This news may sting a little for some of you early Slingbox adopters. The recently announced, but not yet available SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone will require new hardware. Sling Media’s site specifically lists the Slingbox SOLO, Slingbox PRO, and the Slingbox PRO-HD as the only compatible devices.
To ease the pain, Sling Media is offering a $50 discount to owners of the original Slingbox, Slingbox AV, or Slingbox TUNER. If you intended on upgrading anyway, this is actually turns out to be an awesome deal.
The reason for the requirement is not apparent. It has been reported that early builds of the application worked just fine with older Slingboxes, so this decision could be purely money driven. Sling Media’s website does state that SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone is currently the only software that requires the new hardware, but they also state that future services that have yet to be announced will also require it.
After hearing this news, are any of you Sling fanatics any less excited about the impending SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone? Will you be upgrading your older boxes to the new ones, or has Sling Media gone too far?
[via Sling Community]
I’m not less excited about this. Maybe it’s because I have one of the newer boxes and won’t have to upgrade. I feel that it’s still worth upgrading if you have to because of the great features from Sling as this is one of the coolest things out there to be able to watch tv anytime anywhere!
Yes, I’m a bit saddened about this news. I have been waiting for this for quite sime time and now with this economy, I am being asked to spend more money for something that I guess really isn’t a necessity.
I guess I will not be upgrading.
I don’t see why everyone is jumping to the conclusion that this is Sling’s fault? Read between the lines a little bit! What are the differences between all of the models and the Solo and ProHD? Could it be the h.264 codec used to stream the media over the net? Don’t jump on the bandwagon to slam a good product just because we don’t fully understand the problem. With all of the R&D and publicity that Sling has generated for the iPhone version, they aren’t going to abandon this project; if Apple is telling them to implement a less bandwidth intensive codec to get it into the app store, they will do whatever it takes to keep their fan base. Isn’t it curious that Apple hasn’t released it yet? There has to be something going on there. My gut tells me that it’s not Sling’s greed driving this bus. Anyway, that’s my 2cp.
twidget60, I completely agree with you. If these were their intentions originally, Sling Media would have announced the required hardware at the same time they announced the submission of the app to the app store.
I am almost certain that, like you said, it is still in the “inspection” process by apple is because they deemed it to hog too much of AT&T’s precious bandwidth – and are requiring that Sling use the compressed codec like you mentioned.
Good post
I’m no expert with this techy stuff, but isn’t it only the Solo, Pro and Pro-HD that Sling are saying are usable with the Iphone app…..
The Solo doesn’t have an inbuilt Freeview Tuner….so is already less useful than my current Classic.
Eventually, I would have upgraded anyway to the Pro-HD for it’s HD streaming stuff…..but at least in the UK, it’s not available yet…..so is also not an option.
This leaves only the normal Pro…..which won’t actually stream HD so not much better than my Classic from that point of view…..and to the best of my knowledge also doesnt use the H.264 codec (which i understand gives better picture with less bandwidth???)……..it just uses the same wmv thing as my current Classic…….errrrr so why would I upgrade?
Eventually, I’d have upgraded anyway, but only to get an extra improvement into the bargain, like HD etc but to be pushed into upgrading now , without getting thing better than my current box is just daft…..I will not be upgrading