Unannounced Slingbox surfaces on the web

Sling Media is working on a new incarnation of its Slingbox TV-over-the-internet box, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website has revealed. Sling Media's Slingbox 3 Sling Media's 'Slingbox 3': in the labs Details of the new box, mentioned in FCC electromagnetic emission testing documentation, are sparse, …

[Chris Phillips]

why no upnp

why don't these otherwise great little guys support local media streaming too?? talk about missing a trick!

[Simon Greenwood]

Original Slingbox on sale in Currys

At £99.99 it's worth considering, and that usually suggests that something new is due...

[Rob]

Very Cool if..

It would be very good to have the slingcatcher be able to capture IR remote signals and pop them down the web to the slingbox, much akin to the RF video transmitter/receiver I use to get Satellite TV upstairs.

[Mike]

Curious

Can someone point me to an unbiased explanation of just how this thing works?

I have internet connectivity via Comcast cable-modem, and as spotty as the "6Mb" downlink is, I am dubious about the reliability of the "128kb" uplink. And even if it were to be rock-solid, how does one pipe tolerable video though 128kbps?

Thanks

[MegaZone]

Why does everyone miss the big news?

I've seen a lot of blogs and such cover this - but I seem to be the only one who noticed the big change: This is a *cable modem*. Look at the FCC Test docs and the manual. This new box is a combination DOCSIS modem and Slingbox - they've never done that before. It is an entirely new direction for Sling Media.

Chris - Slingbox does local media streaming. Not UPNP, but it does work locally.

Rob - The SlingCatcher will supposedly do that.

Mike - 128Kbps is too slow, you need at least 256Kbps for a usable stream - more is always better. The Slingbox accepts video input, then encodes it using VC-1 (WMV9) and streams it to the client. The resolution and bitrate are dynamically adjusted to handle the available bandwidth and the quality of the pipe. Remote streams are sized up to 320x240, local streams at 640x480. And it will go up to about 8Mbps at full quality for a local stream.