SlingCatcher Is Real!
A few months back, I stumbled upon some patent applications by the Krikorian brothers (AKA Sling Media founders and execs) that alluded to a device designed to receive broadcasts — as opposed to the Slingbox which broadcasts your home television signals.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Slingbox story until now has run one way: the Krikorian brothers' box sends a home TV signal out over the internet to a viewer elsewhere. Patent filings by Blake and Jason Krikorian flagged months ago that a reverse device existed, and Sling Media has now confirmed it ahead of CES 2007 — a receiver built to accept broadcasts rather than transmit them.
The pickup matters beyond one gadget: GigaOM frames the SlingCatcher as Sling entering the PC-to-TV bridge category outright, and Reuters' interview coverage of Sling's chief signals the announcement traveled well past gadget blogs into mainstream business press.
First-order effects
- Sling Media's product line becomes a two-way chain: the Slingbox sends a home signal out, and the confirmed SlingCatcher receives streams back onto televisions that have no PC attached.
- The Krikorians move from defending patents around the concept to shipping against it, converting filing-stage IP into a public product commitment at CES.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in the nascent PC-to-TV bridge market now face Sling arriving with an installed base of Slingbox owners who already generate the streams its catcher is designed to display.
- TV makers and set-top vendors lose part of the 'second room' argument: a cheap receiver box can pull place-shifted video onto any existing television, undercutting hardware upgrades sold on that basis.
Third-order effects
- If the send-and-receive pairing holds, television viewing starts decoupling from the broadcast schedule and the set-top box, with internet-delivered streams terminating on commodity living-room receivers rather than operator-supplied hardware.
- The pattern points toward place-shifting firms becoming two-sided platforms — controlling both ends of the video path — which positions them for carriage-style deals with content owners whose rights regimes currently assume one fixed receiver per home.
The trend: Place-shifting companies are reversing the direction of their pipes, from pushing home TV out to the world to pulling networked video onto the living-room screen.