Dish Has Plans to Offer a $200 Advanced Touchscreen Remote

As more people cut the cord and abandon their pay TV plans, Dish Network believes it can retain customers by offering a new remote control that promises to help people find what they want to watch. Startup Ray Enterprises is already working with Dish to make its advanced remote control compatible with Dish Network’s Hopper DVR. The $200 touchscreen remote includes search and recommendation features and the ability to control other devices connected to the TV.

The Ray Super Remote from Ray Enterprises was intended to solve one of the biggest problems with pay TV: hundreds of channels and nothing to watch.

Ray_Super_Remote_Dish

“The Ray Super Remote grew out of my frustration that despite living in the Golden Age of television, I was struggling to find content across proliferating platforms and using a multitude of archaic TV remote controls to do so,” Ray Enterprises CEO David Skokna explained at the Code/Media Conference. “I set out to create one device to control my entire living room and offer the personalized content search and discovery experience my family was craving.”

The startup loaded the remote with plenty of content discovery features. Viewers will finally be able to search, see recommendations, and browse lists of what’s trending and most popular on TV at that moment. The interface will also work TV programming into personalized themes.

Like other universal remotes, the Ray Super Remote will also put the controls of every device in the living room into one remote. “The Ray remote uses Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, infrared and ZigBee technologies to connect to and control up to several thousands of devices including HDTVs, DVRs, set-top boxes, streaming-media players, gaming consoles and connected home devices,” Variety reports.

However, Ray Enterprises may struggle if people think it isn’t worth $200 to pay for an all-in-one remote. Other startups, like Fanhattan and Qplay, that were determined to build a better interface for TVs are now defunct. Dish itself is supposed to debut its own touchscreen remote control with voice recognition this summer.

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