What is Open TV?

[dbronstein]

This might be a dumb question, but I really have no idea. I keep reading all these posts about how the 721 is supposed to have Open TV, when are they going to put it in, etc. I have a 721. I have no idea what Open TV is or why I should care that the 721 doesn't have. So can someone please tell me what the heck it is?

Thanks,
Dennis

[Steve Mehs]

Open TV is a company that provides Dish with interactive TV content. On Open TV enabled receivers (3900, 4900, 301, 501 and 508) there is a channel 100 called 'Dish Home', you can also get to it by pressing the Dish light up logo button on the PVR remotes. Dish Home is the homepage for interactive applications and breaks them down into categories. Applications include Instant Weather, Horoscopes, Reuters News, Zap2It listings, Showtime Interactive a pay game service called Playin TV and a few more. IMO, Open TV is a nice feature but really isn't necessary and I'd be happier if they put the time and effort that they do into ITV into other things like name based timers and so forth. On the 501 and 508 sometimes accessing OpenTV applications can be painfully slow and in the past receivers would freeze up and crash, but that pretty much is non existent now.

Here's E*s ITV section on their website, it used to be more in-depth with application listings and descriptions.

http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/products/itv/index.shtml