DISH Anywhere Streaming App Review

The DISH Anywhere app is a totally free streaming app for DISH customers. DISH Anywhere is a companion product to your existing DVR and works with either the DISH Hopper 2 or 3. Like its name says, it lets you watch shows and movies anywhere.

We're giving DISH Anywhere four stars because it excels at providing easy, quick access to your DISH content wherever you are. For a free app, DISH Anywhere is quite powerful. The app runs on multiple devices, including iOS phones and tablets, Android devices, and Amazon Fire tablets and televisions.

You don't have to have a Hopper DVR to use the app, though that limits what the app can do. The DISH Anywhere app is still free, and you can even access the free on-demand movies. All you need is an active DISH subscription.

Note: We won’t cover all of the DISH television packages and costs in this review, but head over to our comprehensive DISH Network review for more details.

Here are the most important DISH Anywhere specs, and you can find the full spec list at the end of the article:

DISH Anywhere is powerful and nimble, so it’s surprising in some ways that it is also totally free. Of course, the reason it’s free is because you already have a DISH subscription and, more than likely, a DISH Hopper. If you don’t use a Hopper DVR, you can’t access live or recorded programming but can access free on-demand movies.

When you access the app, you see a similar interface to what is on the DVR itself. This includes the familiar programming guide, the DVR, a tab for sports and movies, your watchlist, and any rented or purchased movies and shows.

A nice perk with the app is you don’t have to watch the new season of Blue Bloods in the living room. You can watch it on the deck or even while you’re on a road trip (as the passenger, natch). Recently, DISH has made the app available on Amazon Kindle Fire devices and Amazon Fire TV plus Android TV models from companies like HiSense.

Beyond the basic streaming and download capabilities (which DISH calls a transfer), the app also lets you search for content easily using a text search. The app doesn’t currently support Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant for voice searches.

It’s worth mentioning there is no remote control available. That might be obvious, but if you decide to use DISH Anywhere on a laptop, you will need to use the mouse and keyboard.

Interestingly, the DISH Anywhere app is also geared for the discerning media streamer, those who like Max or Hulu and know the perks of those apps. Namely, you can create profiles for multiple users who can then use the app with their own settings. You can enable parental controls in the app using a security code.

Like the DISH network programming options, the DISH Anywhere app is loaded to the gills with content for any taste. We’re talking all of the major premium channels like HBO and STARZ are available through the app, every sports channel like NFL Network, local channels for major networks, and of course all of your Primetime Anytime shows that record automatically every night.

There’s quite a large library of on-demand movies, including 28,000 titles that are free. We also like the simplicity of renting or purchasing a movie using DISH and having that charge added to your bill.

In short, everything you can access from your Hopper DVR is available from the DISH Anywhere app. This means the only limitation to what you can watch is your own DISH programming plan. We’ve covered those options in detail in our DISH Network review.

To cut to the chase, though, we love DISH. The programming options are varied and the plans are designed to fit your own budget. We also like that several of the premium channels like MGM+ offer 4K movies as part of the premium service.

One finding with the DISH Anywhere app is that the quality is fairly consistent, but it can depend on the network you’re using. With a 400 Mbps connection connected to a mesh network in a home, the streams were all pristine. We had no problems with pausing or interruptions, and the quality was as expected for a streaming media app.

When we tested at a coffee shop from an outdoor patio, we noticed the quality degraded a little. We suspect the Wi-Fi network connection to a slower internet feed caused the issues, not the fact that we were accessing the Hopper 3 remotely. (By the way, you can only access streams remotely and can’t transfer shows for later viewing.)

One minor gripe: the DISH Anywhere app does not support 4K streaming. You can stream at 1080p, which is likely what you want anyway on an iPad or your laptop. Other streaming apps on mobile devices do run at 4K in some cases.

We’re big fans of the DISH Anywhere app. We’re even bigger fans of the price. For a streaming media app that is completely free, there are quite a few extra features such as user profiles, parental controls, and transfers for later viewing.

Here are the complete specs for the DISH Anywhere streaming app.

Do you use the DISH Anywhere app? What's your experience with it been? Or do you like a different streaming service better? Drop us a comment below!