Well lookee here, both Sling Media’s SlingCatcher and Slingbox PRO-HD are now available for pre-order (!) from Amazon and SlingMedia.com at $299.99 each. While there’s no shipping date, I presume either would arrive in time for a holiday a delivery.
As you may recall, the eagerly anticipated SlingCatcher brings a variety of video content to the television in three distinct ways. First, it’ll play media synced and stored on a USB drive (some file format details here). Next, and similar to the ZvBox, software will project a PC display to the Catcher – either the entire screen or a specified region (plus audio). Think Internet video, like Hulu. What makes the SlingCatcher most unique, of course, is it’s ability to directly receive a Slingbox feed. Essentially Slinging from television to television, with no computer in the mix, inside the home or out. Interestingly, the interface looks somewhat different than what was shown at CES.
The Slingbox PRO-HD is the first Slingbox to stream in high definition (1080i, 5.1), serving video the house or beyond, to PC, Mac, mobile (or Catcher). PRO-HD supports multiple inputs and I imagine most owners will utilize the component inputs to broadcast content from an HD set-top box. However, this is the first Slingbox with an integrated digital tuner – both ATSC OTA and clear QAM are supported. The PRO-HD was originally announced at $399, so the new lower price point ($299.99) is a nice surprise.
yesssssss!!!!!111!!!!
Wooooooohooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Regarding connectivity options, the USB SlingLink Wireless accessory announced at CES hasn’t shown up online.
Niiiicccee!.
BTW, your two interface images are the same, were they supposed to be?
Thanks, tivoboy – the second one was supposed to be a YouTube link. Now corrected.
Slingcatcher…that would explain why I just saw pigs fly outside my office!!!
one should ADD, that this has been “coming soon” for over a year now.
;-)
From the Slingcatcher web page:
“…Watch your DVR programming or premium packages in another room in your house… without paying additional subscription fees.”
Comcastic® “Men in Black” show up at your house and confiscate, then destroy your shiny new SlingCatcher in 3…2…1…
I’ll believe it when I see it :)
I’ll hold off until the reviews come in on SlingCatcher. I don’t like the fact that it can’t stream content off the network (have to hook up USB drive) and having to use PC to highlight content for SlingProjector seems lame. I don’t want to get up & walk to my PC.
What, no Slingblade jokes? I mean come on? What’s happened to the youth of America? What, do all us older guys have to take up the slack?
I’m sure some sort of LAN integration will be forthcoming, lets’ just lettem gets this much overdue and delayed puppy out there and then lettem optimize the connection options.
It looks like there are TWO USB ports, so that could be a prompt for a future WIFI dongle integration? Or, I guess one might just hookup TWO USB storage devices? or, maybe some control device?
I just realized we said SlingCatcher would be $249.99 at CES back in January. Guess this price increase, slightly offsets the $100 PRO-HD price drop.
tivoboy, at CES we discussed a ‘SlingLink Wireless’ USB option for Catcher. Not sure what the status on that is – I don’t see it available for pre-order.
Newegg has the release dates as such:
Slingcatcher (10/2/2008)
Slingbox HD (9/25/2008)
… but can you use a slingcatcher in every room in your house to receive HD from ProHD?
I just ordered both of them. After pressing one of the “submit order” buttons for the Slingbox Pro HD, I received a response that said “In Stock”. I’m not sure what to make of this. Perhaps it’s a mistake? I saved the page as a PDF and sent it to Customer Support. We’ll see what they have to say about it.
Dave, the formats page mentions Xvid specifically, but not DivX. I assume it supports both, but can you comment?
Like others, I’ll wait for some reviews and videos showing it being used in more detail. Not sure if I need this at this point or not…
Glen, I assume it does too. What that page doesn’t indicate is max resolutions, bitrates, etc for each file format. Hopefully, they’ll get more details up.
Dave,
I am interested in using the SlingProjector feature of the Slingcatcher. My 6 year old Alienware computer has 1 gig of ram and a AMD 64 processor 3500+ 2.4 GHz. On Sling’s site it says to watch videos from your PC with the Slingcatcher you need 3 GHz. Do you still think it would still work OK?
I was also going to get the new Slingbox HD to hook to my HD Tivo but it also requires 3 GHz for HD.
This is really depressing as I have been waiting for both of these products a long time.
I have looked into upgrading the processor of my computer with Alienware but for some reason they say they can’t do it because of the motherboard I have.
Thanks!!!
Colin, I don’t know. Generally speaking, companies overstate requirements to cover their butts. It’s possible it’ll work, but the only way to find out is by trying.
I just saw that slingcatcher does not support MKV. This is a big negative for me…
Glenn, it’ll handle DivX 3, 4, & 5.
Damain, MKV could be enabled via a firmware update. In the interim, their may be bundled software that transcodes for you – not sure though. I still think the right solution for you may be Popcorn Hour based on what you requested earlier.