Sling Media, the company behind the popular Slingbox TV-streaming hardware devices, has opened the gates to its video portal Sling.com. The site pits Sling directly against Joost and Hulu (though Hulu is a Sling partner), allowing users to stream a variety of television shows and movies for free through an intuitive Flash player.
Sling’s selection of media is pretty comprehensive, offering content from most of the major networks and studios including Warner, Sony, and MGM (Sling is licensing some of its content from Hulu). The site also offers movies from a number of smaller sources, like College Humor’s shorts. But there are a few notable exceptions: Comedy Central is nowhere to be found, which means The Daily Show and Colbert Report aren’t available (Hulu began offering both shows in June).
Sling.com’s biggest advantage over its competitors is its ability to stream content directly from any Sling boxes you own, giving access to both Live TV and premium content saved on your DVR. The service works very well, automatically detecting the contents of any Slingbox connected to your user account, and definitely makes me want a Slingbox of my own even more. That said, live content streaming from Sling.com won’t be a gamechanger yet, as it still comes with too many caveats.
First, live streaming is only available for Windows machines at launch – an acceptable sin but one that is irritating nonetheless (a Mac version is on the way, and the rest of the site works fine on all platforms). But what really hinders the live playback is the fact that it requires a browser plugin. Ideally, Sling.com would allow users to watch their content from any computer that supports Flash, even if they didn’t have the administrative rights required to download and install the native Sling application. Unfortunately this isn’t the case. And while the browser plugin may be only a fraction of the size of the native install, it will still likely be restricted on most public computers, which makes it far less useful. Fortunately the plugin is only required for live playback, as the rest of the site uses a standard Flash player.
Sling is off to a good start – its interface compares well to Hulu and Joost, and its selection of content is impressive if not unique. Once it nails down its live streaming (hopefully with full Mac support and no plugin needed), it could turn into my site of choice for consuming video. But until then, most people will probably stick with what they know.
Another player unavailable in Canada. This is where Blockbuster has a big opportunity if it ever gets it’s act together since it already has all of the licensing agreements in place in both regions.
Maybe someone can explain to me why I can’t watch a video online that is freely available, rated, etc. here in Canada? Licensing it for one more use (online) cannot be that difficult, or is the market really not worth the time?
Ask the CRTC.
haha
Would be nice if they opened up a channel to independent films.
Is this really a Hulu competitor or a is it more a Hulu partner? Most of the TV content on the site is from Hulu.
You’re right, I’ve rephrased it a bit. I won’t be surprised if Sling drops Hulu if it can get enough users to take it on head to head.
Nice Arrested Development Screen shot Jason.
“And I shall out that Queen!…….”I think you just did (Tobias)
Sadly Sling joins Hulu, Pandora, Lala and Netflix plus a host of others as unavailable in my region. Please, somebody offer me an alternative to illegal downloading.
I am rather tired of these barriers as well… do they think people never travel outside their own country? Short sighted and visionless to the huge opportunity that exists in other places in the world other than the United States.
Jon
http://blog.legendarylife.com
Contrary to the statement in the article, the Sling player is apparently NOT Windows-only. It plays fine on my Linux box.
Was that live streaming from your Slingbox or elsewhere on the site? Only the live portion requires Windows.
Sling actually has some substantive TV content that Hulu does *not* have – mainly CBS shows like NCIS. Currently Hulu doesn’t have any CBS content.
Fancast.com has all that content and more… Full disclosure I work at Fancast.
James
In Canada??
I represent the CRTC and we do not want your stinking US shows taking place of our great Canadian talent. We don’t only have jurisdiction over radio and TV. We regulate internet media too! This is why you don’t get those American shows on Hulu, BooHoo, Sling, or even iTunes.
Free trade in television stations would overwhelm the smaller Canadian market, preventing it from upholding its responsibility to foster a national conversation.
Now go watch Little Mosque on the Prairie and be happy your TV hasn’t corrupted our country and economy.
Hey CRTC bring back the Friendly Giant will ya? Beachcomers too if you have time.
Not interested in Little Mosque or any other low budget crappy Canadian shows. When I’m interested in Canadian culture watching Corner Gas is hardly the outlet. It does not foster a national conversation except for to discuss how crappy the Canadian productions are. Sure there are people out there who like those shows…but that should not prevent me from watching whatever I want online.
Why is it not available outside of US?
Because it’s illegal!
It seems that each gov. does not want content from another one.
(I guess afraid of lack of control).
Not sure about the illegal part, it is mainly about monetization, I think: they need to show ads to allow people to watch shows for free and they simply stick to the same advertisers that they work with in the US. If they could agree with networks to show their content elsewhere monetizing it with local advertisers, they could very quickly change their mind.
RIP Sling.
Dead on Arrival. Hulu will dominate. Youtube will crush.
Hulu controls the ad insertions in their stream. They couldn’t care less what frame other people put around the content. Any box people want to run it on, any content aggregator people want to embed it in, it’s just more viewers for their ads. Look for an exploding list of Hulu partners in the future: mobile phones, game consoles, set-top boxes. Anything with a screen.
All Sling features could become embedded software on some other box. Or they could wind up slowly displacing the devices that don’t “get it.” They’re adding features to TV, and while they’re easily copied, so was the iPod. It’s an edge play at the moment. If/when they get access to all the content, they’ll hit up design talent to make the coolest package available. Ultimately they’re only an aggregator, but so’s Comcast. If they’re the last stop between everyone else and your eyes, they can make money.
While Sling has a interesting platform, I’m afraid they are late into the game.
Youtube/Hulu have so much momentum and tough competition.
Sling will need more to differentiate themselves in my honest opinion.
@Kelly Agree. Must do something new or won’t keep my attention.
I love the pic of the guy with his shirt off..
What in the world is that! lol
Way too late for this, someone need to get a legal website that has videos for the world!
What I want is the movie channels on my computer w/o purchasing through cable or dish.
when hulu will open for UE users?
and then there is the rest of the world not within the US who cant watch this.
“the requested video is not available in your region”
Big show starts, that’s good. Joost is good except it requires a machine with at least 1GB memory to watch the program smoothly, I hope Sling.com can do a better job on cutting bandwidth and memory usage – even a little bit.
Regarding the Canada thing, there are some streamers like JumpTV in Canada, so I’m not sure if CRTC is to blame for the lack of streaming portal.
“The requested video is not available in your region”
Heh
i am SOOOOO confused – it is showing up in safari on mac just fine at sling.com, BUT check this out:
*their copy of testees if from HULU!!!** don’t believe me? check out the ad and program logo at:
http://beta.sli...50/Pill-For-Men
Hulu is great!
Another company that you guys should check out is a start-up called VingTalk from the Silicon Valley:
http://www.vingtalk.com/cpp
Looks like 99% of the crappy movie selection are straight from Hulu’s list. Which wouldn’t be bed if 1) they had additional content and 2) Hulu had updated their movie list in any notable way in the last 2 months.
May have some value for new TV episodes, looks like they have a pretty hearty list.
Part of the reason why these shows aren’t available outside the US is that non-US traffic is significantly less monetizable than US traffic. With sites like Hulu or Veoh that have high costs due to premium content licensing (as opposed to a YouTube or Break who rely mostly on UGC) and are completely dependent on ad revenue, they simply can’t afford to dilute their CPMs with non-US traffic.
There has to be a way to stream videos, TV shows and music internationally before we grow this industry anymore just to service the U.S. Think of how many more customers these companies would have access to if they could watch U.S. TV and use services like Pandora for streaming music.
I recently starting using http://parkmytv.com which hosts my slingbox for me and I’m now getting MUCh better video quality since I’m not limited to my home DSL upload speeds and I pleasantly no longer annoy those at home watching TV while I’m switching channels on them while away
I think they are in trials now but I was able to get an account early on…
“not available in your region”
That’s the idea of a global internet?
It seems that neither has it all.