They have a short video which walks through the different generations of their designs for Sling Media and highlights some of the key design points:

They also have one on the Sling Touch Control 100, which they designed of course:

This was announced at CES 2010, but I don’t believe it ever shipped.

New Deal Design has worked on a number of other well known projects as well – such as the Lytro, Sifteo Cubes, the Fitbit Wellness Tracker, and, reaching way back, the Palm Zire. They’re the design wizards behind the curtain.

As for other streaming boxes – Popbox, Western Digital, etc. – no idea. None of the other devices really have much of a user base so it may not be worth the effort.

Well, according to a post today on Tech of the Hub, I was dead wrong. SlingPlayer for Connected Devices is coming to the Western Digital WD TV Live family. They posted a message from a tipster, apparently from the Sling Media Beta site:

If you have a WD TV Live or WD TV Live Hub, now would be a good time to list it in your TV & AV Equipment Test Platform. We may have a beta opportunity coming up real soon and we usually recruit testers based on their beta profile information.

Today SlingPlayer for Connected Devices is available for Boxee and the Logitech Revue Google TV – though it also works on Sony’s Google TV products. And now it looks like it is coming to the WD TV Live Hub 1TB Media Center (MSRP $229.99, Amazon $169.00) and WD TV Live Streaming Media Player (MSRP $129.99, Amazon $92.95), at least from that note. It isn’t clear if it will be coming to older models like the WD TV Live Plus (Amazon $149.84).

If you want to watch a video stream from a remote Vulkano directly on your TV instead of your computer or mobile device there are two Vulkano units that will connect to a remote Vulkano and allow you to stream it’s content directly to your TV.

The Vulkano Lava and Blast both have this feature. You can read more about how it works here.

The folks over at Monsoon Multimedia have been hard at work adding easier to use controls and features for doing this.

They are just about ready to release these updates to the public but want your input on the design before doing so. They have created a beta test of their new on screen features using two Vulkano units and a DISH TV setup.

If you have a Vulkano here are the details.

This Beta testing is only open for Dish TV owners at this time. The requirements are as follows.

1) Must own either a Vulkano Blast or Lava at a receiving location.

2) Must have a Vulkano of any type located at a sending location.

3) Must have a Dish TV DVR connected to the Vulkano at the sending location

4) Must be a member of the Vulkano Community to apply, obtain the firmware(s) and provide feedback on the testing.

The Beta test will require that you install a private beta firmware to your Vulkano Lava or Blast.

Click Here for their application for the Beta test.

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I wonder how their sales would be today if they used a commercial like this on TV.

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Did you see it? Answer after the cut…

The Slingbox the aliens give to Blake is the Slingbox PRO, one of the second generation boxes. They should’ve used the original Slingbox Classic!

You can access either your live TV or you recorded content using a multitude of devices such as your iPad, Roku, Boxee Box or Google TV. There is even an HTML 5 version is in the works, for Macs, PCs, or other connected TVs.

Simple.tv has announced the box will ship in this June. Users can preorder the box on the Simple.tv Web site.

The box is now $149 and there is an optional $4.99 monthly fee.

That fee covers unlimited remote streaming, automatic recording of all your favorite shows and their program guide.

This could be a great way to cut the cable cord but still have the ability to record your shows like a DVR and also place shift your TV to your favorite device.

You find out more about it from their website here. https://www.simple.tv/

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This is actually a very nice system, and one of the few things I’m envious of as a TiVo user. I use an external Slingbox with my TiVo, but that’s really a but if a kludge with analog A/V connections and IR blasters. The DISH Sling Adapter connects with a simple USB cable, and that’s all. TiVo’s forthcoming transcoder box will provide a similarly elegant solution via a single network connection, even moreso as it can support multiple DVRs with one box. However, initially at least, it will only stream within the home. I really hope TiVo comes around and adds true place shifting for streaming outside of the home as well. Then I’d gladly replace my Slingbox.

Three tuners, but it can record up to six HD channels at once? What kind of dark voodoo is this? Well, note the asterisk: “*DURING PRIMETIME HOURS”. And now note this from the quote above “ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC”. How it manages this trick is actually pretty simple, but requires a little explanation.

I’ll oversimplify a bit, but for analog broadcast TV you have one channel per frequency. A tuner did just that – it tuned a given frequency and therefore a program. But with digital content frequencies and channels have a more nebulous relationship. A single frequency block may contain several digital channels all multiplexed, or MUXed, together. And this is precisely how satellite works. They can’t use a dedicated transponder and frequency for each channel, rather channels are MUXed together. So ‘tuning’ a single channel is actually a multi-step process.

First the tuner tunes the desired frequency and this allows the unit to receive the data stream that is the MUX. Normally the next step is that the signal is de-MUXed and the desired channel is extracted, with the other data being discarded. This one channel is then saved to the drive as a recording. Can you see where I’m going?

Since DISH controls everything end to end, what they’ve done is place ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC in one MUX. And instead of de-MUXing the data as it is received they’re saving the entire MUX to the drive, all four channels. Then it is de-MUXed at playback time, not record time. That’s how it can record up to six channels with three tuners. You have one tuner recording the MUX, for four channels, and two tuners each recording a single channel.

But this is limited. As the page states, they do this during prime time hours only. And recording four channels takes up four times the space, even if you’re never going to watch all four channels. The Hopper has a 2TB drive, but only half is available for user recordings – up to 250 hours. The other half is used to store these PrimeTime Anytime MUX recordings, as well as pre-cached OnDemand content pushed the the box. And you can’t record up to six programs you select, you can only record up to three individual programs. Or two programs while the third tuner is occupied recording this MUX.

So you can record any three channels or the four-channel prime time MUX of the major networks and any two other channels – which is how they get six total. And it only does this during prime time, 8-11pm Eastern, so you won’t be doing this for day time programming, etc.

In addition to this PrimeTime AnyTime feature, the Hopper also supports TV Anywhere place shifting with the Sling Adapter add-on.

Last week DISH launched a new YouTube channel and they’ve gone on a tear uploading videos – most of which have to do with the Hopper. They do provide some useful product info:

They even have a couple of TV spots for it, though I’m not really sure if I should be amused or offended seeing as I currently live in central MA and my wife is from South Boston. And no, she does not have this accent:

They’ve even uploaded videos from the launch at CES:

Anyway, they’ve now launched an actual Embedded SlingPlayer, which you see here:

Actually, that’s one of two options, called the Launch Pad. That pops open the player in a new window, and it is designed for embedding within blogs and such with limited width – like this one – as it is 500×200. The other option is the Full Player, which is just what it sounds like, and is 768×800. You can get the code to include it in your own page from their page.

It is Flash-based, and should work in any Flash-enabled browser on any platform, including Linux – and likely on any set top boxes, gaming consoles, etc., which will run Flash. Go head, give it a try and leave a comment.