With eight tuners, a full day's worth of content can be recorded in just a single prime time block. Picture quality across eight recordings was fine. I was worried that as I recorded more, the quality would suffer, but that wasn't the case. In side-by-side comparisons with content recorded on the cable box, I sometimes reached for the wrong remote, as I couldn't tell which source I was watching.

How do you make Dish Network's Hopper HD-DVR system even better? That's easy -- you supersize it.

Introduced earlier this year at CES, Super Joey has officially arrived, and for TV fans it more than lives up to its "super" moniker. Utilizing the same Hopper and Sling technology as previous versions, it now increases the recording power.

The Joey units, basically room extenders to the Dish set-top box, allow viewers to watch live or recorded TV around the house. The catch was Dish could only -- yes only -- allow viewers to record or view six programs at the same time.

That might not seem like a problem, but it could become one if users opted to use the PrimeTime Anytime functionality every night. This feature automatically records the prime time content from ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC.

As I noted in my original review of the Dish Hopper with Sling, PrimeTime Anytime was enough to make TV junkies jump -- or hop -- for joy. With PrimeTime Anytime, there are no show subscriptions to manage, and should you hear good things about that new drama you skipped the night before you are covered -- as long as it aired on one of the aforementioned nets.

The downside to PrimeTime Anytime is that it eats up four of the six tuners in the set-top box. That suddenly robust looking "six" recording options dwindles to two, and that could be a problem if you want to watch something different on more than two TVs.

Of course, if you agree with former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Netwon N. Minow that the networks are a "vast wasteland," than you'd still have six tuners to record exactly what you want. However, as network TV does have a lot to offer, it isn't hard to see why this feature usually should be kept on, just in case.

The other benefit it provides is that by recording everything on, say, NBC you need not worry about the final seconds of a program being cut off if it runs long -- you've recorded the full evening.

See the rest here:

Super Joey Makes Dish Hopper a TV Junkie's Delight