Tech Friday: Slingbox Clip + Sling

Posted By on September 14, 2007

sling clipA recent post by moderator Brandon C. on the Sling Community blog has highlighted some information on the much anticipated Slingmedia’s “clip + Sling.” In case you don’t know what a Slingbox is, it is hardware component that is usually located at your home or office and broadcasts your local television signal to authorized computers or smart devices on the Internet. (my post from 2005)The Slingmedia software call the Slingplayer is then in control of the Slingbox or devices that might be connected to it. (ie. DVR, VCR, TiVo, cablebox, etc) It works extrodinarily well and is a great way to watch a local broadcast when traveling away from home … when you have broadband access. (“audio only” would well under dial up non-high speed data or cellphone connections)

I own an original Slingbox connected to my TiVo box and find it great for recording a program if I know I’m not going to be home and occasionally watching a ‘don’t miss live’ broadcast. Although I don’t recommend it, it even works well connected to my Sprint EV-DO high speed data cell service from in the car. (see blog posts) If I’m not on my computer, I can easily access this from my Palm Treo 700p and schedule the recording. (TiVo offers online scheduling too, but your Series 2 box much be connected to the Internet and you must schedule the program well ahead of the start time)

Now for the in’s and out’s of the new Clip+Sling. Think of it as a YouTube for the Slingplayer. Noticed I said “Slingplayer” … as the Clip+Sling is a software based component that will work with all existing Slingboxes. The new software will reside on the computer enabling you to record segments and upload them to the special Sling Media website. This site has been designed to share clips, and content provider descriptions, with others much like other hosted media sites. Interestingly, since most Slingbox users have a TV or DVD player on our Slingbox, I suspect some restrictions to preserve copyrighted content that many broadcasts, rented and purchased DVD already have in place? (I’m unsure how this will work?)

The current assumption is that Sling Media will finance the new project with ads placed at the begining of the encoded clips, probably related to the content. Viewers will probably be permitted to embed the clips in their web design or blogs and viewers who want to share video clips with friends will most likely be able to forward a URL link to friends. Brandon mentioned that the Clip+Sling website will also have a comment and rating section included … very YouTube-ish.

I’ll post more when I get the chance to try it out. Here’s a YouTube clip announcing the product.

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