Watch all red carpet interviews from Streaming Media West in San Jose.
I’ve had a Sling Box for about two years. And I love it. Simply, a Sling Box allows me to watch my cable TV from anywhere in the world on a computer. As TiVo is to timeshifting, watching a program later in the day, the Sling Box is to placeshifting, watching a live program anywhere in the world.
More specifically, the Sling Box is a little box that daisy chains to my cable set-top-box at home. It’s like a spy that taps into the TV signal and can route that signal anywhere I choose. On my laptop I have software that connects directly to my Sling Box to both control it remotely and tap into and watch the broadcast.
As an example, when I was traveling to San Jose last week for Streaming Media West, I get to my hotel and remember that the Celtics are playing on Comcast Sports Network in Rhode Island. I launched the Sling player on my laptop in the hotel, change the channel on the set-top-box 3,000 miles away, and watched the live game broadcast from my hotel bed.
Sling Media, the company behind the Sling Box, believes that if you pay for a cable subscription, you have a right to that content and should be able to watch it anywhere in the world. They make a fair use argument that a consumer can watch his own content wherever he is. The cable companies and ISPs have not always agreed with this thought process. Consumer demand for the product has shown that consumers agree with Sling.
Sling Media started in 2004 and shipped the first Sling Box in 2005. I spoke to John Paul, VP, Product Development, Sling Media at the Streaming Media West conference.
The company was acquired by Echostar in 2007. At the time, Echostar had the DISH network, similar to Comcast and DirecTV, and Echostar, which makes hardware (set-top boxes that are sold to DISH and others) and Satellites. After the acquisition, the two sides of the business were split into two independent companies, and Sling went with the Echostar side of the business.
As Echostar looks to innovate the set-top-box experience, they viewed the placeshifting capabilities of the Sling Box as a great technology to add to the set-top-box.
Later this year, former sibling DISH will be the first customer to roll out an Echostar set-top-box with the Sling Box technology baked into the set-top-box. So the set-top-box now has timeshifting and placeshifting capabilities.
Interestingly, Sling has a different strategy than TiVo did as it looked to grow in the timeshifting market.
TiVO was viewed as a threat by Cable / Set-top-box companies and forced many of them to innovate and create their own DVR capabilities. It competed, rather than partnered with the set-top-box manufacturers. Sling Media, on the other hand, plans to partner with OEM’s and Set-top-box manufacturers to embed Sling technology in all devices.
On the mobile front Sling has created applications that allow a consumer to watch their cable TV from their mobile device. Not all the carriers have been thrilled with this.
AT&T still tries to block the Sling Player from working on AT&T cell phones, such as the iPhone. Sling thinks this is unfair because AT&T doesn’t block others, such as the MLB or the NBA, from selling apps in the iPhone app store that enable and encourage video streaming. AT&T isn’t even handed in deciding which content services it tries to block and which it lets through.
Sprint, by contrast, has been more willing to play ball with Sling because the Sling service helps Sprint sell more data plans, especially as they launch their 4G network.
John Paul would not disclose how many Sling Boxes they have sold since 2005.
