SlingPlayer for iPhone Rumor Gains Momentum
SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry was finally announced formally prior to CES after having been passed around the rumor mill since September. Add the BB version to their already existing support for Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Symbian and they have all the bases covered, right? Ahhh, that’s right; OS X mobile. An iPhone / iPod Touch app has also been rumored to be in Sling Media’s pipeline for quite some time. It looks like the rumors can almost be elevated to "confirmed" status as ElectricPig.tv is claiming to have spoken to a higher-up at Sling Media. They quote their source as recently stating, "iPhone and iPod touch are OS X devices, and we can write OS X apps with our eyes closed. It’s coming." Further support comes from the report that Sling Media is among the developers in receipt of an early iPhone SDK tasting from Apple. Lack of 3G support on the iPhone will be a limitation of course, but iPhone 1 compatibility will mean a much shorter wait for iPhone 2 compatibility. Here’s the thing though…we’re pretty positive Sling Media did not in fact get an early look at the Apple iPhone SDK, and after talking to one of our sources at Sling, they’re just "poking around with the idea."
[Via Mac Rumors]
I can’t see EDGE as being capable of this. I stream Sirius to my iphone over EDGE and it works well but video I think would be too much.
3G iphone and no problem.
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Dtest is correct it wont fly over edge but remember the iphone/touch has 802.11G which would support the sling playback.
Of course if iPhone2 has HSUPA then all is right in the world.
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I definitely agree. EDGE is not fast enough to do video. YouTube on the iPhone is the perfect example of this. You can view video just fine but it takes a long to buffer and the video is very choppy and clunky. As for Wi-Fi, the video looks pristine. So this is a nice idea, but its only gonna be good for people with Wi-Fi surrounding them at all times or until the 3G iPhone comes out and saves the day.
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What about the idea of the rumored *new* iTV will stream to the Iphone. Could be interesting to see that.
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Of course that will happen, and they will charge an arm and a leg for it. Apple collaborates with nobody.
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I watch a lot of Youtube videos on my iPhone over EDGE and the buffering doesn’t seem to take too long, and once it has loaded, I do not notice any difference in quality to when I am watching over wi-fi. I know that wi-fi or 3G is ideal for video playback as I used to use my Slingbox on an AT&T Tilt which was great, but I think all the continuous moaning about the iPhone being slow over EDGE is nonsense.
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EDGE can’t do this, it can barely stream video off cingular tv on my BJ, how can it do something better?
I’m not seeing HSUPA in the new iPhone, if they couldn’t fit in standard HSDPA or CDMA with this one then how are they going to fit HSUPA in the new one?
Besides there are like a handful places in this country that have HSDPA and I don’t think you can even get HSUPA here yet.
Damned cell providers take too fucking long…damn att.
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i can see the appletv being able to do this at some point. And Apple would allow sling because of their customer base.
Jeff B. isn’t HSUPA the new upload protocol? I think for video the HSDPA is more than fast enough, and I would be interested.
and i agree, the damn carriers are soo slow in upgrading anything.
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Apple will have to get the slingplayer into the Iphone because so many of us are waiting for this before we buy the iphone.
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Forget 3G. Sprint just did a soft launch of 4G/WiMax. If ATT/iPhone decide to upgrade, that’s what it should be.
While everyone is waiting for Sling… there’s always eyetv hybrid. Of course, it only only works with the iPhone/iPod’s wifi connection. But at least it’s something.
Just curious though, what is the number one spot people hang out at to watch tv on their handsets that doesn’t have wifi around? I go to college, where the entire campus is a hotspot. I go to starbucks/borders, where they have it as well (granted it costs money, but not alot). My home, as well as 90 percent of my friends have it too. Anymore, most businesses have it. And I live in the Midwest. When I’m on the go, I don’t need to watch anything,.. just an email here and there, and basic web browsing to look something up. iPhone owners should stop complaining about lack of 3G, when they have the immense luxury of wifi. Not many phones do. cough, cough,.. helio.
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Just to add to C.R.’s comment about 4G/wimax. Both verizon and AT&T have chosen an eqivelent platform called LTE. Testing and deployment likely won’t be complete until 2012. In the interim they are expanding their 3G footprint. However , a great solution would be using AT&T’s newly acquired 700mhz spectrum. It would be technically possible to significantly boost the speeds of EXISTING iPhones. If only
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ofcourse I would be perfectly happy with a wifi only sling player for my iPhone
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I do not see the need for any higher speed than 3G, sure it is great for other applications but for slingplayer on iPhone it does not need that much. 275kbps should work ok on the small screen, 512kbps would work very well but doubt you can see the difference above that. Right now I settle for 275kbps streaming speed.
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it’s also important to remember that slingboxes are limited by the bandwith that your home can upload with. So having much greater download speeds won’t make that big of a difference after a certain point.
On another note, why does Slingmedia lag so much on their software development? They already have the hardware, they have millions of customers in line, don’t they recognize how much money they are losing by not writing new software? I have a motorola q9h and it is not compatible with Slingplayer mobile. What a waste of 3G. Very frustrating.
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