I’m not sure where they dredged this up from, but AgencySpy posted this video that purports to tell the tale of the secret origin of the Slingbox. It was clearly made a while ago as Blake Krikorian hasn’t been CEO since he left in January, 2009. There is one glaring continuity error though, can you spot it?
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!
I really don’t have anything to add to this, this video just popped up on Sling’s YouTube channel today. It is a clever little spot, perhaps destined for TV? I think it is simple, but clear. Decent brand advertising.
If you have not heard about Simple.Tv’s new product it is a device that can be attached to either a digital antenna or a basic 
cable connection. You can then connect an external hard drive via the USB port and record your shows to that hard drive.
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/
As part of their new YouTube channel I mentioned in my last post, DISH Network has also published several videos highlighting their ‘TV Anywhere’ feature. TV Anywhere brings Sling Media’s technology to DISH customers, either through the Sling Adapter add-on for the ViP722 DVR and the new Hopper DVR, or built into the ViP922 SlingLoaded DVR.
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.
DISH Network’s recently announced Hopper whole-home DVR, and the Joey companion units, are now available to customers. The Hopper is a unique design with three tuners, but with a trick up its sleeve which allows it to record six programs during prime time. But it isn’t really a six-tuner DVR. Let me quote myself from my previous post, with a little trimming:
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:
Join the General Place Shifting Discussions forum discussion on this post
Recent Comments