Slingbox, a device and service that was in digital TV streaming long before the world was ready for it, will die the death of a cloud server on Wednesday, November 9th. The service was almost 17 years old.
Sling Media announced two years ago that Slingbox would be discontinued, noting that “all Slingbox devices and services will become unusable.”The reason is the decline in demand. The ability to watch a video that would normally be on a TV on a non-TV screen was new—and legally controversial—when Sling first launched in 2005. There is more content today than you can watch in a lifetime. available on devices that can connect from almost anywhere, eagerly offered by every major media company and sports league.
Sling was born out of two wealthy areas: General Magic, an Apple subsidiary whose founder Blake Krikorian worked in the early 1990s, and the San Francisco Giants baseball team in 2002. own consulting firm. The Giants were heading to the World Series that year, and the Krikorian brothers wanted to watch or at least listen. They found that they were either cut off from local broadcast agreements or asked to pay additional fees for cable and internet game streaming they had already paid for at home.
Then there was TiVo, but it could only play what you recorded on the same TV. Slingbox, as the name suggests, can project cable video from your home over the Internet to anywhere you can access it. Shortly after the launch of Slingbox , the companies that provided this video took notice.
“Will Hollywood Sue SlingBox?”was an Ars headline in April 2006. The strongest hand the content companies could play was in their relay agreements, which Sling did not sign. Sling CEO Blake Krikorian said at the time that seat-shifting video “is one of the technologies that will help broadcasters stay relevant these days.”Nate Anderson of Ars wrote at the time that “if broadcasters were really interested in getting their product to as many people as possible, SlingBox wouldn’t even exist: networks would already be broadcasting their content over the Internet.”
There have been many hitches and a fair amount of chatter, including from sports leagues frustrated by traveling sports fans who might see games they usually miss because they’re not on the market. Later, when 3G and the iPhone introduced devices that made watching TV on your phone somewhat reasonable, AT&T forced Sling to block 3G devices from accessing Sling devices on the carrier’s network.
Yet the Slingbox (sometimes in camel case as “SlingBox”, but officially it’s just one compound word) persisted. “Here at Ars, we are big fans of the SlingBox,” Jeremy Reimer wrote in early 2007, noting that “we have successfully tested it across the Atlantic.” Sling even guessed correctly for the second time how people will one day view the content. SlingCatcher, a $300 box released in October 2008, will let you (get it) watch internet content like Hulu, YouTube, or whatever you can put on a USB drive on your TV. This was an update to Smart TV before Smart TV became a separate category.
Later, Sling will partner with the Dish satellite network to upgrade its Hopper digital video recorder (DVR) to “Hopper with Sling”, allowing people to watch live and recorded broadcasts over the Internet. This prompted actual injunctions from content companies such as Fox, possibly due to Dish’s larger size. CBS would also show its disdain for Sling, albeit in a quieter way. The network reportedly banned its CNET affiliate from viewing the Dish’s Hopper service, leading to the resignation of CNET reporter Greg Sandoval.
Legal issues continued to arise, and perhaps as a result, Dish and Sling switched to the more content-compatible streaming offering of Sling TV. The app was aimed at those who skipped cable television but might still want to watch live cable channels such as ESPN, Food Network, and CNN. However, there were no local broadcast channels and some well-known shows were turned off. Our review at its launch noted that the target age for these channels was much older than the audience that might be comfortable with a grid of apps rather than a single cable. However, Sling TV survives and expands its offerings.
But Slingbox, the hardware product that sends your TV to your devices, will still not work after November 9th. However, if you act quickly, you can get your Slingbox device’s password and then use the free and open source Slinger app to potentially route your Sling traffic. around company servers and directly to your apps and devices. In the end, as in the beginning, Slingbox fans are bypassing existing technology to get the TV they want.