[opendtv] Sling Media Slings Bull at Slingbox Faithful
- From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: undisclosed-recipient:;
- Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 23:00:59 -0400
Sling Media Slings Bull at Slingbox Faithful
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000533.html
Greetings. Sling Media, purveyors of the popular "Slingbox" line
of devices that stream home television or other video/audio sources
over the Internet, have just slung a smelly slug of excrement at their
loyal customers and fans.
Slingboxes permit users to quickly and easily stream content from --
and pretty fully remotely control -- their home cable boxes, TiVos,
and the like. Because it's a hardware-based solution, it has proven
much easier to use than free software-based systems such as "Orb"
(which require capture cards and significant CPU resources) for many
users, this despite Sling's move to encrypted data streams that shut
out "unofficial" player applications.
While the primary modality of Slingbox usage is streaming to
specialized programs and embedded Web players (which have been
included with the cost of the device), a big attraction of Slingbox
has been its mobile apps -- such as the Slingbox player for Windows
Mobile cell phones -- which actually works remarkably well, even at
quite low, non-3G speeds. Even though this is an extra-cost item, it
has proven to be very popular.
For months now in the Slingbox world, anticipation has been riding
high in anticipation of an iPhone version of the Slingbox mobile app,
and speculation has been rampant that an Android version (e.g., for
the HTC/Google G1 cell phone) is also in the works.
But now comes word from Sling -- not an April's Fools joke
unfortunately, that the iPhone app will only be compatible with new
model (mostly HD-oriented) Slingboxes, and that owners of existing
models will be out in the cold.
Many Slingbox owners are livid, and it's easy to see why. We already
*know* that Sling streams will play just dandy at low speeds,
even into limited architectures like Windows Mobile. To allow for
backwards compatible streaming of standard definition video into the
mobile applications for the iPhone or other mobile platforms simply
cannot be a rocket science level project.
So there is only one likely reason that Sling Media is going down this
non-backwards-compatible path -- simple greed.
The first indications of Sling Media's greedy nature surfaced when
they locked down their data to try prevent the implementation of
unapproved applications, as noted above. But with Sling's new
incompatibility manifesto, we see their greed in its full flowering,
and what it portends for the future of the Slingbox platform is not at
all encouraging.
Rather than upgrading to newer Sling devices, I would urge current
Slingbox owners -- and anyone else thinking about the purchase of
Sling Media products, to instead wherever possible consider the use of
Orb or similar services that operate using standard protocols, and
devote whatever time and resources that they can to the development of
open source software-based and hardware-based Internet video streaming
systems. Sling Media's proprietary approach is no longer acceptable.
As it stands right now, as far as I'm concerned, Sling has
slung its last.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@xxxxxxxxxx
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: LW1
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