Blake Krikorian talks about the Slingcatcher, isn't worried about Apple's iTV
By Peter Rojas 
posted Jan 7th 2007 11:21AM
posted Jan 7th 2007 11:21AM
Reuters chatted with Sling Media co-founder Blake Krikorian about his company's latest trapezoidal gadget, the Slingcatcher. The Slingcatcher, which should drop sometime in the middle of the year, is sort of like a Slingbox in reverse: it's designed to stream video from your PC to your TV, rather than from your TiVo or cable box to your PC. Sounds more or less like all the other digital media adapters out there, right? Yeah, well Krikorian says that the space is "littered with dead bodies" and that problem with all those other products is that they're "giving consumers a subset of the Internet video experience they're looking for." He doesn't sound too worried about the one product that a lot of people will see as the Slingcatcher's main competition, either, saying that along with most of the other options out there that Apple's forthcoming iTV doesn't offer the "Internet video experience in an uncompromised fashion. Maybe it will connect to the iTunes service, or a couple of different Web sites that have been reformatted for the TV, or certain videos in formats and not others. That's one major reason why they fail." The Slingcatcher won't be limited at all, he says, and will let you take "anything you have on your laptop, any type of media, any Web site, or Web-based video and project it wirelessly at the push of a button onto your television set. I can go to any site, any video content, any formatted content and get it to play on my big screen TV. That's a huge difference between what we're doing and what others are doing."
That sounds really nice. I love when gagdets or technology puts no limit on what I can play or do. I would never think about an "itv" because I know apple will limit the user to their service only (as usual).
...Apple's forthcoming iTV doesn't offer the "Internet video experience in an uncompromised fashion.
Considering it will be a couple of days until we even know the full functionality of the iTV, this is a pretty brash statement to make... wishful thinking, even.
It's not wishful, you know damn well it won't be an open device. Apple doesn't do open. What it WILL do, however, is do what it does in a simple and straightforward way.
1) download xvid media from nonreputable site
2) copy to 4GB flash drive
3) plug flash drive into front of philips 5960
4) enjoy downloaded video on tv "wirelessly"
He's right. Apple can shoot inself in the foot sometimes with unecessary restrictions (done in the name of "it just works").
As a longtime (exclusive) user of the Macs it's this tendency of Apple's that is the one thing that's bugged me over the years. DVD region restrictions, lack of support for other formats in iTunes (e.g. FLAC), etc. There are more and it's this sort of thing that's pushed me recently to learn how to use Ubuntu Linux, just for a bit of security incase I have the urge to jump ship.
It's not clear from this discription how the user navigates. Is there any navigation as part of the SlingCatcher? Or does it require the navigation be done on the PC. That will work fine if you're watching TV with your laptop in hand. What do you do if your computer is in another room?
You guys are so wrong regarding apple locking you into their content only on iTV...
Did they do that with the iPod? I think you may be thinking of Sony's first attempt to kill the iPod where their devices didn't play MP3??
Wasn't there just a study produced that said very few iPod owners actually purchase tunes from iTunes... so gee what's driving the sales of iPod?
1) being locked into apple content
2) being able to put what ever content you want
on the coolest MP3 player out there.
Can we say INNOVATION and OPENNESS drive sales as which will be similar to the iTV or what ever it is.
If it's just like the others it will fail. If it is as simple as the iPod to use with whatever content I throw at it ... besides WMA files ... it will succeed.
I'll have to wait and see on the Slingcatcher. Considering no one knows what the "iTV" will do yet, the comment here seems like a cheap shot. I agree with panicman -- I want it to "just work", unlike the Windows Media Center Extender I bought which *never* operated. An Apple solution is going to work right out of the box. Elegance and simplicity is Apple's greatest strength. It worked for iPod, and it is likely to work here.
I have the feeling "iTV" is so much more than people are expecting. I believe that it will pair with iTunes to be an unbeatable combination for bringing your digital entertainment content into your TV. We'll see... in just a couple of days.