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SlingPlayer for iPhone and iPod Touch?

Mac OS X Ocelot said:
Let me get this straight. Instead of watching television on your television, you watch it, in your house, on your iPhone. And people are excited about this. And it already exists to watch it on your computer. And people have bought that.
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No, although it does potentially save you from having to put an additional TV in the bedroom, you generally watch it in places other than your house, such as hotels, airports, coffee shops, other countries and so forth. Combining it with a DVR at home makes it even better.
 
Oh Happy Day!

wow this is GREAT news! I've had a slingbox for years. Sometimes I lug my macbook around just for slingbox so this is gonna be nice. If it's WIFI only than this would be the tipping point to justify me buying a 3G iPhone when/if it is released.
 
Slingbox question

I'm interested in getting a slingbox, and will be more interested if I can use it with iPhone. One question that I haven't quite figured out from the slingbox web site:
If someone is watching the TV in the living room, and I am somewhere else in the world trying to connect, can I change the channel? In other words, can somebody be in my living room watching channel 5 while I am slinging channel 10 over the internet from the same cable box? Would I need the slingbox PRO for this?

thanks.
Dustin
 
dbwie said:
I'm interested in getting a slingbox, and will be more interested if I can use it with iPhone. One question that I haven't quite figured out from the slingbox web site:
If someone is watching the TV in the living room, and I am somewhere else in the world trying to connect, can I change the channel? In other words, can somebody be in my living room watching channel 5 while I am slinging channel 10 over the internet from the same cable box? Would I need the slingbox PRO for this?

thanks.
Dustin
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Depends on the Slingbox model, yes. Some models have a built-in tuner, which means you could use a cable splitter and sling a different channel from what's on your TV. If you need a cable box at home (e.g., digital cable) that limits your options somewhat in the obvious ways.

As far as I know, the more common use case does have the SlingBox sitting between the cable box and television using A/V cables instead of coax. In that case, you'll have an IR blaster plugged into your SlingBox and pointed at the remote receiver on the cable box. In that case you can remotely change the channel on your cable box, but this may annoy the person watching at home.
 
THIS SOUNDS AWESOME!

Does this require you to actually own a SlingBox or do you send video from your computer to your iPhone to your TV? Or is it talking about sending video from your iPhone to your SlingBox to your TV?
 
TheSpaz said:
THIS SOUNDS AWESOME!

Does this require you to actually own a SlingBox or do you send video from your computer to your iPhone to your TV? Or is it talking about sending video from your iPhone to your SlingBox to your TV?
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There's no "sending" with the slingbox. And yes, you do need to purchase the device. The Slingbox essentially is a streamer, but for AV devices (like Tivo, Cablebox).

w00master
 
evilyankeefan said:
Wouldn't this compete with the (more than likely) iTunes rental service? If I have something on my DVR and can sling it to my iPhone/touch, what's the incentive of renting it?

Just seems that this would take away revenue for Apple. Maybe I'm over thinking this.

Cool idea though especially if you have stuff on your DVR that isn't in iTunes.
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CDs compete with iTunes. DVDs compete with iTunes movie sales. iTunes for Windows could potentially reduce sales of Macs. I don't see why Apple would be afraid of competition.
 
rstansby said:
CDs compete with iTunes. DVDs compete with iTunes movie sales. iTunes for Windows could potentially reduce sales of Macs. I don't see why Apple would be afraid of competition.
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Agreed, besides this is a *very* good sign for the upcoming iPhone/iPod Touch SDK. If Apple is open to a so-called competitor like "slingbox" think of what else is possible with the SDK.

w00master
 
I don't think slingbox is a competitor in fact if you have appletv you could sling that. Slingbox doesn't record anything. I have been using slingbox since it came out, i use it at work, and it is watchable down in the 200kbps.
 
bigjohn said:
As a Slingbox owner this is the only thing keeping me from buying an iPhone, I hope this rumor comes into fruition.

:)
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As a Slingbox owner this is the only thing keeping me from buying an iPhone, I hope this rumor comes into fruition. :) ... oh wait, I own an iPhone...YAY :)
 
tothelimit said:
I've been putting off the purchase of a sling box for quite some time now. If this turns out to be more than just 'rumor', I'm sold.
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Me too, especially if the quality is decent over EDGE. That'd give me something to do during school. :)
 
I talked with Sling at CES and discussed iphone app.--got the hint that they were working on it but was told biggest issue is the "larger" screen size of the iphone vs the other mobile clients they have now.
 
My WAG is that they gave them the technology because they are going to build a "sling" into AppleTV so you can sling AppleTV to you iPhone and the partnership was to allow them to sell it for their hardware as well.

BZ
 
Slingbox == AppleTV?

Avatar74 said:
Unless you already own a slingbox, the ability to stream to iPhone wouldn't be a great selling point....
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Unless the "slingbox" is actually AppleTV.

What if apple just buys SlingBox as part of the deal?

Conversely, why allow Slingbox to do this when the functionality could be easily added to AppleTV which is a competing product in the same market? Add to that the ever present very solid rumours that AppleTV is being updated on Tuesday and I am having a hard time making sense out of this.

:confused:
 
/dev/toaster said:
Wouldn't Apple start sending out taken down notices if it was a big leak on something they would show at Macworld ?
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I'm thinking they are going to release a version 1.2, which will have the 1.1.3 stuff, perhaps refined, plus more. The 1.1.3 was an interm development release and the leak was to distract us so the real stuff wasn't leaked.

I predict the real stuff will be movie rentals that play on the phone, a SALES facility to buy stuff from stores via phone, ala the Starbucks takepout scenario but with more stores signed up, and a preliminary release of the SDK available now, with the final released at WWDC. A bunch of third party apps will be shown with some released. We will also see integration with Notes and To Do items, possibly WiFi sync, Apple Remote Desktop, and stereo Bluetooth. Other than that, I don't expect much.

Oh, and one more thing, a 9" tablet mac, thin as an iPhone, with no keyboard and multi touch screen, Bluetooth for keyboard and mouse and audio, flash memory, and a dock to I/O ports for charging, external disks, and so on.
 
The only people who would post anything negative about a Slingplayer app for the iPhone are people who do not have and do not understand how Sling functions.

I have been waiting for this app since the iPhone first was jailbroken, and will say that I would pay big time for this app.
 
Yuppi said:
Hmm, the sling website is not really informative. They try to be funny and seem to forgot to tell what the product exactly does. Could anyone enlighten me?
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I had the same feeling. :(

So many websites and 2.0 upstarts make this same mistake. It's as if no one ever tested the website with viewers not already in the know about the product.
 
Virgil-TB2 said:
Unless the "slingbox" is actually AppleTV.

What if apple just buys SlingBox as part of the deal?
:confused:
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Possible, but I would say highly unlikely. EchoStar Communications just recently purchased Sling Media for $380 million. I don't see them turning around and selling it so quickly.

But you never know...
 
this may be a stupid question, but if they can stream youtube why wouldn't they be able to stream the slingbox? i know it wouldn't be a super-duper resolution, but i wouldnt mind watching some tv programs at whatever the lower resolution of youtube is while streaming off the edge. I find watching youtube bearable.... but thats just me. The only time i ever have a problem with youtube is when the video has some kind of small text that needs to be read.
 
Virgil-TB2 said:
I had the same feeling. :(

So many websites and 2.0 upstarts make this same mistake. It's as if no one ever tested the website with viewers not already in the know about the product.
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I figured out that those buttons below the "funny" guy are just useless. If you actually want to know something about the products you better go to http://www.slingmedia.com/go/slingbox which is the same as clicking on slimbox above the video. Weird website anyway.
 
dbwie said:
In other words, can somebody be in my living room watching channel 5 while I am slinging channel 10 over the internet from the same cable box?
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No. The slingbox isn't a tuner**, it simply takes a signal off a source and streams it over your network (and over the Internet if you configure that feature). If your tuner is tuned to channel 5, then it's tuned to channel 5 and delivering channel 5 to the sling.

Since Sling has had a OSX client out there forever, their ability to deploy an iPhone client isn't surprising. I've been using it on my Treo 755p (edit: the Treo client, that is - I've been using the OSX client on my Macs - and only one active client is permitted at any one time), and it's OK. It became much better once I upgraded my home net connection to 768kbps out (from 384kbps - Comcast). I suspect it would suck over Edge and wireless would be the only really acceptable transport medium on the iPhone until 3G is supported.

** edit: I take that back - the pro model has an analog cable tuner, assuming you have basic cable to connect up to. I'm on DirecTV, so that's not a very compelling feature for me.
 
This seems to give these rumors a bit more weight:

macworld-banner-1.jpg


The banners have gone up at the Moscone center. First thing I noticed was the new font.....
 
Apple Tv

They need to hook this thing up some more. I hope they can make this thing "sling stuff". That would be worth it.
 
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