Of course, I’m biased. In fact, I may actually have been the guy who named this product – prior to joining Sling. Whereas a Slingbox is desgined to transmit video content, the SlingCatcher is designed to receive video… and display it on your TV. No mere media extender, Catcher is the only product that will receive a Slingbox feed and display it on a television (locally or remotely) with no computer in the mix. We’ll also stream audio/video from your PC, such as Netflix Watch Now or Hulu, to the TV. At CES, our product manager Matt Feinstein described SlingCatcher on camera quite a few times. So check out some of those videos and come back with your questions.
Can’t wait until this thing is released. I am thinking this will be perfect for our cabin!
Hopefully it works better than the SOLO which I had to return due to the video freezing every minute or two. Despite all of the reports on SlingCommunity, Sling still would not confirm the bug existed so apparently there will never be a fix. It seems the quality of Slings products has been on a steady decline in the last year. HAVA is looking better and better everyday.
I want that…..I am so tired of dragging out all the cables to hook the laptop up to the TV so I can watch a basketball game when I am at my cabin! i think Slingcatcher will be one of the hottest products out there, plus ad in the new Sling modem and Sling becomes a real player in the entertainment arena.
Dave:
Will the Sling Projector software be made available for Mac OS too?
Rainwater, what looks like one issue on the Community is often similar symptoms but different causes. This is not a guess on my part – we’ve reached out to some of those folks. Some the Slingbox MTU size needs to be adjusted, some are UPnP or wireless bridge issues, video quality is set too high for the processor, sometimes it’s just user error, etc. If you’re ever ready to give the Slingbox another shot, I’ll put you in touch with a Support manager who can run a debug session to find out more about what’s ailing you.
JV, SlingProjector is Windows only at this time.
Dave: I spent several months working through all of Sling’s ideas that might fix the issue. Eventually, they stopped responding to any of my questions, so I gave up. I really feel that is a bad way to treat your customers. The issue occurs on 3 different PCs inside and outside of my network, so I doubt it is a slingplayer issue. Also, it occurs on Netgear and Dlink. Frankly, it isn’t worth it to spend anymore time on this issue and I certainly am not going to replace my DIR-655 because of this issue. I still have an A/V that has always worked flawlessly and will just keep it, but the whole situation left a bad taste in my mouth. So much so, that I my plans put my 2 other TiVos on Slingboxes is now canceled.
i would looooove one of these right now. i just re-activated my netflix account (yay for finishing my masters!) and since i have only mac’s at home now, netflix instant movies are pretty useless. i didnt know the catcher was able to handle netflix, so this is excellent news to me!
will it require a pc to send the feed or will it pull directly from netflix?
Rainwater, I here ya and I’ll pass along your experiences/frustration/feedback to Support team management. However, to keep this post relatively contained to SlingCatcher, please feel free to contact me directly if you’d like to continue the conversation: davezatz@slingmedia.com.
Jon, The SlingProjector feature relays audio & video from a PC to the Catcher. It can be the entire screen, a window, or just a portion – the software has a snap-to feature that recognizes areas like the video-playing portion of Hulu. However, you can also selectively crop… For example, I remove the side menu bars around the Hulu video as I don’t need them on my TV.
SlingCatcher – I want one, people I know want one, Dave supposedly has one.
Wikipedia describes the Slingcather as “a mythical consumer electronic device that has had a ‘coming soon’ status for many years…”
Is the Slingcatcher a myth? Does claiming to have seen a Slingcatcher put one in the same category as the guy who claims to have been abducted by aliens? Is Dave Zatz kinda loke The Smoking Man from the X FIles, who’s job it is to just keep the truth locked away in a warehouse like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Add me to the “I want one” list. I bought a HDTV for the bedroom but I am unwilling to get the box from Comcast so it was kind of a waste. I’m thinking Slingcatcher would be great because then I could also get rid of one TiVo subscription and stream everything from the family room.
Do I need the Slingbox HD to accomplish this ofr the HD content?
Todd, I like the “mythical” status, but “many years” is surely an exaggeration as the product was announced only 53 or 54 weeks ago, though we’re obviously behind schedule. Remember kiddies, don’t base your term papers entirely on Wikipedia. ;)
Robs67, the current Slingbox lineup streams at a max of 640×480. Streaming a TiVo Series3 via Slingbox SOLO to my 42″ plasma via the Catcher is very watchable though it’s not HD. The Slingbox PRO-HD coming out later this year maxes out at 1080i and 5.1 audio and will stream that to the Catcher. A variety of HD video files can currently be played back – these are synchronized over to a USB mass storage device (USB stick, hard-drive) attached to the SlingCatcher.
Any chance you might take MegaZone of TivoLover’s idea of implementing support for the Tivo HME SDK in SlingCatcher? I feel your product is targeting the enthusiast end of the market, where the ability to push ‘apps’ to the living room would be seen as a great differentiate quality compared to a closed environment like the AppleTV.
I am so ready for this product I feel like it’s 2007. Beta tester here!
Heh, someone noticed the crazy idea I had in the shower. ;-)
And Todd, I’ve seen and played with the SlingCatcher too. Which X-Files character am I if Dave is The Smoking Man? ;-)
A few questions on video playback. When streaming from a usb drive is there any common format/codecs that are not compatible? If you have a group of videos and you want to watch them all is there a “play all” feature? If there is this feature is there a way to restart playback from the last video watched when you start a new session?
colin, James: Not with the initial software release. However, Catcher is a platform which will continue to evolve and feedback will be critical in determining which features are added.
Basic file format support can be found under the SlingSync tab and you can add your name to the beta pool here under Need to Register?
Dave – As you spend a lot of time on the road, do you use a travel router (i.e the Dlink or the Airport express) to convert hotel LAN connections to wireless?
Will the slingcatcher have wireless support built in?
Lou, For awhile I used an Airport Express and later a Netgear travel router (which is no longer made). But I’ve found that I want/need the additional Ethernet jacks (usually when demo-ing, not in the hotel). So I travel with a small WiFi Belkin router with 4 ports in my backpack – it was inexpensive and has been rock solid. A colleague used a Linksys travel router for awhile until he misplaced it – like the Airport Express, the power adapter was built in which is a very nice feature.
SlingCatcher does not include built-in wireless, but at launch we’re also introducing the SlingLink Wireless which is a $50 802.11g USB WiFi adapter for use with the Catcher.
In all candor I’m not sure Sling is doing any favors by continuing to hype this product with no firm release date. Like the boy who cried wolf even if it does arrive many may have stopped listening. May I suggest they hold off until they have a real, drop dead release date.
This product looks ideal for my target usage scenario. Currently I have to spend time hooking up the laptop to a tv and then the VGA to RCA converter box (blech) adding to the mess. Eager to see this released! I’ve just been a Slingbox customer for about 1 month. So far, I am very happy and recommend the product to others.
While there is no “play all” feature when using a usb drive if you were using Sling Projector and on your computer you selected a folder with various types of videos and selected play all in the folder would you then be able to watch all the videos on your TV without further input? Thanks again
Colin, yup. It you have something like Windows Media Player, DivX Player, etc run through a series of videos, that content can be streamed uninterrupted via SlingProjector functionality.