SlingCatcher unboxing and hands-on

We knew the SlingCatcher was sneaking out into the wild, and hey -- we just snagged one at retail in Chicago. We're busy tearing into all the projector, Sling streaming, and media streaming features, but we figured we'd throw up the unboxing photos right away so you can get a feel for Sling's latest, long-awaited box.

Gallery: SlingCatcher unboxing

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[Frankenstein Black @ Oct 18th 2008 7:58PM]

I snagged one recently too and so far so good. The beauty of Sling products is how easy they are to setup. After it updated the software, it saw all 3 sling boxes right away! Hopefully they hurry up and get out projector software for Win x64 and Vista 64bit OS's ;^)...

[who? @ Oct 18th 2008 8:42PM]

"The beauty of Sling products is how easy they are to setup."

People used to say that about Apple products... sniff.

[High Ranks make you sterile @ Oct 18th 2008 9:07PM]

That remote is oddly shaped. The over/under on how many Gizmodo readers will visit the ER tonight with that remote as part of the contents of their ass is at 7.5.

Place your bets.

[Jon Nelson @ Oct 18th 2008 8:32PM]

That's a surprisingly gorgeous picture, wow.

[AKBlade13 @ Oct 18th 2008 8:37PM]

I agree. That actually looks great.

AKBlade13

[drumdbeat @ Oct 18th 2008 8:41PM]

+1

[who? @ Oct 18th 2008 8:43PM]

I killed Mr. Blurrycam.

[K_fly89 @ Oct 18th 2008 8:58PM]

Honestly, we've had them at our local futureshop for days now.
If I would've known that nobody had taken some unboxing pics, I would have picked one up early and done it myself.

[Michael @ Oct 18th 2008 9:34PM]

If they added support for mkv files, I'd get it. But for now it's not very useful for many enthusiasts.

[Mike @ Oct 18th 2008 9:48PM]

Keyword: Enthusiasts.

It'll be rare to ever see a real product with MKV support that is amazing. Maybe in 5 years when the next better format rolls out.

Don't get me wrong...I have about 1000 mkvs myself, but all of the high quality ones are already converted to AVI (gotta love AllToAVI) cause I'm only gonna watch one audio stream and one subtitle stream at a time.

[Mike @ Oct 18th 2008 9:51PM]

Although if you're serious about it all, you'd get one of these:

http://tomacro.en.ec21.com/product_detail.jsp?group_id=GC02943950&product_id=CA02943952&product_nm=H_264%252FVC1_MKV_High_Definition_HDD_Media_Player

[sixtyfps @ Oct 19th 2008 10:25AM]

Call me a small thinker, but isn't MKV the last word in open-source container standards?

[BrandonC @ Oct 18th 2008 11:33PM]

There are several review and photos on the catcher at Slingcommunity.com

[btdown @ Oct 19th 2008 10:17AM]

i still dont understand what the difference is between the Slingcatcher and my Slingbox pro...

[MegaZone @ Oct 20th 2008 12:40AM]

The SlingCatcher 'catches' video, the Slingbox 'sends' it. They're opposite functions. You can stream video FROM a Slingbox TO a SlingCatcher.

[Marco Piol @ Oct 19th 2008 11:34AM]

Check the amazon reviews. I wrote the long one. Seriously frustrating.
7 reviews so far, all 1 star

[crow610 @ Oct 19th 2008 2:20PM]

Great product with great looking enclosure. Chumbi, learn something from this!

[Cote @ Oct 19th 2008 2:33PM]

Lost of bad reviews and a few bugs.

1. h.264 support is limited to 480x320. That's not a typo people. h.264 is the future. They hope to increase this to 640x480. Oooooooooo! Watch out!
2. They expect you to transcode anything that is not natively supported. Have fun with waiting 2 hours to transcode all you h.264 collection.
3. WMV video is limited to a MAX 720/24p. Non of the sample HD video in Microsoft's own site plays on the Slingcatcher! WOW!
4. The only HD resolutions available are in mpeg 2.
5. Did I mention h.264 is decoded in software? YEP. The hardware inside the Slingcatcher was spec'd 2 years ago.
6. sling.com integration is not available....yet
7. Slingsync is not available, Slingmedia is blowing the dust off SNEAKERNET.
8. No wifi, YEP. This thing was spec'd 2 years ago, yet they still didn't include it.
9. No HD streaming from the Slingbox Pro HD. They say this is planned for LAN viewing only.
10. No HD streaming from Slingbox Pro HD for remote viewing EVER.
11. There is a remote viewing bug that drops streaming speeds each time you change the channel. WOOOO!

Since the Slingbox Pro HD uses h.264 for streaming and the catcher is limited to 480x320 (640x480 in the furture) h.264, can you guess why HD isn't planned for remote viewing?

Try waiting for Slingcatcher 2.0 and let the rest of us fan boys beta test this terrible product.

Supported file formats here:
http://www.zatznotfunny.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/catcher-files.doc

Do I sound angry?

[pmup @ Oct 19th 2008 3:27PM]

I could not agree with you more and that is why I cancelled my order. I own a Slingbox Pro and was planning a to buy a new Slingbox Pro HD after the SlingCatcher. After seeing the SlingCatcher reviews, seeing the specs and relizing Mac support for Sling Projector and Sling Player 2.0 was nowhere in sight.

This product has much potential, but Sling after over 2 years could not seem to deliver! Sling has long been the vaporware kings, and now seems like a one hit wonder. Still no Blackberry SlingPlayer or one for the iPhone. now this terrible product release.

If you read reviews on the Sling Community, the fanboys are all there saying how great the SlingCatcher is, then take a look at the reviews of actual customers on Amazon and see the truth! After all the demand and waiting for SlingCatcher to arrive (why I pre-ordered) it is now already being discounted!!!

My advice, run do not walk from SlingCatcher at least for now. WAIT, and see if it improves, or pay the price in disatisfaction.

[karmaghost @ Oct 19th 2008 3:11PM]

I dunno. I like the idea of being able to watch video from my TiVo in another room without buying another DVR... but to do that I'd need a Slingbox and a Slingcatcher. That would cost me around $500 for the two of them. At that price I might as well just buy another TiVo and get the 1 year prepaid subscription.

[pmup @ Oct 19th 2008 3:15PM]

I cancelled the order I had fro the SlingCatcher due to mostly ALL the bad reviews I read and partly due to lack of Mac support with no idea when Sling will bring Mac support.

After over 2 years of waiting I would have thought the SlingCatcher would have less problems, but seems it is not so.

This product was given some of the lowest rating I ever saw on Amazon. So I cancelled mine.

[F1Mikal @ Oct 20th 2008 3:47PM]

What is up with the lack of AppleMac support. I understand that AT&T doesn't want us iPhone sling users clogging their bandwidth but
if they've Blackberry support why note iPhone? Just don't understand.

F1Mikal in NYC

[DG @ Oct 22nd 2008 7:45AM]

The most ridiculous thing about the SlingCatcher is the fact you can't access media from your other computers or a NAS. You've got a network connection but rather than use that you have to copy files onto a USB drive? Ridiculous. I can't believe that Sling's product development team didn't identify this as a wee bit of a shortcoming. Two years to develop a particularly half-arsed product - I'm not impressed! If SlingPlayer could be easily installed onto an Apple TV, that would be interesting...