In the era of widespread and freely provided web video (of questionably quality and selection), it’s heartening to see personal placeshifting technology initiatives continue to blossom. Last week, Apple stalwart Elgato provided a EyeTV software update (v3.3) to enable remote web-based playback (including Mobile Safari/iPhone! over 3G!) of live and recorded content sourced from your home Mac. Similarly, AVerMedia best known for PC tuner cards, has been beta testing SnugTV – which looks to be a pretty comprehensive web streaming service of multiple tiers, consisting of live playback, cloud-based recording, content stream sharing, and, unfortunately, ad serving. I went ahead and installed their current Windows client (some of the screengrabs below) yesterday. However, as you’d expect, I couldn’t get it running by utilizing a pair of non-AVerMedia tuner cards. Fortunately, I’ll be meeting with the AVer folks for an in-depth briefing early next month at CES. Along with some others active in the space. Stay tuned.
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Personal placeshifting has tons of potential, especially in the music market. I think the break into mainstream will come in 2011.
Dave,
The future is all about placeshifting. It’s a quiet revolution and because it’s quiet not enough people know about it and realize how valuable it is.
Placeshifting was barely born. “Not Yet Dead”? Come on, that’s not funny.
Ben
Perhaps you’ve missed my *personal* modifier. As someone who’s followed this particular space since it’s inception and having been gainfully employed by Sling Media until shortly after our acquisition, I’d like to think I know personal video placeshifting’s potential pretty well. More importantly, I’m quite familiar with the market pitfalls – conceptual, technical, and legal.
I have a new AverMedia TV tuner card (the one poorly marketed as a Windows7 only card, but works beautifully with my Windows Vista Media Center). I, too, am a longtime placeshifting fan going all the way back to the original Slingbox.
I couldn’t get the SnugTV app to work outside of my local network. I could connect through the web to my “SnugStation”, but could only do “audio only”. I have plenty of bandwidth to support streaming.
I was disappointed with the app and promptly deleted it. Until someone comes along and knocks off the STILL FREE sensational WebGuide4 (Vista), I’ll be plenty happy with my setup. I can stream live and recorded TV, music, etc. just fine.
I have a feeling we’re going to hear of new WebGuide4 integration (MS hired the developer quite some time ago) into Windows 7 Media Center at CES next week. Although, I imagine it’ll probably go by a new name.
I’ve seen bits and pieces of it already with LiveMesh…same guy, same ideas….I love the simplicity of WebGuide, and I sincerely hope that the developer will make LiveMesh a breeze to configure.
So far, I wasn’t impressed with what I saw so far, but he hadn’t implemented all of the features yet.
On a side note, the AverMedia tuner card (USB 2.0) is an absolute dream, and does a great job picking up relatively weak channels. It also has FM tuner functionality with a nice Vista Sidebar gadget that I use to listen to local radio stations.