This is another media extender. Whether they like it or not it’ll compete with the Apple TV, Linksys et al products. I want a 10′ interface you’d expect from Apple. I want to listen to my music (with album art) off my PC or NAS. I want to browse photos with thumbnails, including slideshows with transitions and music. I want to do all of this without walking to the PC, other than once to setup the firewall or shares. I’d rather they didn’t install more software on my PC to slow it down. I want a professional looking front end to Youtube, along with the social networking aspects (meaning email and posting) on the box. I want to be able to watch internet video, mostly DivX and XviD, off my PC without bogging it down with transcoding. I’d like it to work with ALL codecs, including the occasional RealPlayer and QT and MP4 and … I want a VOD partnership, allowing me to rent movies (not buy them) from Amazon or Netflix. I want access to internet video from NBC, Fox, CBS, ABC, SciFi etc for whatever they put online thru hulu, innertube, etc in case I miss an episode. And support Pandora, which I’ll pay for if I want it.

I want to be able to watch HD quality video from a Slingbox Pro HD elsewhere in the house. And like you I’d like the Slingbox HD to be both a Sling and a catcher over time.

Yes, the SlingCatcher works over the Internet just as the software SlingPlayer does. The resolution will depend on the bandwidth. Today most Internet streams are reduced to 320×240. How that looks on a TV will depend largely on the size of the set. It will frankly look pretty poorly on a large TV, kind of like VidCD. But it won’t be as bad on a smaller TV. With today’s Slingboxes the best resolution is 640×480, which is roughly equivalent to standard SD NTSC television. If you have the bandwidth to support it, there are ways to set an Internet stream to use that instead of 320×240.

I forget the minimum required bandwidth to use 640×480 – I think it is around 2Mbps or something like that. On a LAN you can see 6Mbps sustained streams, and I believe the current maximum is 8Mbps. The PRO-HD will most definitely have much higher speed streams. I don’t know the specs exactly, but consider that it will stream 1920×1080 as compared to 640×480. That’s 6.75 *times* the number of pixels. Now, it is 1080i, and I’m not sure of if that 640×480 is interlaced or progressive. If it is progressive then it may *only* be 3.375 as much data. Still, you could be looking at streams upwards of 20Mbps at full quality.

Maybe Dave Zatz will chime in if he reads this.

natas – I agree about the network content access, that’s why I said I think it is a big gap. There needs to be something between SlingSync (copying the content to the local storage) and SlingProjector (‘projecting’ content from the desktop). I personally would’ve thought that would come before something like SlingSync. I much more often want to access network content than I want to copy it to yet another location. That’s one of the annoying aspects of Apple TV too.

As for your question, the decoding is all done in the SlingCatcher itself. When you have content on a USB device it is decoded and displayed locally. With SlingSync the content is copied to the local USB storage and decoded locally.

With SlingProjector the software basically is doing a real-time encode of a region of the screen (which you select) and streaming it just like a Slingbox to the SlingCatcher. So the SlingCatcher is also decoding the stream in that scenario.

And, of course, it is also doing all the stream decoding when acting as a client to a Slingbox or when accessing content online such as Clip+Sling clips from Sling.com.

That actually reminds me of something I meant to put in the post but forgot while writing it up. I’d really like to see direct access of Internet video sites built into SlingCatcher. Let people browse YouTube right from the UI. Even if the SlingCatcher couldn’t do Flash video natively, we know YouTube has MPEG-4 content because that’s how the iPhone accesses YouTube. And we know the SlingCatcher can decode MPEG-4.

Keep in mind this is a ’1.0′ product, so I’d bet a lot of these things get added in future firmware updates. But I personally hope the ability to stream content from a network share is in the first update, that’s the biggie I think.

The Slingcatcher is cool and matched with the Pro-HD would have been a good substitute for the TivoHD in the office (and subscription free), but since I’ve already got the second Tivo with MRV etc. I’m not sure I’ll bite.

Unless, of course, they partner with a netflix and offer me HD movies for rent, in which case I agree a Pro-HD/Catcher would be the box to have.

I think the two biggest features I’ll use is the 2nd slingbox to watch HD content on, since I have a Slingbox classic today, but can only watch regular def TV on it. Another feature I’ll be able to enjoy is watching my Tivo in another room. Today that Slingbox classic is hooked up to the Tivo. The feature to sling data from older slingboxes to another TV is a great feature.

I also like the addition of the USB drive, but what is confusing about it is, if you place xvid movies on the HD connected to the slingbox, why don’t they just put the functionally of streaming over the network also? It’s very confusing on what is actually doing the decoding of the movie, your laptop CPU and then streaming it over the network to the slingcatcher or a CPU within the slingcatcher unit???? I hope Sling does not think media stored on the USB attached hard drive will be streamed to your laptop over the network, decoded and then slinged back to the slingcatcher?

I hope more details come out in the near future.

I thought about keeping the drive in there, but I’m not sure if there would be enough space in the form factor to fit the card reader and the USB hub. But I suppose it could be ‘deeper’ than the SlingCatcher itself, so the drive could be positioned front-to-back instead of across the width of the unit. Then the card reader could be off-set to one side to provide the space needed for the depth of the card slots. I would go with SATA at this point as well.

The other issue with supporting a drive though is power. A USB hub and card reader could be powered off the USB connection to the SlingCatcher. To be a drive enclosure it would also need a power adapter which would add cost. Hmm, unless the power adapter that powers the SlingCatcher is enough. They could include a ‘jumper’ and a power ‘out’ on the dock. Move the SlingCatcher’s power supply to the dock, then jumper to the SlingCatcher to power it. No need to include another adapter, which would lower the cost. But that only works if the power output of the supply can handle it.

If they can put drive support in there for a reasonable cost, they should definitely do it. Well, presuming they make a dock at all. I hope they do.

Your idea for repurposing the Sling drive case into a docking station is inspired.

I would take it just one itty bit further: how about keeping the internal space that was supposed to hold the drive? Then include the drive connector and power supply so that users can optionally plug in their own drive? If the consumer doesn’t want to or doesn’t feel comfortable, they still have a highly useful docking station. But for the geeky types who are the natural core of the customer base, they get maximal use.

Taking that a step further, Sling save some money in production. They could put a simple connector inside the box but NOT equip it by default with the drive-related connectors and hardware. This simple connector would allow plugin of the “drive support module.” There could be a coupon in the box as part of the product registration form. A checkbox on the form would allow the new customer to request the “drive support module.” (I guess this depends on whether fulfillment on a subset of customers is worth the savings in manufacturing. And how highly they would value a higher product registration rate– incentives usually drive up registrations.)

Considering that SATA drives are the latest and greatest, probably the box would support SATA (rather than legacy IDE). Customers could go out and buy an internal SATA drive, open the base station plug in the connectors and close the box. (To make it even friendlier, secure the box with thumbscrews. Then the consumer can do the whole thing without tools.)

Based on the demo Dave gave me you can have multiple PCs running SlingSync and/or SlingProjector and you select the source from the SlingCatcher UI.