There’s news out of Sling Media today, and since I don’t work for the company (unlike Dave), I feel perfectly justified in covering it. :)
Sling is collaborating with DirecTV on a new offering called Supercast, which brings online streams of NFL games to the Web every Sunday. Subscribers to the DirecTV/NFL SuperFan package can access these streams for free, though it appears you will only get access to the games available in your geographic region. (Hmmm– isn’t “placeshifting” the whole idea behind Sling?) Sling designed the SuperCast interface (further updates promised soon) and is hosting the service for DirecTV. More details direct from Dave on the Sling Community forum.
What’s extremely interesting about this news is that it represents the first time Sling has ventured beyond the hardware biz into direct content delivery. The new service does not require a Slingbox or Sling software. And, in working with DirecTV, Sling shows new media and old media distribution are growing ever closer. Maybe there are more partnerships to come?
One other note about the news from a satellite-vs.-cable point of view: it looks like the battles over sports content are not going to die down any time soon. What’s next? Is Comcast going to bring Donovan McNabb on door-to-door sales calls?
They actually started this with week 1 of then NFL two weeks ago. The service collapsed under demand the first week but worked pretty well the second. You also have it reversed on what games you get. You can stream any games that you can watch on Sunday Ticket which is the games that aren’t currently on your local (by geography) FOX or CBS station. Usually that is 10-12 games a week that you will be able to stream.
Oh one other thing is you must subscribe to SuperFan which is an additional $99 on top of the $250 that NFL sunday ticket already costs.
Red Zone channel too! :)
Unrelated – but I just installed Slingplayer for Windows Mobile Smartphone and I’m glad I got the Samsung Blackjack and not the iPhone (now if they come out with a 3G iphone…)