Originally published January 20 2006
Slingbox allows cable to come with you
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Slingbox lets consumers take their local TV and cable or satellite hookups on the road. There is no subscription, and all consumers need is a set-top box or DVR and a broadband line. Slingbox is the size of a shoe and costs $250.
Their beloved San Francisco Giants were in a pennant race, yet Blake and Jason, two Silicon Valley engineers, were traveling so much that they missed many of the games on television.
Desperate, they signed up for a service that offered live audio and video of the games over the Internet, only to find that subscribers from San Francisco could not watch Giants games because of blackout restrictions.
The Krikorians decided to find a way to let cable and satellite television customers watch what was on their home televisions while they were on the road.
Just as TiVo and other digital video recorders ushered in the concept of "time shifting" a few years ago, the Slingbox promises to make "place shifting" a reality for households.
As with music, where many younger consumers are forgoing CD's in favor of downloadable songs, television viewers - with the help of devices like Slingbox - are expected to download more and more of their programming when and where they want it.
The box can be hooked to a cable set-top box or a digital video recorder, and must be linked to a broadband line so the video can be "streamed" to a laptop or other device.
Faster connection speeds provide better video quality.
Users install software on laptops that communicates with the Slingbox over a high-speed Internet connection at a hotel or other remote location.
For all its convenience, few people are all that interested in watching programming intended for full-screen televisions on laptops, especially if connection speeds are slow and the picture is jerky.
But Mr. Krikorian, who has worked as an engineer in Silicon Valley for 15 years, says he has developed a solution called stream-optimization technology.
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