On Thursday, DIRECTV announced the nationwide availability of its Wireless Genie Mini—a wireless version of its Genie Mini slave set-top box, that allows additional TVs to access live TV and recordings from a Genie DVR.
Readers here may recall that after Dish announced their similar Wireless Joey at CES in January, we wondered aloud how well the newest WiFi technology, 802.11ac, would fare in handling the unique challenges of delivering video from an in-home DVR.
We’re still wondering, and looking forward to any information that emerges on the success rates consumers have with these devices.
Specs are not readily available for either the Wireless Genie Mini or the Wireless Joey, so we’re not clear whether they include built-in support for a wired coax connection as a backup, but both DIRECTV and Dish do have wired versions of the devices, of course. Presumably, part of their deployment strategy would be to substitute a wired connection, if a consumer experiences wireless reliability issues at a particular location.