Sneak Peak at the Sling Player for Mac OSX 75
kjh1 writes to tell us the folks over at SlingCommunity are running an interview with Brian Jaquet of Sling Media. They get the scoop on the upcoming SlingPlayer for Mac OSX. There is a text transcript as well as a video version of the interview."
Direct link to YouTube article (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the on the page. [youtube.com]
Dear god. (Score:5, Informative)
1) What is Sling?
2) What is SlingPlayer?
3) What is special about SlingPlayer?
Someone tell me, please.
"What's Sling Player?" (Score:4, Informative)
- from Sling Media's site [slingmedia.com], for people like me who just kinda avoid TV, since both summary and article seem to assume you know what it is.
Re:Dear god. (Score:3, Informative)
sling!
Re: What's a Sling Player? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Dear god. (Score:2, Informative)
BTW, I didn't know what it was either.
In Layman's terms... (Score:5, Informative)
Er no, not at all (Score:3, Informative)
It is basically for people without many computer skills. They've got a computer (probably running Windows, maybe OSX) but they don't use it much. They've probably got broadband and they like watching TV. Usually they watch TV on their TV. Sometimes they want to watch it on their computer, sometimes they want to watch it on their laptop, sometimes on their mobile, sometimes overseas or at a friend's house.
Compare that to EyeTV. EyeTV is for people with a decent modern (OSX) computer that want to watch TV on their Mac with its nice screen. How can an EyeTV user watch what is currently playing at home while overseas? What about if they're in bed with their laptop, can you use your EyeTV plugged into your desktop to help? Even if you can with a few hacks here and there, won't that require your desktop to be turned on?
Re:VideoLAN (Score:3, Informative)
On a LAN, the slingbox video is quite passable. Better than, for example, a TiVo on maximum compression.
Re:VideoLAN (Score:5, Informative)
The slingbox is awesome for $100, but VLC (and one of my favorites, the deprecated VLS [videolan.org]) really has a leg up on the options it gives you. One of my favorite features is that it can transcode either a video file or input stream (from a capture card for example) into any other format it supports for playback, in realtime (as long as your CPU can handle it). I use it to stream 5 Mbit/sec video over wireless every day and it works and looks fantastic.
In my experience, VLC's lowest-end quality (for example, trying to send upstream on a crippled US cable modem or ADSL), looks far better than the highest quality available from a Slingbox. Other pluses are that VLC runs the same (and supports the same features and codecs) on all major operating systems and your stream will never be wrapped in DRM.
Re:Dear god Indeed! (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, Sure mod me flame bait. But I'm fucking right here. If these people took any effort at all, or the same effort as making a post(!) they'd know.
Googling Slingplayer, the top fucking link is:
http://us.slingmedia.com/page/slingplayer.html [slingmedia.com]
Which is the fucking product page! Searching Wikipedia for Slingplayer doesn't return it immediately, but gives this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search =slingplayer [wikipedia.org] a list with the top(!) link being the Slingbox, the device this software interfaces with. It tooke me much longer to write this post than it did for me to do those searches, and that's the truth. It's not like this information is secret and hidden. A simple search on the most common information sources gives it straight out.
Re:VideoLAN (Score:3, Informative)
It's a small feature, but very useful. I hook my Slingbox to my TiVo. Voila, I can watch my TiVo anywhere! (With full control of it too). It also supports cableboxes, so you can use it with digital cable. Or if you're really down, you can use the coax input for analog cable.
So via coax, it's like your VLC setup. But then add in the remote control feature, and the ability to remotely choose between coax, composite and s-video inputs dynamically, and Slingbox makes it a snap to setup. It can be all done via VLC and a few other OSS apps, but honestly, Slingbox took only 10 minutes to set up. Add 5 more minutes to change it static IP and open a port on my router so I can view it over the Internet.
Hook up a small surveillance camera, TiVo and maybe regular cable (or antenna) to it, and you can choose between seeing your camera, watching TiVo, or plain old regular cable/OTA, all controllable via the GUI or keyboard. It's place-shifting for the lazy.