News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

October 31, 2006

software

Slinging comes to OS X at long last

Posted Oct. 31, ’06, 8:43 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

SlingPlayer on OS XFor those of you keeping score at home, we’ve been talking up Mac support for Slingbox since time immemorial (or, well, January of this year). The Sling Player for OS X has been “imminent” since the beginning of this year, and after many a delay (caused, no doubt, by marauding zombies or, perhaps, pirates) the beta version of the player software has now been publicly released.

For those of you not familiar with the Slingbox—understandable, given the lack of Mac support until now—it’s a device that intends to do for space what TiVo did for time. That is to say that you can watch your TV connection via your computer from pretty much anywhere in the world. The real killer, however, is combining your Slingbox with your DVR, forever freeing you from the mundane restrictions of the space/time continuum. Watch your TV whenever you want, wherever you want. Of course, you’ll need one of the physical Slingboxes for the software to be any use to you.

There are some additional caveats for the Mac version. Though the application is a Universal Binary, only 10.4 is supported as of the moment, though 10.3 support is supposedly forthcoming. The system requirements call for a 600MHz G4 or 1GHz Core Duo machine with 256MB of RAM (1GB recommended) and 100MB of hard disk space. Also, the Slingbox requires a wired connection to the broadband source, so AirPort Express users will need to find a different solution. Finally, the software is only available to US and Canadian customers; support for the PAL video standard used in the UK is not working yet.

All of these exceptions inside, it’s good to see Sling releasing the software at long last; one hopes it won’t take as long to fill these gaps in support as it did to release the software in the first place, especially as in the meantime Sling has been selling products that claimed Mac support. Time to make good, guys.

[via MacCentral]


2 Comments

James said:

It seems you are a little off on the specs. It SHOULD work for airport users since the requirement is the following:

* Ethernet Network Connectivity (wired, 802.11 a/b/g, or Powerline)


October 31, 2006 2:51 PM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

If you read their FAQ, you'll see that it can't use AirPort Express because, as I said, it requires a wired connection to the broadband source. Since the Express only has one wired port, it won't work.

October 31, 2006 4:45 PM

Leave a comment

 



Visit other IDG sites: