The Sling-powered Arris MS4000 media streamer has found its first home(s). Regional cable providers Comporium and Service Electric are now offering up these transcoding boxes to their customers for both in-home and mobile streaming. Ideally, this sort of service is resident within one’s DVR, à la TiVo Roamio or DISH Hopper, but this accessory provides an efficient way to retrofit existing Moxi Whole Home DVR hardware. And, unlike an agnostic retail Slingbox, given tighter MS4000 integration with the source tuners, up to 4 concurrent streams can be broadcast.
I’d assumed all operators would go with a monthly rental, as RCN does with the TiVo Stream, yet Service Electric has decided to provide streaming services via a single flat fee:
SE Next Everywhere … $159.95
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I can't get anyone on the phone at Comporium that has any idea what I am talking about, this is still great news! Will this work with all the current slingplayers?
That's a good question. On Comporium, they're calling this "Moxi Sling" and it requires the Moxi Whole Home DVR. For both Comporium and Service Electric, at launch they're going with their own branded iOS apps with an Android app to follow and no mention of desktop access. Unlike Sling's mobile apps, these will be free - at least SE's is. But I wonder if you'll be able to use Sling's desktop, Roku, etc apps anyway.
Should be interesting to see how these operate out-of-home. If it will be like Hopper or like Stream with copy protected content like HBO.