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."

Comments

"peek".

[hatless]

A sneak mountaintop?

Re:"peek".

[chazwurth]

Yes, that's correct. Widdling: the practice of taking something big and making it widdle.

Direct link to YouTube article

[From A Far Away Land]

The link in the summary loads a page with horrible popover advertising that floats in the way.
Here's the on the page.

Dear god.

[jb.hl.com]

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.

Re:Dear god.

[brunascle]

i assume a singplayer is slingware that connects to a slingbox

sling!

Re:Dear god.

[Andy_R]

Well, I visited their site, and it doesn't say what the damn thing actually is (or if it does, it's in a non-obviousl place), and after 2 minutes 30 of the video, all I know is that the developer doesn't know that the Dock is called the Dock. However, the interviewer does say "awsome" at least once in every sentence, so it must be good!

Re:Dear god.

[slughead]

1) What is Sling?

A piece of leather that allows one to hurl stones at high speeds.

2) What is SlingPlayer?

It's a brand new product which is now available on the Mac!

3) What is special about SlingPlayer?

It's NEW!

"What's Sling Player?"

[Peganthyrus]

The Slingbox family of products enable you to watch and control your TV anywhere you are from virtually any Internet-connected laptop, PDA, or Windows cell phone.

  - 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.

What it is

[mac1235]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingbox Ideal for people who don't have bittorent or have TV's. Poor bastards.

VideoLAN

[digitalhermit]

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.

Re:VideoLAN

[entrylevel]

NTSC is many things, but calling 320x240 "full resolution" is wrong. NTSC has several resolutions, all of which are considerably higher than 320x240.

The slingbox is awesome for $100, but VLC (and one of my favorites, the deprecated VLS) really has a leg up on the options it gives you. One of my favorite features is that it can transcode either a video file or input stream (from a capture card for example) into any other format it supports for playback, in realtime (as long as your CPU can handle it). I use it to stream 5 Mbit/sec video over wireless every day and it works and looks fantastic.

In my experience, VLC's lowest-end quality (for example, trying to send upstream on a crippled US cable modem or ADSL), looks far better than the highest quality available from a Slingbox. Other pluses are that VLC runs the same (and supports the same features and codecs) on all major operating systems and your stream will never be wrapped in DRM.

sad that there's a need for this....

[nblender]

What I mean is that if the networks had their collective poop in a group, you would be able to access your monthly TV subscription via some 'iTunes' thing no matter where you were but as it is, you have to buy this extra piece of hardware and potentially violate the AUP of your broadband provider (for setting up a server on your connection).

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...

In Layman's terms...

[cyclocommuter]

...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...

Article is spam

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Interview Venue

[ari_j]

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.

The guy on the MacBook obviously doesn't use Macs.

[mattyohe]

"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)

Re:Better Idea

[eldepeche]

-1, Can't spell.

Re:Dear god Indeed!

[Cadallin]

Would you whiny bitches quit posting "I don't understand!" "What's this about?" "I don't get it?" Do you do the same thing thing with the Nightly News? Do you hear "Volcano erupts in Hawii" and immmediately ask: "Whats a Volcano?" "What's this Ha-waa-eee thing?" "Isn't an eruption something that happens in sex?"

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.