Sling Media Announces Slingbox 350 and 500 Media Streaming Boxes

Reading this article reminds me I've been meaning to disconnect my current Slingbox and re-purpose the AirPort Express I have it plugged into. While the picture quality was ok most of the time, I had my share of problems with the device. With the ever-increasing streaming options, frankly I haven't even thought to use Slingbox in ages.

This new hardware is pretty ugly and pricey. Wondering if Slingbox may be going the way of Betamax, CDs, and DVDs?

avanpelt said:

Their apps for iPhone and iPad aren't showing as updated in the App Store yet. Hope they show up soon. The apps lost the ability to stream in high quality after you update to iOS 6.

Sling Media has been, in my experience, an awful company in terms of customer service. They nickel and dime their customers to death. In addition to releasing new hardware, I think they need to clean house at the company and get some people working there who appreciate their customers who spend hundreds on the hardware and $29 each for both the iPhone and iPad apps.

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Yeah - with what we paid for the apps, losing this ability is frankly unacceptable. And it has been weeks.

I like my Pro-HD, but if you have to have a cable box to use the new one, it is worthless to me. They need to have a product with a bulit in tuner. I don't care about using the Slingbox to view content on my TV because my Slingbox is not even hooked up to a TV. It is just hooked up to the network. I certainly won't be updating and it looks like when my Pro-HD finally dies or they stop supporting it with the mobile software, I'll just find another alternative.

EDIT: Just downloaded the new app to my iPhone running iOS 5 and I have HQ streaming back with the Pro-HD. The release notes say it should be fixed for iOS 6 as well, except for with the SOLO. I will try out my iPad running iOS 6 when I get home.

3.0 pushed this morning for iOS...HD still disabled for Solo users...SD quality is smoother, less stutter

avanpelt said:

Their apps for iPhone and iPad aren't showing as updated in the App Store yet. Hope they show up soon. The apps lost the ability to stream in high quality after you update to iOS 6.

Sling Media has been, in my experience, an awful company in terms of customer service. They nickel and dime their customers to death. In addition to releasing new hardware, I think they need to clean house at the company and get some people working there who appreciate their customers who spend hundreds on the hardware and $29 each for both the iPhone and iPad apps.

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Ya still no app update on my end :'(

I'm going to post the comment I wish I had read before buying my slingbox and the slingbox app.

These things suck! In my experience they simply didn't work. I was rarely able to get the application to work on my computer. Anytime you change your network (this includes any updates) you have to go in and change things dramatically in your sling box - not a simple task). They charge you for help anytime after 90 days, so forget getting help. The iPad app and the iPhone app (yeah, that's right, it's not universal, you have to buy each one) were $29.99. Apparently they're now half price, but you're still paying a total of $30 bucks to get it to work on both devices. Plus, I never got it to work on my iPad. It was so bad, that I contacted iTunes and thankfully got my money back. Support is a NIGHTMARE. I literally spent hours every week trying to get this product to work - to no avail. I wish I had known all this before buying into this experiment in frustration.

Here's the other thing. The 500 costs about $130 more and only appears to offer you wi-fi and the ability to show your photographs on your tv. An apple TV will show your photographs and do a lot of other things for $99. Do not waste your money.

I was about to post a positive comment about how much I liked my Slingbox PRO-HD, but am now irked that:

1) I just had to replace mine under warranty after about 2 months because of some sort of power issue (that they're well aware of).

2) How in the heck do you release an update to an app weeks after the iPhone5 launch without support for the iPhone5's larger screen?! At the snails' space that they release updates, we'll never see an iPhone5 compatible update.

eekcat said:

2) How in the heck do you release an update to an app weeks after the iPhone5 launch without support for the iPhone5's larger screen?! At the snails' space that they release updates, we'll never see an iPhone5 compatible update.

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I don't doubt that they'll release an update for the iPhone 5 screen at some point; but it wouldn't surprise me if it's a new app that will cost another $29. They'll probably call it SlingPlayer HD for iPhone. That's the type of company we're dealing with here.

Here's the thought process behind the design:

1) Steve Jobs took acid and later on created awesomely designed products.
2) Give our designers acid and see what they can come up with
3) ...
4) Profit!

Not very esthetically pleasing.

Wish I did more research before I bought the ProHD. Didn't realize that it would cost me another $30/$60 to get both of the iPhone and iPad apps to go along with it, not to mention the less than stellar performance from those apps.

I also didn't realize the poor customer service and 6 month intervals between app upgrades that often don't take in to account the previous retina display upgrades or new iPhone5 screen size.

I use free apps that are more feature rich and are upgraded more often then these.

I have had 2 slingboxes and loved both of them. They work great. But these look like they are going to try to assimilate me in my sleep. Did the art director of American Horror Story design these shells? Yikes!

Obviously the



is designed to work with the



so that you can have hours of fun rolling it back and forth.

This is what happens when big companies buy small innovative startup.

Just remember Dish/EchoStar purchased Sling in the fall of 2007.

Obviously sling's products released in 2008 were already well into the testing stage before dish purchased sling.

So the original creators all took the cash from Dish and got lazy and stopped innovating.

Who knows who actually creates these new 2012 sling models.

I expect the debut of these new devices will sunset and eventually brick the older models and their softwares for OSX and iOS. Slingbox was a brilliant idea with a worsened execution with the intro of each new device or software update. Jeez. I can't believe they took the tuner out but since they were bought out by a service provider that makes sense. Well... for them at least!

Yeah, I bought the original Slingbox back in 2007 when it really was the only way to watch home TV when I was working abroad. But as others have said, their business ethics are crap and they've simply been overtaken by better services. I now just use the BBC iPlayer (with a VPN of course) which is a free App instead of the price gouging Sling Media ones.

Sad, I was a day 1 Slinger and beta tester for many years. They stopped reaching out, guess they found a new team to work with. With no tuner, I guess the ProHD is my 6th and last slingbox for the forseeable future...

And really, no iPhone5 support on a new app update released today? Really Sling?

looks like Slingbox is trying to make their product asymmetrical like Boxee

too bad Slingbox absolutely failed at making it have even a trace of appeal

however, at $149 it's $120 cheaper than the current 1080p streaming sling.

Random Thoughs

I'm a long time sling user, and have no affiliation to Dish or Sling.

1. I've been very pleased with the Solo.
2. I took advantage of a Best Buy sale to purchase an HD on Monday. I was unaware of the new Products before I made my purchase.

The design of the new boxes doesn't to it for me. It's as if they tried to make them as unattractive as possible. I accept beauty is in they eye of the beholder, but not making a stackable component is an oversight in my view. I think their Dish add-on is quite attractive (although I haven't seen it in person.)

The content blocking through HDMI is real to me. I experience this with Tivo to Go. As much as I want HDMI, the new models would have to be connected otherwise for me to view content. YMMV as this is controlled by your content provider.

I've never used Sling's technical support, but I have helped other people configure their's. I'm no networking expert, but can eventually get things to work. I can see a noob would get lost quickly with things like port-forwarding, etc. I do not have any answers nor claim Sling has their busines model right -- but I can understand why they charge for technical support. I'll add I find it reprehnsible they do this for known hardware failures. As a result of this, I ponied up for the Best Buy extended warranty. Not such a great deal now, but I've had great experience with BB taking my pile of junk and replacing it with no questions asked. I'm not sure it's great customer service. I gather the employees can't be bothered, and take the easy way out.

I've been disappointed in Sling's promises of updates for software. There's always a long lead time with the exception of their initial ipad app.

I was ok paying for my first sling app. It was highly priced relative to other apps, but it was worth it to me. Buying the ipad app was annoying. I use Sling a lot, so I had to make the buy it or cut my nose to spite my face decision.

I did waste time and get steamed at the loss of HD on IOS6. It's reasonable in my view to allow 90 days for them to get it sorted. I can't blame them for my "want it now" expectation. A great company would meet that.

Sling works really well for me, and my lifestyle. I'm slightly annoyed at their app policy, and have some anxiety over other's experience (touch wood.) Nevertheless, it works really well for me. I wish there were more competing products to make this better. I don't think the future bodes well for new competitors as streaming and subscriptions continue to be attractive alternatives.

bushido said:

aw this box will look neat next to my lava lamp and my pot plantation. oh wait its not the 60s anymore

jeeze and that price, yep ill stick to my ecosystem integrated apple tv

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Hey, I have a lava lamp in my lounge room

I purchased the now-superseded Slingbox HD only 2 weeks ago. But now that I can watch Japanese television programming from several thousand miles away, I'm not overly fussed about the update, especially if they've taken away the tuner.

I'd rather that the Apple TV had Slingbox functionality, but the WD Live Streaming box at this end is actually not too bad to use.

edit: On the downside, the app policy of purchasing separately for iPhone and iPad is very sucky, not to mention the price of the app.

I'm OK with the app price, they farm out their coding to India and I suspect this is done piece meal as needed.

The big But however, is when one pays a premium for a good app like Nav or Sling type must haves, it's reasonable to expect timely updates, something Sling seems to fall down on.

I need to confirm about it's actual price. Can anyone have the idea.

mikeyrko said:

I just recently sold my old slingbox and purchased a vulkano lava I'm much happier with it, I can now record shows and watch them on my iPhone offline.

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I too have had a Vulkano (Can't remember which one) for about 2 years now and it works great! It's than the Lava I think, so my player on my iPhone was FREE! I think for the newer models the iPhone player is like $12.99.

Had a little trouble setting it up at first, cause with the one I have you had to do some research and become a bit of an IT guy to set ports and stuff like that, but with help from their tech support I was able to get it to work without any problems. The newer models may be easier to set up.

The streaming works great on computers and on my iPhone (as long as I can get a signal from AT&T!), so I've had no problems there. That's mainly what I wanted it for. It also works over WiFi, which the lower version slingbox doesn't do. I added a class 10 memory card so I can use it as a DVR too. That to me, was an added bonus. It works well for the most part, but there are rare times that is records choppy, or it doesn't record at all. Again it doesn't happen often and it could be that I'm using a memory card and not a eSata drive.

Best part of it all... It's cheaper than any of the slingboxes.

RemE said:

The big But however, is when one pays a premium for a good app like Nav or Sling type must haves, it's reasonable to expect timely updates, something Sling seems to fall down on.

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Exactly. My biggest beef with the whole loss of HQ streaming after upgrading to iOS 6 is that their developers had all summer to prepare for iOS 6. Clearly, their developers aren't doing much app compatibility testing while iOS is in beta. It seems like the only really begin testing the app on the new version of iOS once it's released to the public. It then takes weeks or months for them to push a release out that's optimized for the new version of iOS. For an app that's $30, that's totally unacceptable.

I also don't know how they can justify releasing a major release since the iPhone 5 came out (version 3.0) that still isn't optimized to take advantage of the iPhone 5's larger screen. It's a big deal for a streaming video application not to have iPhone 5 optimization.

If anyone is considering purchasing a Slingbox, here's some information I wish I had before purchasing three Pro-HD's for myself and my family…

• Don't count on tech support. After a mere 90 days, you have to pay $30 for basic telephone support. They literally won't talk to you until you pony up a credit card.
  
• The updates to mobile apps come at a snail's pace. Before this latest iOS 6 compatible app, they hadn't updated their apps for nearly a year. A year. For a $30 app. To give you an idea of just how bad this is, take the debacle that's been going on for the last two weeks. Though they've had access to developer builds of iOS 6 for months, they obviously didn't bother testing their app. A major "bug" with the new OS made it impossible for users to stream High Quality video to their devices. It took more than two weeks for the bug to get fixed. Meanwhile, mobile users were left out in the cold.
  
• In the past, there have been major issues with hardware failures. The capacitors they use are of low quality. I've had to exchange two of my three boxes in two years.
  
• Don't even consider purchasing a Slingbox for remote viewing if you don't have significant upload speeds. The quality for remote viewing is directly tied to how fast your home network can upload the video. This isn't Sling's fault, but a fault of the technology.
  
• The primary way to watch video from your Slingbox is a service they call "Watch on Slingbox.com." It's basically a plugin for your web browser. Many times in the past, they've had significant downtime. When the service is down, it means you cannot watch your content.
  
• The communication at the company is terrible. Good luck getting any answers.

When the product works as advertised, it's incredible. You've just got to know the downfalls of the product and the company.

I have a Pro-HD and have had almost no issues with it. Once in a while I may have to restart it, but it may be due to my own network. Other than that, it's been perfect. I would like to comment on some of your points:

Alucardx03 said:

Don't count on tech support. After a mere 90 days, you have to pay $30 for basic telephone support. They literally won't talk to you until you pony up a credit card.

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Very true, they are money hungry and want your wallet for any question. Hopefully the web community can answer any questions you may have.

Alucardx03 said:

The updates to mobile apps come at a snail's pace. Before this latest iOS 6 compatible app, they hadn't updated their apps for nearly a year. A year. For a $30 app. To give you an idea of just how bad this is, take the debacle that's been going on for the last two weeks. Though they've had access to developer builds of iOS 6 for months, they obviously didn't bother testing their app. A major "bug" with the new OS made it impossible for users to stream High Quality video to their devices. It took more than two weeks for the bug to get fixed. Meanwhile, mobile users were left out in the cold.

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$30 is a steep price to pay, but if you use it regularly, it's worth it. As far as updates, I don't really know how many updates you need. The app does everything, very clean too. I was surprised that the latest update this past week did not include a stretched interface to fill iPhone 5 screens, but I'm sure they will address that soon.

Alucardx03 said:

In the past, there have been major issues with hardware failures. The capacitors they use are of low quality. I've had to exchange two of my three boxes in two years.

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Sorry to hear that. I've had no issues with this.

Alucardx03 said:

Don't even consider purchasing a Slingbox for remote viewing if you don't have significant upload speeds. The quality for remote viewing is directly tied to how fast your home network can upload the video. This isn't Sling's fault, but a fault of the technology.

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That's just common sense. If you don't have a reasonable upload speed, then you can't expect to broadcast a nice HD video stream. I have about a 5Mbps upload rate at home and it does just fine to provide me with HD quality remote viewing abroad.

Alucardx03 said:

The primary way to watch video from your Slingbox is a service they call "Watch on Slingbox.com." It's basically a plugin for your web browser. Many times in the past, they've had significant downtime. When the service is down, it means you cannot watch your content.

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You can also download their desktop application which pretty which always works. Never had an issue with it.