Foster City, Calif. —Sling Media said its next-generation Slingbox PRO-HD system, offering in-home and remote streaming of HD content, is now available at a $299 suggested retail in the United States.
The Slingbox PRO-HD will stream HD content from a home television source, including over-the-air HD digital signals (ATSC), digital cable channels (Clear QAM), HDTV cable set-top boxes, HDTV satellite receivers or HD DVRs, to a laptop or desktop computer in and around the house.
Users with a high-speed broadband connection with an upload speed of 1.5Mbps or higher can also use the Slingbox PRO-HD to stream HD TV signals outside the home to PCs with a high-speed network connection using the player software.
Sling Media said it has also updated its SlingPlayer capabilities for use with PCs running Windows XP or Windows Vista. The SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows software is now available for download from Sling Media’s Web site.
SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows includes a live video buffer built into the software to pause and rewind a live video stream for easy navigation within a program, and avoid potential conflicts with home viewers.
Also included is an electronic programming guide (EPG) that slides out of the player, offering fast access to TV programming information without having to bring up an onscreen guide on a user’s home set-top box.
SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows also adds a Sling Accounts feature, which is a single sign-on feature to keep key personal Slingbox information, including Finder IDs, favorite channels and programming guide information, for easy access on a PC running SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows software.
“With Slingbox PRO-HD, our customers will have the ability to place-shift their HD programming to a laptop or desktop computer both in and around the home or remotely while preserving the best possible picture quality,” stated Blake Krikorian, SlingMedia co-founder and CEO. “Slingbox PRO-HD marks a giant leap forward in hardware and software development from Sling Media including the powerful encoding enhancements that are a part of SlingStream 2.0. Because of this, Slingbox PRO-HD delivers picture quality at all resolutions that are truly amazing.”
Slingbox PRO-HD includes support for both standard (4:3) and widescreen (16:9) video formats and features a variety of connection interfaces including a tuner support for HD Digital Antenna (ATSC), analog and/or HD digital cable (Clear QAM) channels, S-Video, composite video, component video and both analog and multichannel, 5.1 surround, digital audio [S/PDIF]) and features integrated looping outputs for each input.
Sling Media’s pre-order partners, Amazon.com, Buy.com, J&R, Newegg.com, PC Mall.com and Sling Media’s own online store, began shipping existing pre-orders to customers today and are now taking new orders for immediate delivery. Product will start rolling into retail stores nationwide including Best Buy, Fry’s, J&R Music World, Microcenter and others in the coming weeks.
In Canada, Slingbox PRO-HD will be available from retailers including Best Buy, Future Shop and London Drugs in October.
