Sling Your TV to Palms, HP Notebooks, Vista PCs--and other TVs.
Sling Media brings TV place-shifting to Palm devices, HP laptops, and all PCs running Windows Vista.
People using Sling Media's Slingbox "place-shifting" system should soon be able to watch home TV programming on Palm OS-based smart phones, some Hewlett-Packard laptops, and any PCs that run Windows Vista, the company says.
Sling Media released a new version of its SlingPlayer software for Palm's Treo 700p smart phone today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company also announced a deal with HP to distribute its player software on HP's consumer notebooks, as well as plans to release a Vista version of SlingPlayer in the second quarter of 2007.
In a further announcement, Sling unveiled a new version of its enabling hardware designed to facilitate video distribution throughout the home as well as over the Internet. The SlingCatcher is due to ship by midyear and will support HDMI, component, S-Video, and composite video outputs for connecting to a TV, as well as integrated wireless and a standard ethernet jack for network connectivity. "The company is targeting a price point under $200," Sling Media said in its news release.
The SlingCatcher will work with SlingPlayer for TV and SlingProjector to distribute video within the home.Sling Media says that it expects to announce additional applications and partnerships that may produce content optimized for delivery through the SlingCatcher platform.
SlingPlayer software allows users to place-shift video sources in their home, so they can watch them on any device that has a sufficiently fast Internet connection. SlingPlayer connects over the Internet to the user's Slingbox, which in turn connects in the home to their broadband Internet network and to video sources such as cable TV, satellite TV, or a digital video recorder.
The version of SlingPlayer for Vista will include a full-screen viewing mode with remote control information in a transparent overlay. Viewers can choose among feeds from multiple Slingboxes. The Palm OS version will allow users of the Palm Treo 700p to watch their home TV over wireless Internet connections.
The versions of SlingPlayer for the Palm OS and for Vista will join existing players for computers that run Microsoft's Windows XP or Windows 2000, or Apple's Mac OS X, or for smart phones and Pocket PCs that run Windows Mobile.
There's still no version of SlingPlayer for smart phones that run the Symbian OS. That operating system is more prevalent in Europe, where it is used by smart phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Last fall, Sling Media said that it planned to release a version of SlingPlayer for Symbian by the end of 2006.
In addition to the various versions of SlingPlayer for different operating systems, Sling Media even has a version for no operating system. The company struck a deal with HP to install SlingPlayer on all HP QuickPlay-enabled consumer notebooks in the United States. HP QuickPlay enables notebooks to play multimedia content without booting up the Windows operating system.
Peter Sayer, IDG News Service
