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Sling Media Denies Collaboration With AT&T on 3G Streaming

sinsin07 said:
I'm not sure what type of quality you are looking for. It's not HD, not 720P, it's viewable. You keep talking about upload, which is important, however do you even know the Kbps needed for slinging? I could be mistaken but if I remember its 500. Video looks fine at lower than 350. Do you even own a sling 'cause from the way your talking you sound like a theorist, not a user.
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I've got a sprint air card and have occasionally used it to access my slingbox via my laptop. I generally never see my sling connection speed over 400k (note by best upload speeds via roadrunner are only about 425k anyway). Using a window on my laptop that's prob about double the Iphone screen in size, I'd say the image is very passable/usable. It's in no way a replacement for an HD signal (of course). I expect that even at 400k the video on the smaller iphone screen will look pretty good (assuming the app doesn't do something to it).
If I get a chance tonight, I'll take a couple screen caps of the air-card based sling video on my laptop.
 
cmaier said:
....My answer, which I maintain is correct, is no it won't.
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I think this is the best comment of all on this thread. It should be a sticky. In fact I'm gonna use this as my screen saver, with the poster permission of course.

Nothing like a litlle self serving positive reasurrance of ones own view point. Lol
 
sinsin07 said:
I'm not sure what type of quality you are looking for. It's not HD, not 720P, it's viewable. You keep talking about upload, which is important, however do you even know the Kbps needed for slinging? I could be mistaken but if I remember its 500. Video looks fine at lower than 350. Do you even own a sling 'cause from the way your talking you sound like a theorist, not a user.
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Let me second that, at least up until the argumentum ad hominem. Until very recently my ATT internet connection was 6.0 Mbps down and only on its best days as much as 450 kbps up. Nonetheless, I was consistently able to view anything on or through my DIRECTV HD DVR on my iPhone or on my 15" MBP screen (wifi, of course, but the limiting factor isn't receiving device download speed) with perfectly acceptable video quality, even when overseas. Regardless of what might be said about any other of the company's skills, their engineers have done a truly impressive job with compression technology (or magic spells) to get the most out of whatever bandwidth may be available. There is an "Optimization" process that the software applies repeatedly at the beginning of a link, a bit of buffering, and then the picture quality and audio synchronization quickly becomes surprisingly good.

I'm very much looking forward to the Slingbox Mobile app being updated. (By the way, if someone could explain why the software for the Slingbox itself might need modification, as one poster suggested, I'm curious to hear it.)
 
sinsin07 said:
I'm not sure what type of quality you are looking for. It's not HD, not 720P, it's viewable. You keep talking about upload, which is important, however do you even know the Kbps needed for slinging? I could be mistaken but if I remember its 500. Video looks fine at lower than 350. Do you even own a sling 'cause from the way your talking you sound like a theorist, not a user.
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I've owned and used a SlingBox Solo for over two years and I've watched video from that on both my iPhone and MacBook (receiving over WiFi). It would be a pretty big stretch to call the quality good when sent over my 350Kbs+ upload speeds and on the MacBook I usually need to lower the frame size and frame rate and total bitrate to the point were the video is blurry and somewhat choppy. On the iPhone I always see dropped frames and notable pauses in the playback.

However, the same is true for my EyeTV when it is "throttled" though my ISP's slow upload speeds. In any case, when I use my iPhone or MacBook from within my home's local WiFi network the video quality is actually very good (because in this case the video transfer is contained within my local network and the speeds are in the tens of megabits per second range).

I've also used my EyeTV Plus over 3G using the EyeTV Live3G website. The live video looks okay (with a good 3G connection and the EyeTV server running on my Mac Pro) but it also pauses continually (plays for 20 seconds, pauses for 5 seconds, then repeats, etc.). The only way I can get uninterrupted playback is to compress the video to EyeTV's iPhone Cell 3gp setting which is a pretty lousy 176x132, 15fps, 84Kbps video stream (which is kind of ashamed because EyeTV doesn't allow you to adjust its 3gp setting and something in the 200Kbps range would probably look okay but certainly not great).

Note that I'm not saying that you can't get good quality over the SlingBox, but you need something better than Road Runner's Basic or Power Boost service. A really solid 500Kbps might be good enough but I've never seen uninterrupted (pause free) good quality over 350Kbps.

In any case, here are some bandwidth results from my Road Runner service here in Cary, NC (using SpeedTest.net):

Mac Pro (two trials):
ping: 33ms/68ms
download: 9Mbps/11.6Mbps
upload: 360Kbps/360Kbps

Here are results for my iPhone 3GS using the SpeedTest app over 3G (from my home, two trials):
download: 1.5Mbps/1.9Mbps
upload: 213Kbps/232Kbps

Thus, you can see from these results that the bottleneck is the upload speed on my Road Runner cable service (because the video is sent through the 360Kbps upload link and received on my iPhone's 1.5Mbps+ download link).
 
I should add that I eagerly await the release of the 3G-enabled version of the iPhone's SlingPlayer app. It could be that with the SlingBox's hardware encoding and bandwidth adaptive routines that the video over 3G will be acceptable even given my ISP's 350Kbps upload limit (although tests done over WiFi and with my EyeTV don't look too promising). However, this doesn't negate any of my earlier comments about the upload speed being a limiting factor for many users (you may want to check that before you go out and purchase a SlingBox for use over your iPhone's 3G connection).
 
Uabcar said:
From Engadget. Seems that AT&T wasn't exactly making things up. I'm not sure what Slings motive here was to be honest. Who cares if you did or didn't make changes with or without ATT. What matters is that your app(Sling's) app got much more appealing to some number of people.

Update: Sling just called us to clarify the above statements -- while it didn't make any specific changes to iPhone SlingPlayer, its engineers did work with AT&T to make sure the app didn't interfere with other customers and clog up the network. Sling says that once AT&T was involved in the testing process and "saw how the app worked," things went smoothly, and that the app was "refined" to meet AT&T network requirements -- refinements we were told would come to other platforms over time. Sounds good to us, although we're still wondering why this wasn't the party line in the first place.
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Quoted in case others missed the update from Sling.

Apparently Sling is now saying that they didn't make any changes just for ATT, but did give ATT help in understanding how to test network usage.
 
frjonah said:
+1

AT&T was, basically, just trying to find a diplomatic way of saying, "we capitulated." Instead of winning gracefully, Slingbox slaps them in the face for being political. Very poor business strategy!

I'm the first to point out how unhappy I've been with AT&T's service and pricing, but I still believe in being civil, particularly when someone's making what appears to be a real effort to come around.

Very sad!
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Totally agree with this assessment. As you say AT&T is what it is but there is a civil way of doing things. Companies, governments and individuals have to say things in certain ways sometimes, that's just the way it is.

Sling should have just come out and said something like "we're delighted that users on AT&T will now get to enjoy... ". "we look forward to working with them to deliver other innovative products in future.."
 
Becordial said:
Totally agree with this assessment. As you say AT&T is what it is but there is a civil way of doing things. Companies, governments and individuals have to say things in certain ways sometimes, that's just the way it is.

Sling should have just come out and said something like "we're delighted that users on AT&T will now get to enjoy... ". "we look forward to working with them to deliver other innovative products in future.."

Not that big a deal Sling.
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Remember - Sling isn't Sling. Sling is Echostar - i.e.: Dish Network, which competes with AT&T for television service.
 
muskratboy said:
well, a slingbox and a DVR remove about 98.99999% of the reason to use flash. so... this helps make flash even more obsolete.
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Looks like Sling are doing it anyhow.

Las Vegas, Nev., USA – Jan. 6, 2010 – Sling Media, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), today announced a collaboration with Adobe to support the Adobe Flash Platform. As part of the alliance, Sling Media will natively support Adobe® Flash® Player and Flash streaming protocols in the Slingbox® Pro-HD and Slingbox SOLO to deliver smooth H.264 video and audio to its award-winning SlingPlayers.

Now, any Internet-connected device that includes Adobe Flash Player 10 or is Adobe Flash-enabled will be able run the SlingPlayer application, such as media players, PCs, gaming consoles and mobile devices. The industry-wide adoption of Adobe Flash Player ensures that, as these devices and operating systems evolve, SlingPlayer will run on the widest possible set of platforms.

"SlingPlayer support for the Adobe Flash Platform will broaden the reach of our technology to a world of new devices," said John M. Paul, executive vice president of Products at Sling Media. "Adobe's continued delivery of new performance and feature capabilities make SlingPlayer updates and enhancements much faster to develop and distribute."

Committed to providing the best user experience, Sling Media also plans to support the upcoming release of Flash Player 10.1 as soon as it becomes available.
 
Tethering sling player and skype

The ban is a strange thing anyway. Is tethering also restricted over AT&T? China Unicom allows tethering and so I can use sling player and skype on my Macbook in the 3G network. Why is it banned on the phone but possible with tethering? It's the same bandwidth and usage.
 
NinChina said:
The ban is a strange thing anyway. Is tethering also restricted over AT&T? China Unicom allows tethering and so I can use sling player and skype on my Macbook in the 3G network. Why is it banned on the phone but possible with tethering? It's the same bandwidth and usage.
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Yes, there is still no tethering in the us.
 
bozzykid said:
The original statement that got pulled was trying to imply that the hold up was because Sling was updating the application to work with AT&T's "standards". If I am Sling I have to call BS on this if it isn't true. No way should Sling take the fall because AT&T is incompetent.
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Actually, many people reporting this story have updated the story to include something like this:

UPDATE: It seems that SlingMedia did, in fact, work with AT&T on getting this approved after all. Apparently while no code changes to the streaming portion of the application was changed due to AT&T’s requests, Sling did update it during continued development. AT&T later approved the application on their network for usage on iPhone devices. (BoyGeniusReport).

It's amazing to see how people will just jump on any companies bandwagon taking whatever they say at face value just because they make AT&T look bad.
 
buckdutter said:
Actually, many people reporting this story have updated the story to include something like this:

UPDATE: It seems that SlingMedia did, in fact, work with AT&T on getting this approved after all. Apparently while no code changes to the streaming portion of the application was changed due to AT&T’s requests, Sling did update it during continued development. AT&T later approved the application on their network for usage on iPhone devices. (BoyGeniusReport).

It's amazing to see how people will just jump on any companies bandwagon taking whatever they say at face value just because they make AT&T look bad.
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You know what makes AT&T look bad? They told the FCC, and they told the public, that they had nothing to do with approving or disapproving iPhone apps.

Now they say that, after much deliberation, testing, rending of clothes and sacrificing of goats, they have deigned to give sling permission to operate their app on the network.
 
cmaier said:
You know what makes AT&T look bad? They told the FCC, and they told the public, that they had nothing to do with approving or disapproving iPhone apps.
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Not quite.

ATT said that, although Apple made the final decision, they were consulted for advice on certain categories of apps... and that they asked Apple to not approve apps for VoIP and TV over 3G.

Now they say that, after much deliberation, testing, rending of clothes and sacrificing of goats, they have deigned to give sling permission to operate their app on the network.
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Until now, ATT's terms of use FORBADE redirecting of TV signals to their phones. (Unlike Verizon, whose terms specifically allowed it.)

In their reply to the FCC, ATT pointed out this prohibition and explained that it was why Apple did not approve Sling over 3G.
 
TMar said:
Most cable services? My rural cable is 10/1Mbps or 20/2 for the tiers. They are rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 now with 50/5 in 25% of their market and in a few others 105/10. Basic FIOS is 15/5 up to 50/20. Most people who are interested in sling have more then basic DSL.
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People can only buy what is available to them. I'm interested in the Sling app, and actually already have it. I live in a major metro city and my measley 768kbs upload is about as good as it gets. Sure, my local cable provider advertises better than that... but I've been there and found that their network latency at peak times is so poor that it's not worth using.
 
luv2hum said:
any idea if it has even been submitted? im really anxious to see this.
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No- other than various news reports- and who knows if they actually know anything. I've been following the Sling forums and everyone seems to assume that the update has been submitted and that it will be avail in a few days. Guess we'll see.
 
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