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Sneak Peak at the Sling Player for Mac OSX
kjh1 writes to tell us the folks over at SlingCommunity are running an interview with Brian Jaquet of Sling Media. They get the scoop on the upcoming SlingPlayer for Mac OSX. There is a text transcript as well as a video version of the interview."
A sneak mountaintop?
The link in the summary loads a page with horrible popover advertising that floats in the way.
Here's the on the page.
Oh You POS
Some folks call it a Kaiser Player, but I calls it a Sling Player, mmm hmmmm.
A sling player, you say? Well... that's just great, then. I can put it next to my thatch generator and my hopskotch containment unit.
OK, this article is as clear as mud.
1) What is Sling?
2) What is SlingPlayer?
3) What is special about SlingPlayer?
Someone tell me, please.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
- from Sling Media's site, for people like me who just kinda avoid TV, since both summary and article seem to assume you know what it is.
egypt urnash minimal art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingbox Ideal for people who don't have bittorent or have TV's. Poor bastards.
What's the point of a blog summary that tells more about the media types of the page to which it links than what it is linking to? Is it just an excuse for a title so it can have a typo?
--
make install -not war
That same site has some articles describing the Sling stuff. Here's one on the features of the Slingbox.
Whoever Has the Most Toys Wins!
maybe TiVo will go mac too.
one can dream
Ahh, so this article is another product advertisment!
Bet you feel special having paid for that little * next to your name, eh jackass?
Interesting.. Sling Player apparently allows you to watch television from any device.
Under Linux I use a program called VideoLAN Client to send television (or DVD, AVIs, camera) to other TCP enabled Linux machines. For example, I can use VLC to watch live television on my porch or in my garage over the wireless network. Quality is decent, though don't expect fullscreen DV over a 54Mbit wireless connection. Over the 100Mbit LAN and with a decent server it's pretty decent quality. MythTV also has this functionality.
You can also encode video for iPods if you want to shift your viewing to a a 2" display... I don't understand the appeal of it, but hell, the optometrists need the work.
I almost bought the Slingplayer because it had a Mac OS X logo on the box and claimed it was Mac compatible. This article now says that the player isn't out yet.
So, what is it? Is the article outdated, or is Sling selling boxes that claim Mac compatibility without actually shipping the software?
I have some simple scripts that make it easy for me to automatically grab shows from my mythbackend at home, while I'm in my hotel room 12 hops away. I just watch them manually with vlc, laptop plugged into the hotel room's TV, and cellphone as a bluetooth remote... I keep thinking it would be fairly trivial to convince mythtv to do all this seamlessly...
...A Slingbox is is a device that allows me to stream video from my Set Top Box (STB), DVD player, cable connection, etc., so I can watch it on any PC, Handheld device, Mobile Phone (certain models), and now Mac computer (running the SlingPlayer software) on the LAN or over the internet. So I can be on some business trip in Asia but still be able to watch local shows from my STB in North America via the internet. This is what is known as place shifting. It is actually pretty cool...
ATTENTION SLASHDOT EDITORS:
Please stop posting press releases as "news". This is a e p.r. stunt and you're diluting what little credibility shashdot has by putting what is essentially an ad on the front page
What the hell? This looks like a teenager taking the interview in a busy airport concourse. Can someone help me pull the fork out of my ear? I had to put it there to survive long enough to find the "stop" button on the interview video.
"You'll see that there is an icon when you install it... in the uhh.. kinda cool little toolbar here" (while pointing to the Dock)
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
Wait for iTV (after they finish with the DRM, or, assuming it exsists at all), and actually get something that will record, is gaurnteed Mac compatable, and actually looks descent.
The buzz around this really is rooted in the way that Slingmedia has handled all of this. I was following this for a quite a while because I really liked the functionality of the SlingBox but was not happy on the lack of OS X support. Then, when Sony's Location Free TV came out and IODATA announced OS X software to work with it, I thought I was going to go down that route.
This is really more a kind of thing where Slingmedia showed an early beta of the OS X player (I think at MacWorld in Jan 06!) and the word got around, but Slingmedia was vague about exactly what was going to happen. Then, they did the typical "will release in Q3' garbage only to let that slip. They people went nuts.
So, long story short I was at Best Try this weekend and there was a SlingBox A/V there and the box had OS X icons (and Vista BTW - pretty funny) on the boxes. So, clearly Slingmedia's grand scheme was to already have the OS X release out by the time they release the new hardware models. Anyway, I bought one and got it working under Parallels on my Intel Mac Mini. Pretty amazing that the video and audio are synced-up while running in Windows 2000 in a Parallels environment VM. It works great. I tried initially to get it going on WINE and then CrossOver, but no dice.
Sling makes a good product, they just really dropped the ball on this. If they release the OS X player this month, all will probably be forgiven.
Apart from connecting to a TV signal this has almost nothing in common with EyeTV.
It is basically for people without many computer skills. They've got a computer (probably running Windows, maybe OSX) but they don't use it much. They've probably got broadband and they like watching TV. Usually they watch TV on their TV. Sometimes they want to watch it on their computer, sometimes they want to watch it on their laptop, sometimes on their mobile, sometimes overseas or at a friend's house.
Compare that to EyeTV. EyeTV is for people with a decent modern (OSX) computer that want to watch TV on their Mac with its nice screen. How can an EyeTV user watch what is currently playing at home while overseas? What about if they're in bed with their laptop, can you use your EyeTV plugged into your desktop to help? Even if you can with a few hacks here and there, won't that require your desktop to be turned on?
And it points to a page full of advertizement. All this mess for a poor product. What a pity.
Anyway, that was my slingshot
It's here: http://malfy.org/
Sling deserves no praise or accolades for their Mac client. It's been "any month" now for what? Over a year? If it was a real priority they would have actually dedicated some real resources to getting it done or brought in outside help for whatever was hindering them in their internal development. Mostly they deserve a bit of snarky retribution for allowing their new hardware to ship with boxes that claimed Mac support... even though it isn't in the hands of anyone but a few beta testers.
Where I come from that is called lying.
(Yes development dates slip, things happen, but if they took the time to sticker over other platforms the support was no where near ready for, why didn't they do it for OSX? Perhaps because they are dishonest? Or Lazy? Or what?)
At least unlike Tivo they aren't outright lying to their customers.
--- I do not moderate.
Sure, Sure mod me flame bait. But I'm fucking right here. If these people took any effort at all, or the same effort as making a post(!) they'd know.
Googling Slingplayer, the top fucking link is:
http://us.slingmedia.com/page/slingplayer.html
Which is the fucking product page! Searching Wikipedia for Slingplayer doesn't return it immediately, but gives this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search =slingplayer a list with the top(!) link being the Slingbox, the device this software interfaces with. It tooke me much longer to write this post than it did for me to do those searches, and that's the truth. It's not like this information is secret and hidden. A simple search on the most common information sources gives it straight out.
I don't get it. Why don't they (a) stream a format that vlc can display and let customers supply their own client on a bunch of platforms, obviously including Linux, and (b) make it symmetrical - especially the pro version with pass-through connecters - so you can stream back from the computer(s) to your HD TV?
Wow. I guess it must be impossible to do a bad summary for Slashdot. Heck, why don't they just submit one-word summaries. Darn lazy people!
Next on Slashdot: "Something about Windows Vista, Firefox, and bubble gum. Google it!"
Anyone considering purchasing this product should probably read through this 30page thread:
http://www.slingcommunity.com/forum/thread/11357
Summary: A Mac SlingPlayer was due for imminent release at MacWorld in January, it is now October and still coming soon. A public beta(not a real release) is due by the end of October now and only because they're trying to save themselves from a PR disaster.
Apparently it's not a fucking product, it's just a gizmo to watch TV. Didn't you read the summary ??
How disapointing.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Do Not Do Dumb Things to Your Customers
In summary:
- First announced June 2005
- First scheduled for Q2 2006
- Delayed to Q3 2006
- Shipped New products with Mac Logo on the Box, but no actual Mac software in the box
- Delayed to Q4 2006
Since then, the company has made great strides:Sling Makes Amends
Communication has improved and they seem commited to releasing a public beta this month.
Let's hope they follow through.
http://macdevlog.com
http://macbizlog.com
What kind of retarded rant was that? The readers are fully justified in expecting to get at least a faint idea of the point of the article from the title and submission text. If the information was so easy to find then the original idiot poster (a relation of yours perhaps?) should have included it in the submission so hundreds of thousands of /. readers could easily decide whether they gave a crap about continuing on to the linked article or reading the /. discussion. I don't think that's really too much to ask. If you had to do even 30 seconds of googling for such basic information on every /. submission I think even you would get pretty tired of it pretty quickly.
BTW, your comparison to common words is specious. The vast majority of the readers will know what words like "volcano", "Hawaii", or "iPod" mean. In comparison, this "SlingPlayer" doesn't have enough mindshare for most people to know what it is. Thus the number of perfectly reasonable posts asking why we should care. But congratulations on your simply mind-bogglingly magnificent googling skillz. I'm sure none of us could have figured it out without you.
Submitter take the time to explain the basics of the article: 30 seconds.
Submiter does not take the time to explain the basics of the article: 50 000 slashdotters wasting 2 minutes (since they don't know what it is, need time to search for it, read it, understand it.) Total time wasted: 69 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes.
On the web, a single person being lazy ends up wasting time for thousands of people. Simple enough to understand.
It's a Slashvertisement! There is a difference. Ask for it by name!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
No, you're not right. I am not here to fact check summaries and make them make sense, the submitter and the editors are.
Everybody knows what a volcano is, or what Google is, or what Windows is. What a SlingPlayer is or is not isn't obvious to most people, and the submitter should have made it more clear.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I fail to see the problem in any way. If you want to know, make some effort to educate yourself. My point was was not to illustrate my "mind-bogglingly magnificent googling skillz" it was to illustrate just how available this information is to anyone who makes the slightest effort, a stoned baboon ought to be able to find it.
First: Don't be a dork.
Second: Google for it is seldom a good answer. People are social craetures, and it is in are nature to ask our 'tribe' for information. It was much easier to say, "What's over there" to are peers then it is to go see and get eaten by boars.
If the nightly news was intereactive, and they mentioned something the viewers didn't lknow, then YES PEOPLE WOULD ASK.
Shit, I am tired of you anti social assholes giving the rest of us a bad name.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So... why bother even reading the articles? After all, if you're up to date on the latest "geek" stuff, you really don't need to go here at all, do you?
The criticism was perfectly justified. The article bit.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Actually there is software -- or was software, anyway -- for place-shifting using an EyeTV.
... whatever. And IIRC, VLC uses standard formats and protocols, and is well documented, so you could probably even get embedded device support if you knew what you were doing.
It's called CyTV. I haven't used it in a few versions, but basically it is/was a remote-viewer application, that would let you view the incoming stream from your EyeTV over a network, and also view the saved recordings and change channels and whatnot. So basically it was like a Slingbox, but also worked as a TV tuner on your computer, and also recorded.
http://www.lucid-cake.net/cytv/index_en.html
It used to have two parts, a server and a player (the server going on the machine with the EyeTV), but now it seems like they're using the VideoLan Client as the client instead, so any machine than can run VLC can be a client. So it's totally cross-platform: your Mac can serve video to Windows, Mac, Linux, BeOS
The only advantage of the Slingbox is that it doesn't require a computer to be near a cable connection -- it's much more appliance-ish. You set it in your home A/V stack and it does its thing. Personally although I find the concept intriguing, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. Any company that touts how it "leverages the latest WMV technology!" is not one I want anything to do with. That video stream is probably either encrypted all to hell, or so nonstandard that it might as well be. Given that their Mac support has come more from their marketing department than from engineering, I'm not interested.
Really, the Slingbox is just a horribly crippled example of what you could easily do with MythTV on Linux, or EyeTV on the Mac. (I wonder if it could be re-flashed with better software? The price is pretty reasonable -- under $150 -- so it would be hard to build a DIY micro system for the same price unless you have an impressive junk bin. Might be worth it just for the parts.) The fact that it transmits in WMV and requires a proprietary player application, as it comes from the factory, just kills it for me. Total waste.
Assuming you can drag a cable line over to where your Mac is, there is no excuse for purchasing a Slingbox. Do yourself a favor and support an actual Mac company, and get an EyeTV. It's by far the better product and actually has Mac users as a priority, and not a distant afterthought.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."