Sling Media garners $46.6 million from Echostar and others
Although we love Sling Media's Slingbox for helping us place-shift television from our homes to any Internet enabled display, we've been waiting for the evolutionary next slinging steps. Perhaps today's news will shoot us forward so that we can start Slinging some HDTV through our home (or to someone else's) as Sling Media just received $46.6 million in funding from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Liberty Media Corporation and Echostar Communications. Is this Charlie's next move in helping DISH Network slingshot past DIRECTV in the HDTV satellite space? Could we see some Slingbox integration with new DISH receivers and DVRs?
We're on the cusp of broadband everywhere, which removes one the largest bottlenecks to providing HDTV programming everywhere you want, whenever you want. Once that hurdle becomes nonexistent, we'll need new and innovative devices like the Slingbox to fully take advantage of the new era in HDTV. If you think moving your programming to your variable location isn't important, just think back to that not so little Sony Walkman that first allowed us to listen to our cassette tapes on the go. Then it was our CDs and of course, thanks to MP3 players and digital music stores like iTunes, it's now all of our digital music. Is digital video that far behind in the portability and place-shifting market?
