Andre Yoskowitz
10 Oct 2008 18:54
After first being announced at CES 2007, Sling Media has finally announced the availability of the SlingCatcher playback device, 18 months after its initial unveiling.
The SlingCatcher, according to Cnet is a "playback device that's designed to pull digital content from three sources and display them on your TV. It can play a variety of digital video files from an attached USB storage device (anything from a thumbdrive to a hard drive); display anything on your PC screen (including full-motion video) via the SlingProjector "screen scraping" software; and stream video from any source connected to a Slingbox (elsewhere in the house in high-resolution, or from a remote Slingbox source over the Internet at lesser quality)."
The SlingCatcher, especially with its $300 USD price tag, may seem like a niche product for the time being, but it stands to gain momentum when a few more features are upgraded.
Sling Media's has already introduced Sling.com which it calls a "premium library of movies, TV shows, and Web videos" which already has content deals with NBC, Fox, CBS, Showtime, Break.com, National Geographic, and MGM. Dave Zatz, a former Sling employee adds "SlingCatcher will eventually tap directly into Sling.com for some web video, perhaps partially taking the PC out of the mix."
Good to see it finally on the market.