First of its kind Slingbox capable of streaming both SDTV and HDTV; now available from Sling Media and its retail partners nationwide and coming soon to Canada.
Sling Media, Inc., a leading digital lifestyle products company, today announced its next generation Slingbox™ PRO-HD is now available for purchase from www.slingmedia.com and leading online and brick and mortar retailers nationwide for $299.99. Sling Media is also pleased to announce the Slingbox PRO-HD will be available at leading Canadian retailers for $329.99 in the coming weeks. The Slingbox PRO-HD is a revolutionary new product that is capable of streaming HD content from a home television source, including over the air HD digital signals (ATSC), digital cable channels (Clear QAM), HDTV cable set-top boxes, HDTV satellite receivers, or HD DVR’s, to a laptop or desktop computer in and around the house. Additionally, customers who have a high speed broadband connection that features upload speeds of 1.5 Megabits per second or higher, Slingbox PRO-HD can even stream HD TV signals outside the home to just about anywhere you can receive a high-speed network connection.
With the availability of the Slingbox PRO-HD, Sling Media has also updated its SlingPlayer for Windows software for PCs running Windows XP or Windows Vista. SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows is now available for download from Sling Media’s web site, www.slingmedia.com. SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows features a live video buffer built into the software, allowing the viewer to pause and rewind a live video stream for easy navigation within a program, and avoiding potential conflicts with home viewers. Also included is an electronic programming guide (EPG) which slides out of the SlingPlayer and gives users a fast and intuitive way to see what is on their TV and navigate to it without having to bring up an on-screen guide on their home set-top box. Finally, SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows incorporates Sling Accounts, a single sign-on feature that keeps key personal Slingbox information including Finder IDs, favorite channels and programming guide information, making them all accessible on any PC running SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows software.
“With Slingbox PRO-HD, our customers will have the ability to place-shift their HD programming to a laptop or desktop computer both in and around the home or remotely while preserving the best possible picture quality,” said Blake Krikorian, co-founder and CEO of Sling Media. “Slingbox PRO-HD marks a giant leap forward in hardware and software development from Sling Media including the powerful encoding enhancements that are a part of SlingStream 2.0. Because of this, Slingbox PRO-HD delivers picture quality at all resolutions that is truly amazing.”
Slingbox PRO-HD features SlingStream 2.0, a major improvement to the company’s proprietary SlingStream™ technology. SlingStream 2.0 allows the Slingbox PRO-HD to adaptively stream high quality television content across virtually any network connection. With SlingStream 2.0, audio/video quality is noticeably improved for remote clients operating in both high and low bitrate environments, including high definition players on a home network.
The Slingbox PRO-HD replaces the Slingbox PRO at the top-end of Sling Media’s Slingbox family and sets itself apart as it is the first and only Slingbox product that is capable of streaming video content at HD resolutions and delivers it to a HD-compatible laptop or desktop computer. The Slingbox PRO and Slingbox SOLO both down-convert HDTV sources to SDTV resolutions.
Slingbox PRO-HD is designed to meet the varied requirements of today’s multi-faceted TV-viewing households. The product includes support for both standard (4:3) and widescreen (16:9) video formats and features multiple integrated sets of audio-video inputs and outputs (Tuner support for HD Digital Antenna (ATSC), Analog and/or HD Digital Cable (Clear QAM) channels, S-Video, composite video, component video and both analog and multi-channel, 5.1 surround, digital audio (S/PDIF)) and features integrated looping outputs for each input. Slingbox PRO-HD transforms desktop PCs, laptop PCs, Macs* and a wide range of smartphones into personal, portable TVs and builds upon the goals of the original Slingbox — to give consumers the freedom to view their home cable, satellite or DVR programming on a wide range of devices anywhere they can access the Internet.
Sling Media’s pre-order partners, Amazon.com, Buy.com, J&R, Newegg.com, PC Mall.com and Sling Media’s own online store, began shipping existing pre-orders to customers today and are now taking new orders for immediate delivery. Product will start rolling into retail stores nationwide including Best Buy, Fry’s, J&R, Microcenter and others in the coming weeks. In Canada, Slingbox PRO-HD will be available from retailers including Best Buy, Future Shop and London Drugs in October.
About Sling Media
Sling Media, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ: SATS), is a leading digital lifestyle products company offering consumer services and products that are a natural extension of today’s digital way of life. Sling Media’s product family includes the internationally acclaimed, Emmy award-winning Slingbox™ that allows consumers to watch and control their living room television shows at any time, from any location, using PCs, Macs*, PDAs, and smartphones. For more information on Sling Media or the Slingbox, visit www.slingmedia.com.
* HD Streaming is currently not supported on Apple Macintosh computers, but will be available in a software upgrade.
