C|Net Forced To Pull "Best of CES" Nomination

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Apparently C|Net was forced to remove a "Best of CES" nomination for Dish Network's Hopper DVR. Why? Because CBS, the parent company of C|Net, is currently suing Dish. :eek: The following statement was posted at the bottom of the review:

The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration for the Best of CES 2013 awards due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
So in other words, 'we just publicly pissed our pants when it comes to appearing unbiased wrt to our own self-interests.'
 
wow, thats pretty messed up. CNet has been going downhill for a while but that will pretty much do it for me. Lost all credibility right there.
 
Journalism at its best...or maybe not journalism at all is what we should expect from CNET.
 
Gotta give them credit for even saying that. Sure this isn't that unusual, but most news places would just be silent about it.
 
Wow, never a good thing for a review site to outright admit bias against products perceived to be competition with their parent company. Review sites generally survive based on confidence, and how can you be confident in a review site that is going to pick and choose based on what their parent company tells them they have to think based on strategic business partnerships?
 
Ualdayan said:
Wow, never a good thing for a review site to outright admit bias against products perceived to be competition with their parent company. Review sites generally survive based on confidence, and how can you be confident in a review site that is going to pick and choose based on what their parent company tells them they have to think based on strategic business partnerships?
Click to expand...

Srsly, anyone who goes to C|Net for unbiased reviews or journalism would believe that calling a ship "unsinkable" would mean it would never sink. I don't think anyone who still frequents C|Net would raise an eyebrow at this whatsoever.

Why anyone still goes to that hellhole is beyond me.
 
Ualdayan said:
Wow, never a good thing for a review site to outright admit bias against products perceived to be competition with their parent company. Review sites generally survive based on confidence, and how can you be confident in a review site that is going to pick and choose based on what their parent company tells them they have to think based on strategic business partnerships?
Click to expand...

Much better that they just have a silent bias? Right? Not that I really care for CNET, but without a doubt this is not the first time a company has ever been in the situation. But it is one of the few times I've really seen anyone really admitting to it.
 
Elios said:
how about a [H] review of the Hopper just to spite CBS?
Click to expand...

I just got a DirecTV Genie (their parody of the hopper) and it is pretty bad ass. Being able to record 5 shows at one time is nice. Slinging to the tablet is nice as well. The kido watches her stuff all day long on the iPad.

Of course the video quality is pretty much ass, even compared to over the air broadcasts. But what do you expect from a cable provider. Oh yeh and for some reason the built in 1T drive dosn't seem to go as far as it should. They must still be saving to the drive in MPEG 2 or something. Its definatly not h.264 or hevc thats for damn sure cause a show eats up more space than it should.
 
Tivo makes you buy an overpriced $125 device that only half-ass works and goes totally tits up if it can't communicate with the Tivo site constantly.

Hey, just like their boxes?

I love my Tivo's but they gotta cut this GD internet embilical cord the have wrapped around their users necks, or I'll be going back to either Sat or Cable for my DVR needs.
 
I should have indicated this is to "Sling" to your tablet. And it's local wireless network only. No offsite love.
 
hpglow said:
I just got a DirecTV Genie (their parody of the hopper) and it is pretty bad ass. Being able to record 5 shows at one time is nice. Slinging to the tablet is nice as well. The kido watches her stuff all day long on the iPad.

Of course the video quality is pretty much ass, even compared to over the air broadcasts. But what do you expect from a cable provider. Oh yeh and for some reason the built in 1T drive dosn't seem to go as far as it should. They must still be saving to the drive in MPEG 2 or something. Its definatly not h.264 or hevc thats for damn sure cause a show eats up more space than it should.
Click to expand...

I used to complain about only recording two shows at a time but there is so much crap on TV now it's doesn't matter.
 
Good thing CNET has made themselves a fucking joke for any kind of serious consumerism and awareness a long ass time ago.

But its nice to have a friendly reminder that Corporations ruin just about every single thing they buy out.
 
Wow...I might just have been convinced to get Dish with the Hopper/sling.
 
hpglow said:
I just got a DirecTV Genie (their parody of the hopper) and it is pretty bad ass. Being able to record 5 shows at one time is nice. Slinging to the tablet is nice as well. The kido watches her stuff all day long on the iPad.

Of course the video quality is pretty much ass, even compared to over the air broadcasts. But what do you expect from a cable provider. Oh yeh and for some reason the built in 1T drive dosn't seem to go as far as it should. They must still be saving to the drive in MPEG 2 or something. Its definatly not h.264 or hevc thats for damn sure cause a show eats up more space than it should.
Click to expand...

It's the Pay-Per-View stuff that's saved to the drive at night while you are sleeping. I think my old DirecTV DVR would use ~25% of the drive's space for recording the Pay-Per-Views movies. Not everyone has broadband and can get them via the Internet.
 
Godmachine said:
Good thing CNET has made themselves a fucking joke for any kind of serious consumerism and awareness a long ass time ago.

But its nice to have a friendly reminder that Corporations ruin just about every single thing they buy out.
Click to expand...

One thing I find CNET good for is reserving specs for legacy devices and Speakers. They do a good job of listing a lot of the specs most people care about and sometimes the more obscure ones. I've gone to their site to see the spec's of some monitors that even their respective sites don't list or you have to dig in the weeds to find.

Other then that after you scrape the entire review of all the bias you are left with "Welcome!"
 
The sad thing is there will be 100's applicants to CNET who will be more than happy to shill for the company line and this guy will have a scarlet letter following him everywhere since the corporations who pretty much run it all have no stomach for people with integrity like him.
 
qbert95 said:
The sad thing is there will be 100's applicants to CNET who will be more than happy to shill for the company line and this guy will have a scarlet letter following him everywhere since the corporations who pretty much run it all have no stomach for people with integrity like him.
Click to expand...

Should read some of the replies to that tweet. He had like 5 job offers.
 
The guy gets big props in my book. Good for him!
 
its good that they at least said the reason why the pulled it rather then just pulling it.
 
hpglow said:
I just got a DirecTV Genie (their parody of the hopper) and it is pretty bad ass. Being able to record 5 shows at one time is nice. Slinging to the tablet is nice as well. The kido watches her stuff all day long on the iPad.

Of course the video quality is pretty much ass, even compared to over the air broadcasts. But what do you expect from a cable provider. Oh yeh and for some reason the built in 1T drive dosn't seem to go as far as it should. They must still be saving to the drive in MPEG 2 or something. Its definatly not h.264 or hevc thats for damn sure cause a show eats up more space than it should.
Click to expand...

Do you need any additional coax hookups to your dish?

It's odd that you need an HDMI hookup to get 1080 resolution channels to show up on a TV, when you only need 1 coax cable to bring the signal in (ok technically 2 for my DTV setup, but if I can record 2 channels at once that means only one is really necessary). With 5 channel recording I don't see how they can bring that much bandwidth over coax without compressing the living shit out of it, or who knows maybe they have a lot of multiplexing going on.
 
hpglow said:
I just got a DirecTV Genie (their parody of the hopper) and it is pretty bad ass. Being able to record 5 shows at one time is nice. Slinging to the tablet is nice as well. The kido watches her stuff all day long on the iPad.
.
Click to expand...

Does it actually record five separate channels of your choosing or is it a gimic like the Hopper 1? They don't say this, but the Hopper only has 3 actual tuners. So it can only record 3 shows at once, unless it is primetime-anytime where a single tuner can pick up the 4 locals on one transponder. The joeys will also take up a tuner from the hopper as they simply stream the data from it, no real tuner inside. So if you did a hopper + two rooms, good luck.

I'm also curious if the new Hopper 2 has an improved sling. I have the Hopper 1 and sling adapter and it is hit or miss. I swear they're streaming to dish.com servers and back to your device. Lots of UI delays.
 
i dunno. ive bought a few of the products theyve reviewed (60inch panasonic plasma, asus tf700t, lumia 920). All have been pretty spot on with my experience thus far. Though I only used them as one of many sources.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Do you need any additional coax hookups to your dish?

It's odd that you need an HDMI hookup to get 1080 resolution channels to show up on a TV, when you only need 1 coax cable to bring the signal in (ok technically 2 for my DTV setup, but if I can record 2 channels at once that means only one is really necessary). With 5 channel recording I don't see how they can bring that much bandwidth over coax without compressing the living shit out of it, or who knows maybe they have a lot of multiplexing going on.
Click to expand...

Don't forget about HDCP (the reason you need an HDMI hookup for 1080 resolution). RG-6 Coax has 3ghz, plenty of bandwidth.
 
Spidey329 said:
Does it actually record five separate channels of your choosing or is it a gimic like the Hopper 1? They don't say this, but the Hopper only has 3 actual tuners. So it can only record 3 shows at once, unless it is primetime-anytime where a single tuner can pick up the 4 locals on one transponder. The joeys will also take up a tuner from the hopper as they simply stream the data from it, no real tuner inside. So if you did a hopper + two rooms, good luck.

I'm also curious if the new Hopper 2 has an improved sling. I have the Hopper 1 and sling adapter and it is hit or miss. I swear they're streaming to dish.com servers and back to your device. Lots of UI delays.
Click to expand...

Hopper with 2 rooms works fine for the average customer, usually if they intend to use all 3 TVs at once and record we set them up with an additional Hopper box. It's rare I even set up Primetime Anytime for a customer unless they primarily watch Primetime, since if they try to record 3 things during Primetime and have it enabled it bumps the lowest priority timer off the schedule.

As for your Sling issues, if you are hooked up using a WiFi adapter on your Hopper, depending on distance from your router it could be the cause of the delays. I have a Sling with the Hopper and I used a Hopper Internet Connector (goes in the same room as your router, can hook it up in tandem with a Joey and share internet to the entire Hopper system)....never had any issues with my setup.

They are keeping it kind of hush hush, but the new Hopper has WiFi built in, which I'm guessing will be so we can install Joeys wireless. (which we can currently do but it's still in beta stages)
 
From what I hear this guy is one of the best, he'll get a job EASY, im loling so hard at the guy above who blathered something talking shit about this guy, obviously dosoent know the situation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top