Sling overhauls its TV-streaming app for iOS, adds Roku channel; Windows 8.1 app planned for December
Sling only refreshes its TV-streaming set-top boxes once every few years, and indeed, the current models only came out 13 months ago. So, it's a bit early for new hardware …
Context & Ripple Effects
Sling's set-top boxes are on a multi-year hardware cadence — the current models shipped just 13 months ago — so this refresh is a software play: an overhauled iOS app, a new channel that puts Sling on Roku devices, and a promised Windows 8.1 app in December. The pickup list is unusually broad for an app update — TechCrunch, CNET, Gizmodo, Gigaom and Windows Phone Central all ran it — which says more about where attention sits than the size of the changelog.
The Roku channel matters because Roku is both a partner and a competitor: the company's own iPhone remote app back in 2011 established the phone-as-companion pattern, but putting a Slingbox's live TV onto a rival's streaming device makes Sling's value the signal, not the box.
First-order effects
- iOS users get a redesigned app for controlling their Slingbox, and Roku owners gain a native way to watch their home TV feed without touching Sling's own hardware.
- Windows users are told to wait: the Windows 8.1 app is only promised for December, leaving Microsoft's tablet base unserved through the holiday shopping window.
Second-order effects
- By distributing onto Roku instead of guarding its own box, Sling trades some hardware-lock-in for reach — every Roku sale now doubles as potential Slingbox demand rather than a substitute for one.
- Competing place-shifting and streaming players face pressure to match multi-platform distribution, since a service available on iOS, Roku and Windows undercuts single-device rivals on convenience alone.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, place-shifting becomes a software layer licensed across whatever screen the viewer owns, with Sling's proprietary hardware demoted to a gateway accessory rather than the product itself.
- Streaming-device makers like Roku accumulate third-party channels that make their platforms the default living-room hub, shifting leverage from box makers toward whoever controls the app storefront.
The trend: TV place-shifting is migrating from proprietary set-tops to multi-platform apps, with Sling betting that ubiquity on other companies' devices beats hardware exclusivity.