AfterDawn: News

SlingCatcher finally becomes available

After first being announced at CES 2007, Sling Media has finally announced the availability of the SlingCatcher playback device, 18 months after its initial unveiling.

The SlingCatcher, according to Cnet is a "playback device that's designed to pull digital content from three sources and display them on your TV. It can play a variety of digital video files from an attached USB storage device (anything from a thumbdrive to a hard drive); display anything on your PC screen (including full-motion video) via the SlingProjector "screen scraping" software; and stream video from any source connected to a Slingbox (elsewhere in the house in high-resolution, or from a remote Slingbox source over the Internet at lesser quality)."



The SlingCatcher, especially with its $300 USD price tag, may seem like a niche product for the time being, but it stands to gain momentum when a few more features are upgraded.

Sling Media's has already introduced Sling.com which it calls a "premium library of movies, TV shows, and Web videos" which already has content deals with NBC, Fox, CBS, Showtime, Break.com, National Geographic, and MGM. Dave Zatz, a former Sling employee adds "SlingCatcher will eventually tap directly into Sling.com for some web video, perhaps partially taking the PC out of the mix."

Good to see it finally on the market.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 10 Oct 2008 18:54

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• 3 comments

• plazma247

  $300 + the price of the original sling box... umm, i think i will stick with Vista media center, install webguide4 (http://www.asciiexpress.com/), Tuner Free MCE (http://www.milliesoft.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=11) and you got it all, oh yeah and there is the fact that using the mcetuner app v2 (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/224619.aspx) i can get my 4 tuners all working at once.
  
  So why would i want to have to pay out for a sling box and then a sling catcher which would be far cheaper to use media center, At $300 for a sling catcher if i wanted to drive another TV in the house i would just throw together another cheap pc. Plus then i can use it for far far more.

  11.10.2008 05:44 #1

• varnull

  I think their focus is too domestic. This would be a great device for conferences and exhibitions and the kind of events or places where you want to display media across multiple locations..
  
  I'm thinking about railway stations airports and that kind of thing.. even in large stores maybe?

  11.10.2008 11:32 #2

• plazma247

  Have you seen the divx connected platform? slighlty diffirent bag of tricks but does just what your talking about.

  13.10.2008 03:04 #3