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Comments on: Sling Media intros simplified Slingbox

They need one more thing 

By Tom Posted Thursday 27th September 2007 08:15 GMT

...clients for non-windows machines (Linux, OS-X). Then they might have a product!

From where I sit, they are in the business of making "transmitters", and giving away the "receivers". At least that is what they currently sell. The sooner they realize this, the better off we all will be!

Clients 

By Simon Elliott Posted Thursday 27th September 2007 11:52 GMT

There is a Mac client at http://downloads.slingmedia.com/object/KB-005352.html

@tom 

By Stu Posted Thursday 27th September 2007 12:04 GMT

I agree.

I have a Slingbox, and for ages I didn't upgrade the firmware in it because they added encryption to the stream (there were slingbox video ripping products around until then). I figured some media companies probably leaned on them about it because as a company they were quite liberal about everything for a while.

In the end I had to upgrade and lost the ability to record TV.

Not only that but they charge more for a Windows Mobile version, about £30 which is a bit of a rip off given that they give away the Windows player.

Tom- this is a similar situ as the BBCs iPlayer screw up, slingmedia are tied into Windows Media technologies with some kind of DRM, thats what the box encodes to and so its unlikely we'll ever see a Linux/OS-X player (but maybe a separate slingbox for all platforms???). It also goes some way towards explaining why they charge for the mobile version.

Heres hoping some years down the line they release the slingbox firmware source code after it dies out - I'm looking forward to there being some open source alternative encoders coming along. vive-la-revolution.

I'm confused :-) 

By John Naismith Posted Thursday 27th September 2007 13:35 GMT

"It also streams images at up to 640 x 480 resolution, and can handle 16:9-ratio widescreen input."

Ermm so can the existing (now old I guess) UK model - I'm watching it now.

Also what's the point in streaming at 8Mbps when all the Freeview TV stuff is at 2Mbps (max), as is your DVD player, and probably all your DivX/Xvid encoded media is at WAY lower bitrates? Unless it can stream multiple sources concurrently then what's the point in a bitrate somewhere in between DVD and HD? Overkill for DVB-T/DVD and nowhere near fast enough for HD - or am I missing something obvious?