Sling's $50 rebate on iPhone-compatible boxes rendered useless by stupid pricing
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Apr 8th 2009 5:21AM
posted Apr 8th 2009 5:21AM
Read - Slingbox SOLO on Amazon
Read - Slingbox PRO-HD on Amazon
posted Apr 8th 2009 5:21AM
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Um, the solo is $10 more on amazon, unless I am missing something.
Amazon says free shipping perhaps the one on the left doesn't. I'm guessing.
Right, and the Pro-HD is only $10 more on Sling, so with the $50 rebate, its still cheaper than Amazon. So what is the point to this story??? Alls I needs to know is when in the hells is the SlingPlayer for iPhone is coming out!!! Any reports on that Engadget???
katsun: hey genius, notice the orginal prices crossed out in the Sling pic?
No laughing at my typo you bastards!
Haha, my bad! I may not be a smart man, but I know I want my SlingPlayer for iPhone!!!
Yeah, looks to me like the Pro-HD is the deal on Amazon. It's cheaper period, even with $50 off on the Sling site one.
The Solo is still a good price, just the Sling one is now $10 less with the $50 off. However if shipping is free on Amazon(looks like you need Prime for this item though) and Sling charges more than $10 on shipping costs, Amazon will still come out a better deal.
Yeah, the picture is a little misleading with regard to the SOLO. In my case, I'd been looking at prices after expedited shipping had been applied, and Amazon ends up being cheaper (even though it's $10 more to start).
Either way, to echo what others have said, the PRO-HD is cheaper any way you look at it and $10 isn't much of a discount on the SOLO.
a small fanless (atom based?) pci-tv card equipped pc running a streaming service + a decent internet connection does the trick for me, and you know what? it's iphone compatible.
iPhone compatible? Via Orb? How's the quality on that? I've been hearing the quality is horrible??? Care to comment on your experience? Thanks!
Not getting away with murder with me. I don't trust them enough to buy the next version just to have it obsoleted when they need more money. To say that image quality was an issue is such utter crap -- anyone ever watch a show over 3G? Since when is resolution an issue?
@Matt, I think the point is "big deal, a $10 discount."
F.U. Sling. I hope that you become a case study in failure.
I agree that Sling made a major mistake by screwing its most loyal and oldest users by disabling them from accessing sling via the iPhone. There are plenty of free options out there, and so if Sling doesn't find religion soon, my slingbox is garbage bound. I'll be damned if I'll be suckered into spending money on a new box. FU Sing. Anyone who has an original box and an iPhone should be smart and boycot Sling, don't fall for the con. If enough of us resist the con, perhaps Sling will relent.
While I am as bummed as you that SlingPlayer for iPhone won't be supported by the older boxes, but I tend to disagree with your comment on being a loyal customer. Perhaps you should have said an early adopter instead. Because to me loyalty means repeat sales, and here we are whining about being forced to upgrade to newer and better boxes. The old boxes is using wmv codec which is far less superior than the new H.264 codec. And guess what H.264 happens to be the codec iPhone reads...
I see what you mean about the $10 when compared to Amazon's already low price, especially if forced to buy new equipment.
It would be nice if they allowed the full rebate on Amazon bought items, but likely wishful thinking.
katsun, firmware updates cannot be applied to support H.264 codec? I'm just asking, I don't know.
This what happens when a company makes a product that doesn't compel people to upgrade.
@katsun
the wmv streaming from older slingboxes worked in the iphone betas
"The Solo is NOT capable of streaming in H.264 and neither is the Pro. I have speculated that perhaps the Solo would be able to since it uses the same processor core as the ProHD but at present there is no support for H.264 in the Solo. So the conjecture that the iPhone client has to use H.264 only is purely conjecture and doesn't make logical sense." -NA9D Moderator on SlingCommunity
I bought a Hava to replace my Slingbox AV for $50 from Woot a couple days ago. They've announced an iPhone client and that theirs will be free.
So when the hells is SlingPlayer for iPhone coming out anyways??? Homes can't not no wait for freaking like forevers!
"can't not no"? A triple-negative. Perhaps you should spend more time brushing-up on your grammar, and less time watching TV.
Grammar.........don't talk about grammar. Grammar? Talk about how they want me to upgrade my slingbox for an app that has not made it through the approval process at this point. Show me the app. Talk about the cart before the horse. I agree, "can't not no".
Next Engadget will be "revealing" how the Microsoft and Logitech stores are also more expensive than the likes of Amazon or any of the other retailers.
How is this news?
The real reason for this article is to show how Sling is screwing over the customers with older boxes every way they can, just for the iPhone app. First you need to buy new equipment. Then the $50 only applies if you buy from them at full price. You'd be better off buying from Amazon and not even going through them!
Canada in comparison to the USA, 99% of the time sucks for pricing. But I should share this...
Best Buy Canada has the Slingbox Pro HD on sale for $199Cdn. At that price, I might just try this thing out.
The sling program beta has been working on jailbroken iPhones for many months now, so anyone who believes Sling's nonsense about the video issues might be interested in a bridge I am looking to sell. Sling sold out all of its loyal, early adapters who basically dealt with the buggy early versions of their software and stuck with Sling through it all as their beta testers so that Sling could develop better software and amass a larger customer base. Anyone with an original Sling would be wise not to upgrade and dump the product if Sling does not un-cripple its iPhone software.
And this is why when they emailed me an invite to use their useless rebate I replyed with a rather nasty comment on their past genetic history and sexual habits.
Sling Media have just learnt something from Steve Jobs. The sort of people who buy iPhones are happy to pay over the odds for something with missing functionality (3G, cut-and-paste, turn-by-turn GPS, etc.), pay over the odds again when it's fixed, and still smile about it as they're being screwed over.
Ya that why my AT&T Tilt, after two years of service is so useful as my new paper weight. My new iPhone is so much better in enough ways that I don't moss cut n' paste.
is the SlingPlayer for iPhone is coming out!!! Any reports on that Engadget???
Buy a Pocket PC. It's been streaming the Sling Media for years. Apple is too slow to keep up with times. Apple constantly screws over IPhone owners with problems like this.
I've had Windows Mobile phones, blackberrys, etc. I have an iPhone because I want an iPhone. Technologically there is no reason that the original Slingbox should not work with the iPhone. This is not a decision made by Apple or AT&T, it is a marketing ploy by Sling. Switching to another phone platform just to use Sling is about as senseless as ponying up $120+ dollars on a new sling player to use Slingbox to view video on your iPhone.
Orb LIve work nicely, even on 3G some time I get close to wifi quality. why waste money these days.
Well those Apple folks will pay anything so 50 bucks ain't going to hurt them much, they probably won't even notice it.
Could someone enlighten me on these free ways to do the same thing? Ive been using VLC on my home server to stream to my laptop for a while, but cant find any free solution that will stream h.264 for the iPhone.
Orb. Works great. There's even a Mac version! (sorry, no linux).
I tried orb, but it wont work with my tv tuner.
http://www.equinux.com/us/products/thetube/index.html Can stream from TV tuners on Macs, but I think it only supports in network streaming. You should be able to get around that with jailbreak, but I don't know if you can limit the bandwidth usage enough to work over 3G.
That looks good, but my server is a windows home server box. VLC works great, except that it can only stream h.264 in mpeg-ts, which the iphone cant read. What I need is an app that will grab the stream from vlc on one port and output it to another port in iphone compatible format.
keep sticking it to the bastards engadget.
That's what I'd like to see. An app that I can point to my networked HDD that I keep all of my video on. With Apple's claim of "1000 new APIs" with the 3.0, here's hoping...
Honestly, I can't see the point of Sling any more. Most ISPs have the upload speeds so crippled that the only place that you could really use the Slingbox is on your home network. I doubt that sales are going very well, which is probably why they're trying to screw over their loyal customers in order to increase revenue.
F U SLING!!!!
I too hope you become a college case study in FAILURE!!!!
I think you need to rethink the iphone release and keep all current use models in...
of course im hoping that they change their minds, but i cant imagine how pissed the people who upgraded because of this would be. also, theyre telling people to upgrade when they dont even know if their app will be approved.. theres a huge chance it will still be denied
Bye Bye iPhone. Bye Bye AT&T. Bye Bye Sling.
I bought the classic years ago when these things were unheard of and have been pleased with it. I think Sling has been having lunch with the jerks at MS, and picking up some new "How to F-Over your customers" tactics.....for some reason Direct-X 10 and Vista keep jumping into my head.......Goodbye Sling, was fun while it lasted, now go to hell you UNGRATEFULL bastards.....that felt good.....
Sling, sling, sling. This is a “crumb grab” compared to the loaf$ er revenue you could pull in with new products like the SlingShot™ and SlingBlade™. And guess what, they won’t end up alienating and angering existing customers. To the contrary, the reaction instead would be “holy shit, I got to have that!”. Just sayin...
PS Deep down we know it’s not your fault. We only blame you for naiveté because you “invited a vampire in and expected him not to bite”...
The people at Echostar who are now running Sling are a bunch of morons. They aren't going to get people to buy new boxes, they are just cutting the potential revenue from the iPhone app.
The only way Sling is going to get people to upgrade boxes is to make the picture quality of remote viewing better. You double the resolution vs. my classic Slingbox and I'll be lining up to give you my credit card number. But for the iPhone app? You gotta be kidding me.
It's a good thing my Slingbox can theoretically run entirely independently from Sling. When the company goes out of business due to stupid decisions like this, I'll still be able to use my existing box just by tweaking the network settings and getting a fixed network address.
Slingbox will get their act together, or the free market will dispose of them. Either way life goes on. TV on that little screen wasn't going to be that great anyway. I would have bought the app had they made it available, but there is zero chance this will make me upgrade my box. I really doubt there are many existing owners out there that feel differently than me, and we aren't going to let 'em rip us off.
All this has done has made me root for the application to be denied by Apple as a bandwidth hog - humiliating Sling's management even more than this debacle has already done.
FU Sling - Eat S&*T & Die. - Love, your loyal customer.
They can't make business...I'm so disappointed in Sling!
It saddens me to see this, but it does look like an effort to push away the older boxes and get more sales. I have doubts about the future of the consumer products with EchoStar bundling Slingbox tech into satellite and cable boxes. When those deploy they'll likely rapidly overtake the entire installed base of standalone boxes, and before long the standalone boxes will be a small minority of users. So it won't matter much how happy they are.
MegaZone... don't you work for Sling?