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Sling Streams iTunes Content To TV
Vitamin_Boy writes "Sling has a new product out, the 'SlingCatcher.' It sends video from the PC to the TV and does it for $200. Oh, and it works with iTunes. Will this undercut Apple's iTV? The Ars Technica article thinks it might: 'The SlingCatcher... is media-agnostic. It doesn't care what codec videos are encoded with, nor whether or not they have been purchased from an approved online store. It is designed to take video output and stream it, which means that you could use the SlingCatcher with video purchased from other online services, such as the iTunes Store or CinemaNow. In this way, the SlingCatcher may turn out to be a one-size-fits-all solution in a field populated with specialty products.'"
Get a card with a TV-OUT? They're not exactly rare.
Is it me or does this sound exactly like TV-out, but instead of a cable, it uses wi-fi between the computer and the box next to the tv?
1. Going by the description it appears this would include streaming pay-to-view music videos and DRM protected DVDs. Is that a correct interpretation?
1a. If so: I assume it streams unencrypted/unencoded video signals rather than the data stream itself. What is to prevent me from plugging the receiver into my DV recorder?
2. Assuming the alternative, that it streams the original signals: How could an iPod magically gain the software to decode any stream?
Please enlighten me about how either alternative 1 or alternative 2 could be true in accordance with the 'it does not care about what codex you are using'.
By now, there are half a dozen products that stream video from the PC, from the Web, etc. to your TV. I don't see why people get so excited about either the Sling or iTV--they are nothing new.
I recently bought a new computer monitor, and it is iTunes compatible!!!1
No, seriously, we get it -- its an output device. It can output whatever the heck you want to the TV, be it iTunes or World of Warcraft or your Open Office spreadsheet (which probably makes for better television than half of the lineup). If it couldn't output whatever the heck you wanted, THAT would be news to the Slashdot "Egads DRM is choking us to death!" faction. And they'd be mostly right to be upset about that.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The DRM is end-to-end, so this will only receive the "degraded" signal. Still no different than TV-out.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
A) We've seen this before, so what's the change?
B) My understanding of the iTunes store sharing is that when you want to view a video/play a song you purchased, it checks to see if the client you're using is authorized. If Slingbox hasn't broken that DRM system, then how can it be used for iTunes purchased shows?
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
How is this better than the Hauppage MVP?
Not to blow my own trumpet, but I did a fair bit of work on the mvpmc project to get VLC streaming integration working on this device.
The Hauppage MVP can be picked up for around 50 USD, it sits next to your TV and has an ethernet (or wireless if you want to pay a bit more) connection and a remote. It can integrate with slimserver for music playback, MythTV, can play MPEG1/2 video directly from shares (and any kind of video via VLC, which it does by requesting a vod transcoded MPEG2 stream and allowing you to control it transparently via the MVP remote), and is far more flexible than this - AND cheaper!
Apple's probably far more worried about the Xbox 360's movie and TV download service, which is apparently doing very, very well. That's not to say this is a bad product - I can think of uses for it - but at the same time, it also seems like a hassle in terms of interface, and interface is king to a lot of folks.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
> Will this undercut Apple's iTV?
It's a bit difficult to tell since it's not even released yet, nor have many details been made public.
Will find out more at today's keynote I expect.
It's good because:
It is marketed to those that think DRM is the end of the world, so anything that prevents that, or at least holds it back, is good!
It is just unique enough that most will have no idea what it really is doing, and think it's some sort of magic. Magic they just gots to have!
Hype!
$200? How about no. Buy original Xbox for £50, perform softmod, install XBMC, rejoice!
Really these stories are very mundane now I've been watching content from my PC on my TV for over a year now, even streaming content directly from the net onto my TV for just as long. It's not wireless, but you already had cat5 running to the tv area right?
The only thing that XBMC is lacking is support for HD. The Xbox's poor little cpu just can't handle decoding it. As soon as the 1st "next gen" console is capable of runnign unsigned code that will change.
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
I doubt they're doing well, in December 2006 the XBox360 sold less than either DS Lite, PS2, or Wii. To make the claim that XBox360 sold the most they ignored the Japanese sales, portables and previous generation consoles to make a limited claim of 'top seller in the US for 3rd generation non portable console'. Whoopeeee.
There's so much turf when it comes to Microsoft, I'd wait for the real numbers.
And a big fuck you to you, too, Diffusion. Go open source a goat.
Love,
Stevie
The Sling thing and Apple's iTV have HDMI out. The Hauppage thing appears to just have component out. If you want to drive the latest widescreen LCDs and Plasmas to their potential, HDMI is pretty helpful. That would be an important factor for me, anyway.
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
The MPAA will be around shortly to take a statement from yourself regarding the unothorised reproduction of an iTunes video to people who have not obtained licenses.
Seriously, though, your wife and mother in law better start worrying, how long before your drm purchased media includes a requirement that every individual pair of eyes/ears witnessing said media has it's own licence?
Though i wander if i could then get cheaper movies by paying for only the picture, no need to LISTEN to jessica alba after all...
Isn't this exactly like one of the BIG products that Apple / Steve Jobs is announcing today at Mac World? Macrumors.com says so. I guess Sling wanted to sell one or two before all the Mac Heads went with the Apple-branded product.
I just picked up a D-Link DSM-520 a few days ago at Fry's for $190, and it does exactly the same thing: plays all the AVI/MPG videos (plus audio and image files) stored on the PC in my office, streaming over an 802.11g wireless link.
Sure, it doesn't play DRM-locked music downloaded from iTunes, but BFD. The only such files I have are the ones my wife insists on purchasing from Apple.
Best of all, it has multiple video output options, including composite RCA, S-video, component, and native HDMI.
These devices have been around for some time...I don't see why Sling's entry garners any special attention.
Apple's iTV should also be largely media-agnostic, apart from WIndows only DRM schemes. The box should run a FrontRow like interface, and currently FrontRow can play whatever Quicktime can - including DivX, XviD, so it should be pretty damn video flexible.
Anyway, more will be revealed in about 4 hours...
media-agnostic
adj.
Without devotion to specific codecs, nor specific (approved) stores. Designed as a one-size-fits-all solution.
Current Google Index: 13,900.
I like this phrase. I love this concept. Here's hoping we hear it a lot more often in the wake of the recent BlueRay/HDDVD debacle.
barack to the future?
Will it be technologically superior to iTunes? Most likely. But it is not iTunes technical superiority that will make it the more popular product, if we applied this reasoning to all of Apple's ventures then the iPod would not be the top mp3 player, .mac wouldn't be used and the last iTunes cell would have been even more of a failure.
Apple have an ability to sell a product to consumers who simply do not care about it's effectiveness so long as it fits into their existing Apple set up.
I have no doubt Apple's offering will be more of a success, whether that success is deserved or not however is a different matter.
The client iTunes sees is your computer (which has to be authorized). Simply put, the Slingbox is just like a TV-out + v e r y thin wires.
The SlingCatcher... is media-agnostic.
So they are saying the SlingCatcher isn't sure if media exists? I am all for media "hipspeak" if it makes them feel better/cooler, but at least have it make sense....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Dlink DSM-320 and it only cost $99.00
Anyways, as long as these things need a PC to operate they will suck. Give me one of these that will go to itunes or any other RSS feed and allow me to select and play from the feed directly and you have a BIG winner.
Most people do not want to leave their pc on 24/7. I have resorted to leaving my Mediaportal PC under the TV on all the time as it serves up content for all the DSM-320 boxes in the house.
Record in mpg and all play it.... Encode the DVD's ad Xvid and all of them play it. works great. Only time I have problems is with RSS feeds like Channel Federator. they use a wierd codec. DL.TV does not so the DSM-320's play that just fine while many of the other RSS feeds play only on the mediaportal HTPC..
BTW: I can build Mediaportal playback slaves now for $200.00 each now that they released the master/slave system for it. A mini-ITX 800 board will happily play the content so a micro ATX and AMD processor for $70.00 will easily do it.
Media exists, but it doesn't care what happens to the SlingCatcher.
Clear, Dark Skies
If the device streams video from the video output and doesn't care about the application that generates it, then it follows that you cannot have a remote control for pauses, jumps, etc (or have to provide and configure one yourself, and have some way of sending the signal to the PC, and then you probably can make your own setup to send the video to the TV).
For me, having a remote is important stuff when watching TV, I guess the average Joe would agree with me, specially if he has to climb some stairs to rewind the film every time he goes to the kitchen for another beer.
The device doesn't seem in this case particularly consumer-ready.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
It's not clear to me how much bandwidth is required on both ends, though.
Well, that's not hard to figure out. If you want to watch DVDs via your internet connection, you better be able to put through around 5-6Mb/s, and that's assuming that you have some sort of transcoder that can filter out the unnecessary stuff and pass along only the video and audio stream that you want. The DVD spec allows bitrates up to 10.08Mb/s, if memory serves, including all subs and various audio streams, but a typical commercial one is much lower for the parts you'd actually need to transmit.
Now, if you have a computer on the transmitting/media-server end that's cable of transcoding the video into some more modern format than MPEG-2, then you can probably start talking about live streaming on a 1Mb pipe. You wouldn't get HDTV, but you could easily push passable 720x480 MPEG-4, at say 800Kb/s for the video and 128Kb/s audio, for a total of around 930Kb/s before adding in your protocol's overhead. So basically, a 1MB/s symmetric connection would probably work.
It's certainly possible with today's technology, unfortunately, most U.S. broadband connections aren't up to snuff. A lot of folks are on connections that only give them 128, 256, or 512 Kb/s upstream speeds (e.g. even Comcast's premium cable service only offers a paltry 384 kb/s upstream speed with 6Mb/s down, or 768kb/s up with 8Mb/s down). With buffering you could probably make some of those connections work, but I doubt it would be a hit with consumers -- you wouldn't get the same 'instant start' that you do with locally-stored videos (because of all the buffering).
For the next few years at least, media sharing of the kind you're talking about (where you keep all your content on one system, and dole it out to front-end systems for display), is going to be pretty much a LAN phenomenon.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
My limited understanding of Apple's iTV (we'll all know for sure later today) is that it will integrate with iTunes libraries, share whatever media is there, cache it locally and/or stream it over a home network, and do it all with little further thought from the user. Oh, and it'll use the Apple Remote, natch.
Unless the SlingCatcher can match that kind of instantaneous ease-of-use, it won't undercut anything.
True, but as I recently found out to my chagrin, quite a few big-name (Compaq, I'm looking at you) don't let you install additional video cards. I had an old Celeron system that I wanted to use as a frontend STB, so I picked up an old $20 PCI-based video card with an S-Video out. Unfortunately, I didn't think to check the BIOS: there's no way to disable the onboard video and use an aftermarket card. (With the card in, both outputs just give a black screen.) Apparently this is not uncommon in low-end systems. In my case, it meant that I just had to get a new Socket 370 motherboard that didn't suck so much, which these days is another $20 junk-bin part, but it turned a simple drop-in upgrade into essentially rebuilding a computer.
Sometimes the obvious solutions have unanticipated complications; there's a whole lot of consumer hardware out there that won't "play nice" with anything. For non-technical people, buying a new box may be simpler than upgrading anything they have.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
That means, I'm waiting for the $1000 42" LCD TV with built-in ethernet/wifi that connects to my household MythTV backend with a DAAP plugin.
The pieces are almost there. Probably less than a year.
Let's not forget the Neuros OSD which does the same thing, and more, and has open source firmware!
I'm a bit more excited about the OSD because of its hackability factor. It runs Linux - I've got the source and am working on building my own software for it.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The Sling Catcher is a dead item out of the box. They missed the perfect device.
It should, WITHOUT A PC, be able to connect to and control a slingbox.
If I could drag that box to my vacation home, plug in and watch the CATV from home on the TV in my villa I would be all over it.
Hell college kids could snake one to school and watch their TV lineup from home.
No, they make this crappy box that is a glorified VNC display device just like the Hauppanage Media MVP.... No thanks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Thanks for the informative reply - I was looking at some of their other products, and they seem to make the claim "an Internet connected computer or compatible mobile phone" could be used. Maybe they reduce the quality, or maybe they assume a lot of bandwidth, or maybe they assume that the computer is internet-connected but on the LAN, too... :-)
http://store.digitalriver.com/servlet/ControllerSe rvlet?Action=DisplayPage&Locale=en_US&id=ProductDe tailsPage&SiteID=slingbox&productID=53042900
The Neuros OSD does this as well, runs linux, and is open source. What more could a Slashdot geek want?
The only limitation I see with the OSD is the fact that it only does composite out.
-=Lothsahn=-
Is it definately going to be called iTV? Cause here in the UK there is already a television company called ITV - And its the biggest privately owned TV broadcaster in the country... I could see apple suing for the use of "i" at the start of the name...
Either way, without a re-branding, iTV won't get far here, it will just be mass confusion!
or nobody has nailed it yet? there is an obvious demand for such a thing, but i guess they are either clunky, or nobody knows they exist. iTV has hype, so when it exists people will go see them in stores, and i am sure other people will say "well this product is kind of the same thing and it will do what you want just fine".
the Sling is not due to show up till mid 2007. Apple's iTV is due anytime from 1.5 hours from now till March (iirc). it seems that iTV will show up before this product. though this sounds kind of interesting. they may be waiting for the 802.11 draft2-N. i thought that was not due for a few months, and supposedly the draft2-N chips can be updated to final N with a firmware update (the current draft-N may be out of luck?).
i have heard the Xbox360 works pretty well as a computer2TV media interface, but i don't own one. even if they are a great solution, they still cost a lot considering i never play video games. *if* i was going to buy one for games, then the serving of content would be a great bonus. the same way *if i already had one* it would seem like a deal to get a HDDVD player for only $200 more.
all that being said, i'm a Mac person and i don't think the Xbox interfaces with iTunes anyway, right? personally i like iTunes, and that's what i use to sort my stuff, so some product that can interface with it would make my life easier. the Front Row like interface of iTV looks promising.
I suspect that they just compress the video really, really hard. It's definitely possible to fit video into 128kb/s -- a lot of video-teleconferencing equipment and codecs are designed for this -- but IMO they're terrifically ugly to watch. For portable video (think Verizon's VCAST, or iPod movies), you could probably get away with low resolutions and bitrates, but that's a very different application than a STB receiver where people are going to want to watch the output on a TV and have it look as good as a local signal.
The markets to watch for this technology are the ones where really fast broadband has high penetration. Think some parts of Europe, but more likely South Korea. I think the connections there tend to be more symmetric than ones in the U.S., meaning that services that keep data stored at home and stream them to you while you're on the road are more practical.
As soon as the infrastructure is there -- provided this sort of thing hasn't been made basically impossible and/or illegal via a broadcast flag -- I think there's definitely a market for this sort of thing. But I suspect in the future, the devices that are being offered today will be seen as the Apple Newtons of the video world. Good concepts, just too ahead of their time and impractical to use, to catch on.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I had an IBM pentium 2? that I upgraded from win 98 to xppro, the sound card was completely non-supported.
I bought one of these
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/avcards/6e4f/
which do 5.1 (optical) and regular headphone output both
and that was a coupla 3-5 years ago...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
From the article: "Will this undercut Apple's iTV?"
It could, but there are rumors floating around that the when the iTV is announced (presumably today, possibly as I type this) a deal with Netflix will also be announced. Then I think the iTV would probably be more compelling.
Also, to those who say "just put a tv tuner card in your PC." That works for us geeks. But my roommate hated having a running PC next to the TV so much we just quit doing it. Normal people don't want a PC sitting in the living room. Both Slingbox and the iTV are much more consumer-friendly in that regard.
This will somehow end up in the courts because it probably violates Copyright law in some way shape or form also apple has an excelent and more consumer freindly product note it is now called Apple TV and so far only works with the mac but there are cards for a mac who knows must get back to mac expo kynote blog
That KISS might be running Linux, but it's also running a pirated version of mplayer.
KISS is a company of filthy bastards who use Free software and then call the original developers pirates for demanding that KISS obeys the license.
Google for the details, bottom line is that KISS do not deserve your money.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
How is this different than the Mvix Wireless HD Media Center (except for the clearly obvious differences, of course and the price) http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/8e50/.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Currently, I have two media rooms - one casual family room and one home theatre room. The casual family room has a re-purposed iMac RevA running EyeTV and a TV Tuner/Encoder box, using a 1TB RAID1 array for storage of recorded analog cable programming, pira-ahem downloaded content, and ripped DVDs. EyeTV can be coaxed into encoding programming for our iPod with Video. Audio out is connected to a stereo Receiver which drives zone music thruout the house, so instead of a monster 400-disc CD changer, we just rip the CDs and use iTunes. When it's not in use, we tuck away the wireless keyboard and mouse, and the iPhoto library screensaver runs.
Since the iMac was a hand-me-down, it was all rather inexpensive (except for the 1TB array) and it all works wonderfully as an attractive media-agnostic (and copyright-agnostic) PVR and central media center... except for one problem: I can't share content with my home theatre setup.
The home theatre room has just a VCR, DVD player and A/V amplifier. I need an inexpensive box that can access the 1TB drive and playback content on a composite or S-video output. It needs to be capable of full access to EyeTV libraries, Mac filesystem libraries, and iTunes libraries over a wireless network.
Currently the only way I can see to do this is put a Mac Mini running EyeTV in the theatre room and use the TV as a monitor. But the cost of a Mini and the clumsiness of using a TV as its only display are both discouraging factors.
I'm not holding my breath for Apple's "iTV" to fill this gap. The Sling press release does not mention EyeTV at all. But considering how well the G5 iMac serves as a PVR at the end of its life, a new Intel Mac Mini would do a smashing job... except for the need for a) yet another monitor, or b) an upgrade to an HDTV with a mac video interface.
I can see the fnords!