General: SlingMedia Preps for SlingCatcher Launch

If you've been keeping an eye on my Twitter status, you'll have noticed I had the pleasure of finding myself at the launch of the latest products from SlingMedia last night. I wrongly wrote that it was for a new HD product, but in fact it was for a the SlingCatcher and associated SlingSync/SlingProjector system.

If you don't know about the SlingBox, it is a device that allows you watch your media anywhere. It captures most video inputs, and then streams this to you over the web, dynamically transcoding to the bandwidth available. With use of say SlingMobile, you can even watch your programs on your mobile phone. In combination with an IR Blaster, you could have complete control over something like a Sky Box. Having not used one, I can't comment on this too much, but it's certainly renowned as being particularly good. The chaps at Sling certainly came across as innovative and were genuinely excited about their products - but then I've seen some excited people about awful products

The SlingCatcher is a fairly portable set-top box around 12" across, with most common TV outputs (HDMI, S-Video, Component etc.). Natively, it can play video files directly from USB drives, but can't play anything from your network shares – so in this respect it is less powerful than many MP3 players. However, it does have 1080i/720P HD output, something you won't see on say the N95's TV Output.

SlingSync is essentially the ability to send files directly to your SlingCatcher – it'll either copy the files directly across, or transcode them into a format that is supported. I can only assume the SlingSync does not play the files you're syncing in real time, which means if you're on wireless, you'll have quite a wait while your HD file copies over. I don't think it would have been too much trouble to have the ability to define a network share for access, much in the same way Boxee works.

SlingProjector is basically a remote viewing client designed specifically for videos. You play a file on your local machine, select the window and the software selects specifically the video stream and then transmits this data directly to your SlingCatcher for playback on your TV device. This comes in handy for watching YouTube or the BBC iPlayer. You can even select a particular section of your screen, should you want to “project” anything else. This uses the same technology as the SlingBox, so if you're on a wireless connection for instance and bandwidth is a little low, it will adjust the stream accordingly.

Watching the iPlayer, I found the frame rate to be a little on the low side – but it was watchable. I'm not allowed to say the release date or the price of the SlingCatcher, but it's soon. Price wise, I feel it's a reasonable amount, but feel they could do a lot more with the devices. Naturally, it's not at all Linux compatible. I imagine SlingProjector will be sparking off some open source developers to create something competitive in the very near future, as I imagine it would be a case of tying together several already available systems (VLC + VNC?).

Orb is quite good, I reviewed it while I was at Trusted Reviews. But that wouldn't work if you wanted to control your Sky Box - which I think is probably the biggest appeal. All Sky would have to do is build something like Orb into their devices...