There was a gentleman who informed Engadget of a notice he received from SlingMedia informing him that the SlingCatcher was not up to Sling Media’s standards. So it has been delayed, Sling didn’t confirm the actual email that was sent, but did sort of confirm that it was going to be delayed citing QA concerns as the cause.
Dave Zatz over at Sling Media said they were definitely one of the first 100k people to download the recent iPhone SDK and that they have been looking at it in an effort to bring SlingPlayer to the iPhone. Sling Media has been looking for a way to get their coveted software on the iPhone for quite sometime, ever since last April in fact, and it looks like they might finally be able to pull it off.
Word on the streets is that next week, at the MacWorld expo, we could see a new SlingPlayer for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Apparently this comes from on high at the Sling Media HQ, but one major concern is the slow speeds of EDGE.
The SlingCatcher is a set-top box that will seamless deliver broadcast, broadband and personal content to your TV. It has two built-in applications, SlingPlayer for TV and SlingProjector.
The SlingPlayer for TV has the ability to “sling” your favorite TV programming to another TV in the house or a TV in a remote location without the need of a PC. The SlingProjector enables you to stream/sync internet and PC-based digital audio/video content from your computer to your PC. It supports most popular sites and media players and internet video players and will automatically find compatible players to stream to your TV.
Poor Gizmodo – they managed to get their hands on one of Slingbox’s new Pro HD media shifters, but didn’t get to actually plug it in and watch the high-def 1080i streamed video in action. Still, they’ve got some nice photos of the familiar arch shape, and the bristling input/output panel at the rear, and were able to tell us that the black casing looks better than earlier models.
Sure, Sony was first to market with a place-shifting television technology, but SlingBox did it better. And still do.
Even with the release of this latest piece of hardware Sony can only best the latest SlingBox Pro in a few areas. But if you already have a LocationFree based network, or you plan on adding some of the nicer bits of hardware from Sony’s line to your home theater, this isn’t a bad choice.
You have to love the people out there that scour the FCC’s site in hopes of finding that nugget of joy in the form of an unannounced product. The latest discovery shows us the forthcoming third-generation Slingbox.
What new wonders will the next generation of Slingboxes bestow upon us? Well, nothing revolutionary from what the pictures tell us. The device will have built-in component video inputs which will save you $50 on an accessory that would do the same. We also see either an analog cable tuner and/or an ATSC tuner as well.
So the SlingBox has become pretty popular as far as place-shifting goes its as great as it gets. You can connect this wonderful box to your TV and then connect just about anything else with a screen and a network connection and it will play on it.
Up until just recently that list didn’t include devices powered by the Symbian OS. But with time, all things change, so now there is a SlingBox client for the popular mobile phone operating system.
If I were building my own house then I’d have hidden rooms behind bookcases, a dungeon and a room especially for teleconferencing – oh, and ethernet ports all over the place. It’s a fact of life that as our lives get more and more computer-dependent, the means to connect the gadgets up become trickier. Wireless salves some problems, yes, but there’s no denying the stability (and security) of wired connections, especially when it comes to bandwidth hungry applications like streaming media. Sling Media, makers of the lovely SlingBox, recognise that not everyone has an RJ-45 socket by their TV, and so they’ve come up with their own ethernet-over-powerline adaptors.
When Steve Jobs announced the Apple TV, a lot of people started braying for a one-on-one deathmatch between it and the Slingbox. Since then, reviewers and news-peddlers invariably describe the two as being in vengeful competition; the question is clear: are you an Apple or a Slinger? But over at Sling Media they’ve obviously not been told about this great rivalry; they’re too busy hooking up an Apple TV to a Slingbox PRO and using it to stream iTunes audio and video.
SlashGear Japan
