Sling Media Announces a New Sling Catcher Device

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Jan09/0,4670,GadgetShowSlingMedia,00.html' target='_blank'>http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Jan09/0,4670,GadgetShowSlingMedia,00.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The maker of Slingbox, a device that lets people watch their home television on laptops away from home, now plans to reverse that flow and bring Web video to television sets. Sling Media Inc. will unveil its upcoming SlingCatcher product at the International Consumer Electronics Show, joining a growing group of companies that aim to bring Web content into the living room. The SlingCatcher will be available in the middle of the year. The price has not been set but will be under $200, said Blake Krikorian, co-founder and CEO of the San Mateo, Calif.-based company. The new set-top box, which will echo the trapezoidal shapes of its Slingbox cousins, will send multimedia content of any format from the Web to a TV, whether it's a slideshow from a photo-sharing site, clips from a video sharing site, or films downloaded from an online movie service."</i><br /><br />I don't know how many people are looking to take content from their computer and stream it to their TV. With DVD players coming way down in price, I can't see people spending a $100 to use their laptops DVD player to feed to the TV. On the plus side, later this year Sling will be releasing an update to the software that would allow you to catch streams from a SlingBox. Which is pretty cool. Although, I still can't come up with many situations where you would need such a setup. Either way, it's pretty cool technology. :)

[Bushrod]

Well, we mainly watch our bedroom TV when the family room TV is off.

With this setup, I could cancel the digital service/dvr in the bedroom and sling the hd-dvr from the family room to the bedroom. That would save me $20 a month, a not insignificant savings!

[Mike Temporale]

Ah, good one. I guess we could do the same with our bedroom TV. Alright, now I'm really excited about this idea. :D

[Sven Johannsen]

Does it sound like you can do that to you? Seems to me it hooks to the lan in your house (and thereby the internet) and to your TV, so that you can get things from the internet and display them on the TV...Seems it is controlled by some PC on your network.

In another paragraph it says "Sling Media said it will introduce later this year an update to its SlingPlayer software so owners of a Slingbox would be able to wirelessly deliver their cable, digital video recorder or satellite TV content onto any other television in the home that is hooked to a SlingCatcher."

That now looks like you could do what you want, but you need a SlingBox and a SlingCatcher. This actually interests me. I have a Slingbox, and it works reasonably well to send my MCE PC to other PCs in the house. With a Catcher it would seem to make a MCE Extender of sorts. Good for Vista based MCEs since the only option to date for a Vista MCE extender is an XBox 360.

[Mike Temporale]

Sorry for the confusion Sven. I was talking about once the update is released. I've got 2 SB in the host - 1 hooked to MCE and the other directly to the set top box. They're just a great device. :D

[Sven Johannsen]

Sorry for the confusion Sven. I was talking about once the update is released. I've got 2 SB in the host - 1 hooked to MCE and the other directly to the set top box. They're just a great device. :D
Doesn't seem you and I were confused ;) might have confused others as it sounded like what you intended could be done with the Catcher alone.