I may be wrong, but I suspect what you were reading about is the ViP 622 interactive capabilities, some of which are used via a phone line.
Channel 100 either keying it in directly or by the DISH key on the remote will bring you to "Dish Home" which will download various things, where you can select different things, including Instant Weather from AccuWeather. You can set up Cities and it will get the weather for those cities.
I believe they call it interactive, because it responds to your requests, but the info is already being sent through the satellite and you are just filtering it out; and the receiver is not actually sending out any requests.
Also, at the main menu, you can select 1-Service, and then select 1-Customer Support to get another list of items. Some of these choices are either built into the receiver or it downloads from the satellite. But at least a couple of the options require that your telephone line be connected, so that it can dial out and get the info, such as "Pay Your DISH Network Bill.
Hope this is correct and helps.
EDIT: Dish Home takes a few moments or more to download, as well as to cancel out of it. I find the quickest way to get away from Dish Home is to hit the RECALL button on the remote.
It is possible in the future that the ViP 622 may be able to connect to a broadband internet connection with the onboard ethernet port or the USB port, but I doubt it, they have been saying Satellite Internet for their receivers for almost 10 years now.
: for content!!!
