Dish Launches MultiView Feature To Coincide With First Round of March Madness

Tying its new offering to the NCAA basketball tournament, Dish Network launched Sports Bar Mode, or MultiView, for Hopper 3 customers Wednesday night in a software update. The multichannel view divides a 4K or HDTV screen into quadrants, each capable of displaying a different program. The feature works by decoding four different feeds and displaying them simultaneously, said Dish. Availability of Sports Bar Mode was timed to arrive in time for the first round of NCAA basketball games, during which several matchups are played at the same time, Dish said. The software update also included performance enhancements and general bug fixes. Sports Bar Mode works with all live, linear channels in Dish’s programming lineup, and on demand content and recorded TV shows and movies, Dish said. Consumers tap into the feature through the Options button and then Picture in Picture. Users toggle through the four programs to select the one that will have the audio feed, it said. Other multichannel configurations are possible with Hopper 3, including a split-screen feature that places two channels side-by-side and a setting that overlays a second channel in the TV screen's upper right-hand corner, Dish said.