While other DVRs allow TV watchers to fast-forward through annoying ads, the Hopper “autohop” feature allows Dish customers to skip entire commercial breaks with the press of a button. This doesn’t sit well with content creators, and both Fox and CBS have filed lawsuits against Dish due to the technology. CBS went so far as to prevent its website CNET from declaring the Hopper best in show at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

In a satiric bit of irony, Dish has also launched a TV commercial ad campaign that declares the death of TV commercials. In the first commercial, seen below, Dish says goodbye to both commercials and its “Boston Guys.”

“These lovable characters from Boston helped put the first generation of the ‘Hawpah’ on the map and made nearly three out of four consumers aware of the Hopper,” said James Moorhead, chief marketing officer at Dish. “This campaign takes the Boston family out of the house to show the world that only Hopper with Sling can provide a truly unique entertainment experience.”

The Dish Explorer app will be available today in the Apple App Store. For use with the Dish “Hopper” DVR, the app includes remote-control features that allow subscribers to navigate the channel guide, search for programs, and manage their DVR programming.

“Customers are already using tablets while watching TV but, until Explorer, it had been two separate experiences,” said Vivek Khemka, vice president of Product Management at DISH. “What we’ve done is develop an integrated, seamless experience between the tablet and the television; only the Hopper creates an entirely new viewing dynamic.”

The app also recommends shows by “cross-referencing social media television viewing trends” and taking viewer data from Dish DVRs. Links in the app will allow users to comment and share their thoughts about TV shows through Twitter and Facebook.

In its announcement, Dish highlighted its ability to use metrics to track trending shows and events. In particular, the company’s “Thuuz” ratings will supposedly find sports games that are exciting and recommend them in the Explorer app.

“The Thuuz ratings on Explorer means sports fans can quickly see the potential no-hitters, the shut-outs and the upsets forming live before the sports recap on the evening news,” said Khemka. “Seeing the big events live is always better and Explorer helps deliver that experience.”

Nintendo announced this morning that Nintendo TVii will be launching tomorrow, December 20. The free app is envisioned as a new way to watch TV as it brings the second screen experience to broadcast television and streaming services.

“After Dec. 20, you’ll never look at your TV the same way again,” said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. “Wii U owners have already experienced the transformative effect that the GamePad has on game play and social interaction. Nintendo TVii shows how the integrated second screen of the GamePad can also transform and enhance the TV viewing experience. Welcome to the new world of TVii.”

Unfortunately, most of the promised features in Nintendo TVii have been delayed yet again. Nintendo states that the service, at launch, will only support cable and satellite providers in the U.S. and Canada. DVR and TiVo support have been delayed until early 2013.

As for streaming services, Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Video will be integrated into the service at launch. As for the arguably more popular Netflix, users will have to wait until early 2013 as well. For now, they’ll just be able to use the regular app without the added benefit of additional information being display on the GamePad screen.

Even with the disappointing delays, Nintendo TVii still shows incredible promise. The ability to share moments from TV shows or sporting events on Twitter, Facebook and Miiverse from the GamePad without having to pause the action sounds like a nice feature that will get some usage. The app will also pull information from Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes for a more involved viewing experience.

Ars Technica reports that Verizon has just filed a patent for a DVR that comes equipped with a camera and mic. What would the camera be used for? It would spy on you day and night, collect information about your habits and deliver targeted ads based upon that information. It’s an advertiser’s dream come true, and everybody else’s worst Orwellian nightmare.

The patent filing lists a number of actions and objects that the camera and mic would be able to detect. It would be used to detect the usual objects like the number of people present and what they’re saying and doing. It goes into some weirder territory later on, however, when it says that they would want it to detect pets or the products being used by people, like a specific brand of chips.

Ars points to a particular example of how a camera and mic would be used in conjunction to deliver targeted ads to a couple. If the mic picks up sounds of fighting, it would deliver an ad for relationship counseling. Likewise, sounds of cuddling would present an ad for contraceptives.

Realistically speaking, this kind of tech is likely to never make it to market. US citizens have an expectation of privacy, and blatantly infringing upon that makes people angry. Verizon, or anybody else who has patented similar technologies, could sneak it to market, but the potential backlash is just too risky.

“The idea is to provide an unlimited space for all the users’ videos in the cloud, which we believe is a real need that users have,” Avner Ronen, Boxee’s CEO, tells us.

Cloudee brings the concept of private sharing to users, since they can share their videos with specific friends and family that they choose, instead of sharing them publicly. YouTube and services such as Viddy and Socialcam are geared toward public sharing, whereas Cloudee is very private and includes more long-term content, explained Ronen. Boxee views Cloudee as being a place for users to put collections of videos. For instance, they can have categories for birthdays and vacations.

The new service has also been compared to Dropbox for its storage capabilities. Ronen, however, told us that Cloudee is very different since it is focused on the video experience and social capabilities.

“People can now capture more videos than ever… you can email those videos, and you can post them on YouTube, and you can put them on Dropbox,” said Ronen. “But, we still think that there’s an opportunity there to provide a place that the users can trust.”

“I think it [Cloudee] fills a void,” he added.

Although there has been an influx of mobile video-sharing apps lately, Boxee’s Cloudee did come as a bit of a surprise from the company. As a result, rumors have begun to circulate that the company could be shifting its focus. Ronen denied the claim saying that Cloudee would actually be the way to monetize Boxee.

“We spoke kinda vaguely in the past about the fact that we were going introduce premium features in Boxee as a way to monetize,” he said. “Cloudee is the way we’re going in terms of monetization.”

“It’s [Cloudee’s] going to be a big part of the Boxee experience moving forward,” he continued.

The company wants its Boxee Box to work hand-in-hand with Cloudee. The vision is for Boxee Box users and Cloudee users to have the same relationship as iPhone users do to iCloud users.

Rumors have also been spreading that Cloudee could be Boxee’s first step toward launching a cloud-based DVR service to be used with its Live TV dongle released earlier this year. Ronen also refuted this rumor saying that, while it would be great for users, it would be a challenge to build.

“I think it would be a great feature, if it could be done – enabling DVR in the cloud,” Ronen said. “But, I think technologically, it’s very difficult to potentially solve.”

Since people are trending toward consuming video through services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Boxee, Ronen did say that the company believes the cloud, and particularly Cloudee, will play a role in TV consumption going forward.

“We think the cloud is gonna be a big part of the future of television,” he pointed out. “Looking into the future, there’s no real need for local storage in the user’s home [because] everything can be in the cloud when it comes to video.”

Ronen also told us that Boxee hopes to be the company that makes this possible. In other words, Cloudee could definitely be the beginning of some very big things from Boxee.

At this point, Cloudee is in closed beta, but users can sign up for an invite here.

Cisco released a statement on the matter, “Cisco is focused on its work with service providers to reinvent the television experience – Together we are transforming how consumers engage with video – bridging entertainment, social media, communications and mobility together through IP technologies. Cisco’s suit against TiVo is an effort to defend our DVR products and our customers against TiVo’s aggressive strategy of wrongfully asserting its patent claims.”

The patents Cisco is seeking judgement on are: U.S. Patent Numbers 6,233,389 (the “Time Warp” patent at issue in TiVo’s lawsuits against Dish, AT&T, Verizon, TWC and Motorola); 7,529,465 (“System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams”); 7,493,015 (“Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System”); and 6,792,195 (“Method And Apparatus Implementing Random Access And Time-Based Functions On A Continuous Stream Of Formatted Digital Data”).

In related news, a judge recently dismissed Oracle’s patent claim against Google, in an ongoing trial regarding the use of Java APIs in the development of the Android operating system.

Motorola is announcing DreamGallery by Motorola Medios. DreamGallery is a new on-screen display. Specifically, Motorola is touting DreamGallery’s bookmarking function, which allows content to be marked for later viewing. The platform also has recommendations.

“Consumers spoke. We listened. DreamGallery is to TV what search was to the Web,” said John Burke, senior vice president and general manager for Converged Experiences at Motorola Mobility. “Consumers want to be able to find personalized and relevant content, fast. We set out to address this hunger by leveraging our expertise in media software and our leadership in content delivery. We ended up reinventing the entire interface for television. DreamGallery isn’t just a better search and discovery experience. It’s a better way to watch TV.”

Presumably, DreamGallery will come standard on new Motorola DVRs. Also, much like Comcast’s just-announced X1 platform, there is no mention of DreamGallery having any meaningful internet connectivity. No YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu to be seen in the preview video below. DreamGallery does, however, allow users to watch programming on multiple devices. How this works, and what restrictions might be placed on it, have not been revealed.

These Apple TV-like devices have not been impressive, though The Cable Show is not for consumers. Comcast and Motorola are trying to impress cable service providers. To that end, these products feature interfaces that can be changed easily to promote programming or otherwise control the viewing environment of the subscriber. This focus on cable companies as customers instead of end-users is why many in the U.S. are simply dropping cable altogether.

Take a look at DreamGallery below in a video provided by Motorola:

The new “Auto Hop” feature for the whole home DVR joins the “PrimeTime Anytime” feature which allows you to record the primetime programing on all 4 major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) every night. These features are both completely exclusive to Dish Network, but added to the ability to stream your DVR anywhere on your phone or tablet, and they have completely pulled ahead of DirecTV as far as accessibility of technology.

“The magic of PrimeTime Anytime is that it allows DISH subscribers to catch up on all primetime shows, including episodes recorded over the past week and recommended by friends, family, and co-workers after they’ve already been broadcast,” said Vivek Khemka, vice president of DISH Product Management. “With Hopper, you have access to all primetime HD programs broadcast by the four major networks. Now you can watch many of those shows commercial-free, with Auto Hop.”

It will be interesting to see what Dish Network does going forward. With the Hopper and the purchase of Blockbuster Video they are setting themselves up to be a very big player in the TV game for decades to come.

On average, a typical U.S. citizen watches 1 hour and 15 minutes of live TV, 7 minutes of content recorded to a DVR and 3 minutes of content on a video game console per primetime slot. Teenagers watched the most video game content at 8 minutes per night, which makes sense, while females spent roughly 61% of their time with DVR content watching dramas.

As for rates of watching TV while simultaneously using a tablet device:

The chart shows that males are more likely to look up show information on a tablet while watching TV, while females are more likely to look up information on the ads they see. Adults in the 25-54 demographic are 29% more likely to buy a product online that they saw on TV. Interestingly, 47% of people might checking Facebook while watching a show, and females appear to be interested in all aspects of the internet over that of males, barring sports scores and show information.

I for one rarely watch actual TV, but still view whatever shows online, while constantly checking email, social networks, scores, ads, show information, products and weather patterns. It might be time to switch to a web TV device.

Nielsen posted on its blog a study the group recently conducted that looked at what Americans have been using their TVs for in the past six years.

To preface the study, Nielsen shows how TV usage has changed over the past 50 years. In 1960, only seven percent of all households received cable. In 1990, 56 percent received cable and 66 percent owned a VCR. In 2006, 89 percent of TV was viewed live and DVR usage only accounted for 1.6 percent of our TV time.

Things have changed pretty dramatically over the past five years. Today, 98 percent of American homes own a TV and have some kind of device (i.e. DVR, game console, DVD player) attached to the television. The amount of live television content being viewed has dropped to 85 percent while DVR usage accounts for eight percent of our TV time now.

Nielsen says that of three major devices that we connect to our TVs, the DVR gets the most use. While the amount of live TV content being watched may have dropped, it doesn’t mean people are watching less television. In fact, the time a person spent watching TV content increased 19 minutes year-over-year in the first four weeks of 2011.

If the DVR is so important to our watching habits, who is driving it? It would appear that females aged 18 to 54 use the DVR the most by devoting 10 percent of their viewing time to the DVR.

It would seem that the lowly DVD player is on its way out as less and less people use them. What has seen an increase is the game console with 3.9 percent of TV time being devoted to them. The increase in game console usage is being driven by teens who devote 11 percent of their TV time to using a game console.

It’s important to remember, however, that game consoles simply replaced the DVD player. With services like Netflix and Hulu as well as its ability to play DVDs natively, it only makes sense for dedicated DVD player usage to drop.

For those wanting to get into the nitty gritty of demographics, Nielsen has you covered. Asian Americans spent the least amount of time watching television in 2011. They did, however, see the biggest increase in viewing from 2010. In contrast, African-Americans and Hispanics spent less time watching TV in 2011 compared to the previous year.

Asian-Americans spent the least amount of time watching live television, but made up for it by devoting the most time to DVR and DVD use. Hispanic homes were found to use gaming systems the most while African-American homes used DVD players the most.

Here’s an image that breaks down TV usage among age groups:

I think I’m mostly surprised by the fact that people in my age group were still using VCRs in 2011. I keep around an old Betamax player for kicks, but I never actually use it.

While traditional TV is still clearly dominating American viewing habits, it’s clear that it’s beginning to lose its lead. The rise of the DVR and game consoles with streaming technology are cutting into its market.

All of this could explain why cable companies want to encrypt their signals. They don’t want to lose any more business to these services or new services like Boxee.