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CES 2008: Sling Media shows off SlingCatcher publicly

Written by James Delahunty @ 08 Jan 2008 6:31 User comments (2)

CES 2008: Sling Media shows off SlingCatcher publicly Sling Media has given public demonstrations of its SlingCatcher product at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The SlingCatcher is a Set-Top Box that seamlessly delivers broadcast TV, Internet-based content and personal media to the TV, capable of pulling content from multiple sources and places while providing easy navigation and playback.
"We're thrilled to be showing the SlingCatcher with its full set of features here at CES and it's great to see the enthusiasm in the market for this product. We have been spending a lot of time perfecting new technology that is vital to the SlingCatcher's user experience but sometimes these things take longer than expected," said Blake Krikorian, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Sling Media. "We had hoped to deliver the product for the Christmas holiday, but to plagiarize a well known wine maker; we shall sell no SlingCatcher before its time."



SlingCatcher is composed of SlingPlayer for TV, SlingSync and SlingProjector that combine to create a unified media platform to provide the owner complete control over their personal media. Being able to "sling" programming from one TV or device to anywhere in a home over a LAN or WLAN is one thing, but with the upcoming Slingbox PRO-HD, customers will be able to do the same with high-definition content.

The SlingCatcher includes both standard definition and high definition AV outputs to connect to a TV including HDMI, component, S-Video and composite video, as well as analog and digital audio. In regards to network connectivity, the SlingCatcher features a standard Ethernet jack to connect to the home network either directly or via SlingLink powerline Ethernet adapters. In addition, Sling Media will sell a wireless USB adapter called SlingLink Wireless for $49.99, which can also be used to create the network connection. SlingCatcher will be available in Q2 for a retail price of $249.99.

Source:
Press Release

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2 user comments

18.1.2008 22:57

I wanted a way to take the oodles of music,video, and pictures on my aptly named "Media Drive" and play it view/listen to it on my tv/stereo. So I did my research there are 2 well known commercial products that do this; the above mentioned SlingCatcher and the yet to be released DivX GeijBox. Both were estimated to be at least $200 retail which is far more than what I planned to spend. So after some more research I decided to go with Xbox Media Center or XBMC for short. I bought a used xbox from GameStop ($60 w/ 1 year warranty), and $40 for a used GameShark and SplinterCell game needed to softmod the Xbox. A hundred dollars and a half hour later I was streaming all types of video to my new Xbox Media Center. All for about 1/2 ($100) of what other products cost. Heres a feature set...

Quote:
XBMC can be used to play/view the most popular video/audio/picture formats, and most other multimedia formats (including many more less known formats).

Including:
Video - DVD-Video, VCD/SVCD, MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD.
Audio - MP3,AAC.
Picture - JPG, GIF, PNG.

Which can all be played directly from a CD/DVD in the XBox DVD-ROM drive or from the XBox's built-in hard-drive, XBMC can also play multimedia from a computer over a local-network and media-streams directly from the internet.
XBMC can play DVD-Video movies (with and without menus) from ISO/IMG images and even ZIP/RAR-archives.
XBMC has playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations.
XBMC can in addition run python-scripts written for XBMC as plugin widgets.
XBMC has a simple and user-friendly user-interface, it's easy to use, it's convenient, flexible and offers a great price/performance ratio.
PM me for me info.

29.1.2008 22:33

Another wonderful online video update. How many of these are going to pop up they remind me of the torrent sites that get created daily.

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