’s HDTV products and plans. Having bought VOOM’s HD channels, Dish have added 15 of them to their lineup. Thomas Hawk lists the HD channels Dish has available, including ESPN HD, HDNET, and Film Fest HD. Thomas Hawk also points that Dish is now broadcasting in MPEG4, like DirecTV. And that they also have a six channel in one view.

He also got a chance to look at Dish’s 622 DVR:

I did get a chance to play around with Dish’s ViP 622 DVR, their highest end receiver that they offer. The unit boasts a 250 gig hard drive, which is capable of recording 180 hours of standard definition and up to 25 hours of high def programming, and is capable of getting all of their HDTV content today. Unlike Dish’s other units there is no part of the 250 gig hard drive that is “reserved” for Dish’s predownloaded movies for video on demand.

Like the DirecTV TiVo box and DirecTV’s upcoming NDS HDTV DVR it is a closed box system and their is no way to get any content off of the box. It does have a USB port but this is not activated. Personally as much as I liked Dish’s expanded HDTV lineup I was a little disappointed with this box. The screen changes felt clunky and slow and not as elegant and smooth as my TiVo or Media Center. Also the unit only has two tuners, 1 HD tuner and 1 SD tuner. So while you can watch and record two different shows at the same time, they have to be in SD and HD — you can’t record and watch two different shows at the same time in high def. My DirecTV HDTV TiVo at present has 4 tuners (2 HD and 2 SD) and this is a much more comfortable arrangement which has results in virtually no recording conflicts.

Sounds like a dud to me.

Thomas Hawk - Dish Network, The Reigning HDTV Content King