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Friday, March 7, 2008
With Apple’s announcement and details of the SDK yesterday at its Cupertino headquarters, many are now on the speculation path. The power of the SDK gives a slew of possibilities from voice activation, to video recording, to video streaming. No one seems to do the latter better then Slingbox and with its experience of the SlingPlayer on Windows Mobile devices as an example, its hard not to say the iPhone is next in line for a SlingPlayer.
For those unfamiliar with Slingbox, the technology is one that connects a box to your DVR (TiVo, ReplayTV, DISH, DIRECTV etc.), satellite receiver (DIRECTV, DISH, etc.), cable set-top box (Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Cablevision, etc.), DVD player or VCR. Once connected, you have full access to any of these devices content from either your PC, Mac, or mobile device such as a Pocket PC, Nokia, or Palm. You can watch live TV, change channels, view recored content from your VCR or TiVo or play a DVD, all remotely from the actual video device. Adding the iPhone to the line up will only bring more customers to Sling Media’s door.
Sling Media’s Brian Jaquet, Director of Public Relations, has told SvenOnTech that Sling Media is indeed excited about the new SDK. Sling Media announced Blackberry support at CES and told SvenOnTech, “Before the BlackBerry announcement, the most requested two platforms were BlackBerry and iPhone/iPod Touch.” Jaquet went on to say, “We think the iPhone platform has a lot to offer and is ideally suited for mobile TV via its WiFi capabilities and to a lesser extent (today) its EDGE cellular capabilities.”
Sling Media already has a fully functioning Mac OS X client of SlingPlayer which would take little effort to add the CocoTouch interface to the SlingPlayers OS X client. Sling could either use streaming via Wi-Fi or EDGE or add the content right onto the iPhone itself using it’s newly announced SlingSync feature.
With the Slingbox ability to connect to a TiVo or even an AppleTV, millions of iPhone users could watch a movie, sporting event, or the latest news anywhere an Internet connection exists. With SlingSync, one could then watch prerecorded programming anywhere at any time.
While Sling Media cannot comment further on a SlingPlayer for the iPhone, SvenOnTech was told that its engineers have already downloaded the SDK and, “Are already taking a look at it.”
John Gildred, President of SyncTV (read SvenOnTech post SyncTV Embraces Multi-platform IPTV Scheme to Draw Larger Crowd), is just as keen to the possibilities of what the iPhone SDK could mean for mobile media. Gildred elaborated in his blog saying, “It means that consumers could get ad-funded, subscription and premium downloads from SyncTV in the not-too-distant future.”
And now for our really bad pun: Stay tuned media fans, you may just be Slinging the Summer Olympics on your iPhone from Beijing if all goes well. 
March 7th, 2008 at 20:05
I have a slingplayer solo. It’s great! I would love to be able to sling to my iPhone. HOWEVER, I know that sling uses WMV. The iPhone does not play WMV. I know that the newest Slingplayer, due out in Q3, the HD box, will use H.264. My gut is telling me, that current Slings will not be able to send to iPhones because of the video format. We’ll have to buy a new Sling HD for $399 in Q3, which will have H.264, which the iPhone can play.
May 6th, 2008 at 18:56
[...] particular interest is comments Sling Media’s Brian Jaquet, Director of Public Relations made to SvenOnTech earlier this month. He told the tech blog "We think the iPhone platform has a lot to offer and [...]
July 27th, 2010 at 19:28
Public Relations is very very important because this can either make or break a business or community.`;,