For SD video you generally want 512kbps of better with a Slingbox, and HD starts at 1.5Mbps. Keep in mind that commercial streaming services, like Netflix, operate at 1Mbps speeds too. The more bandwidth you have the better the image quality. A Slingbox will vary the encoded resolution in steps, and within each resolution it’ll vary the bitrate, increasing until it decides it can jump to the next resolution step.

If you’re watching on a 4″ phone display you really don’t need 1080p, or even 720p, video. You may even want to force lower resolutions, like 320×240, to avoid burning through your mobile data cap.

While Sling’s secret sauce is proprietary, the concept in general isn’t rocket science. Netflix does something similar with their streaming video. Doing it on a mobile device where the connection is likely more variable takes more intelligence in the client, but it can certainly be done. Now that EchoStar and TiVo are friendly perhaps TiVo could license Sling’s technology.

Also keep in mind that this would only be for TiVo customers, already a small market, and then only TiVo customers who decide to pick up a TiVo Stream, and then only the part of that group looking to stream outside of the home. It is a very self-selecting group, and likely the more sophisticated customers. If they have smartphones and TiVo and decided to buy a network streaming box it seems likely they’d also be customers with solid broadband connections.

Connection speeds keep increasing in general. Average speeds today are more than enough for most broadband customers to viably stream. And things will only get better with time.

I’d be happy if TiVo enabled out-of-the-home streaming as some kind of hidden feature at first. Market it for in-home streaming and side-loading, but allow savvy customers to set things up to stream outside of the home. Maybe requiring a static source configuration in the client, since dynamic discovery requires some server infrastructure to handle match making.