Place-shifting pioneer SlingBox is slated to announce at CES this week a new software client that allows any Windows Media-capable device to serve as a viewing platform for a customers’ multichannel video or PVR service. This is a phenomenal development given that SlingBox is cutting across the top-line business priorities of motion picture studios, TV program producers, cable operators, wireless phone providers and even Apple Computer, which hopes to build a business on mobile video.
Sling Media co-founder and head of business development Jason Krikorian is quoted by the Hollywood Reporter as saying:
“There are solutions for live and recorded TV on mobile phones, but now for the first time you can have full access to every single channel you’ve got at your house,” he said. “It’s not just a TV experience on your phone, it’s your TV experience, like you have at home when you’re on your couch.”
In other words, no need for cable operators to form a consortium with Sprint to do mobile broadband, no need for Apple to lure content providers to iTunes and iPOD. All you need is this new SlingBox client. Sling even goes as far as to take a clear swipe at Apple’s business.
“You can watch ‘Lost’ the day after it airs without paying two bucks,” added Sling Media PR director Brian Jaquet.
If the new portable clients works as well as the original SlingBox, which manages to deliver sharp, clear and highly controllable video over even poor broadband connections, it’s impossible to see how the media powers-that-be won’t rear up and try to kill SlingMedia in its crib. Way back in May, when I first viewed video shipped over a SlingBox, I wondered how cable operators, Hollywood and everybody else would react to what SlingMedia is doing.
So far, not a peep from the litigious studios, or even a threatened lawsuit from cable or satellite operators. I suspect that it’s difficult to come up with a legal rationale against what Sling is doing — this is not unauthorized copying or transmission of content. It’s merely controlling the set-top box from a distance; in some cases thousands of miles. Secondly, Sling hasn’t caught on yet and so doesn’t pose a tangible threat to the media power structure.
But still…the SlingBox is one of the coolest technologies to come around in a long time, and now it’s portable. There’s bound to be fireworks sooner or later.
Cynthia Brumfield at 2:48 PM|Comments(0)
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