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Slingbox Comes to the Mac
Egadfly writes "The Slingbox has arrived for the Mac world. Some long delays during development now seem over. Sling Media has finally released version 1.0 of their software for Mac OSX. This means that, after buying and installing the Slingbox, Mac users can 'sling' their home cable and satellite signals to themselves at the airport, or in a café hotspot, or over their office computers.
The article on SlingCommunity.com gives the details of the software's development — from last year's much-discussed beta to today's v1.0. Screenshots show how a standard-looking "TV remote," displayed onscreen, allows the Mac users to change channels or browse Tivo recordings over the Internet, many miles from their living rooms."
It supports intel macs. The software is a universal binary. Happy slinging.
I've got one of these too (CompUSA's going out of business sale), and I love it.
I travel for business about 2 weeks per month, and I go mad trying to find something to watch on Hotel television.
The Slingbox lets me see and control everything on my Tivo Series3 and the quality is pretty good even at full screen.
The SlingPlayer client is amazingly well thought out, even though the UI could use some refinement. For instance, during initial setup, the SlingPlayer client asked me for my home router's password and automatically configured the ports it needed.
Also, I don't need to know my IP address at all... Once I've connected to my Slingbox 1 time on my own home network, it remembers that Slingbox's ID on SlingMedia's server. The next time I go online anywhere in the world, the SlingPlayer client looks up the real IP address of my Slingbox on SlingMedia's server and then connects automagically.
My only complaint about the SlingBox (and its really not SlingMedia' fault) is my HDMI troubles with the Tivo Series3. When the Tivo is connected to a TV via HDMI, and that TV is off, it doesn't see the HDMI DRM handshake signal. When that happens, Tivo displays an error message on all video outputs. My SlingBox is connected to my Tivo via Component video. So the first time I went off on a trip, all I could see when I connected to my Slingbox was the menu screen and that stupid HDMI error message. The workaround was to just unplug the HDMI cable when I know I'm going to travel... Or I guess I could leave my TV on 24-7 too.
Sometimes I use SlingPlayer at home when I just want to watch Tivo in a little square while I'm working insted of putting my laptop in front of the TV. On the local LAN, the quality is at least as good as SDTV.
Anyway IMHO the SlingBox is a must-have for any business traveler.
...but it's still awesome.
I've been using mine for a while now, and can tell you that this is about the coolest invention I've seen in a while. Originally, I wasn't sure why I'd need one...now I can't travel without it. I sit in airports watching TV on my MacBook, and always get 1-2 people that ask about it.
Great stuff...
My
RTFA. The Slingbox itself is OS independent. The *Client Software* is not, nor should it be. Video decompression in Java? *That* would suck.
Kevin Fox