Sling Your TV Across the Internet

Speaking of DVRs, a startup called Sling Media is readying a gadget that could be an intriguing companion to one. At CES, I got a sneak peek at the Slingbox, which connects to your TV setup at home (including your cable or satellite feed, a DVR, and other devices you might have) and lets you watch and control it from any Windows laptop connected to the Internet. What that means is that you could sit in a hotel room in Shanghai and pull up shows your TiVo had recorded for you in San Francisco. You could also watch any channel you get at home--like the one that broadcast your favorite hometown sports teams' games. (The Slingbox can also sling TV to a notebook sitting on a home network, and clients for cell phones and other handheld computing devices are in the works.)

In the demo I saw, the Slingbox wasn't doing TV over the Internet--instead, it was streaming over a Wi-Fi connection from a nearby TiVo. The picture looked good, didn't hiccup, and filled much of the notebook's screen, but I don't know whether it would have performed as smoothly if it had been forced to deal with a bursty Internet connection.

Will content owners be happy with their shows being slung over the Internet? Sling Media says it shouldn't be a problem, since the box is only transmitting video, not recording it. We'll see if Hollywood sees it that way. And the Slingbox only deals with unprotected, standard-definition analog video, so it's unclear what will happen to it as we head into a world where more and more TV is digital, high-def, and locked up with various copy-protection schemes.

The Slingbox (whose name keeps making me think of Billy Bob Thornton) is supposed to show up by mid-year, and will sell for $249. That feels a tad high to me, especially since DVRs often sell for less these days. On the other hand, DVRs have subscription fees, and the Slingbox doesn't...