In an attempt to produce that oh-so-elusive all-in-one “God Box”, EchoStar has introduced the SlingLoaded HDS-600RS to the UK. Not only is it a dual tuning Freesat+ DVR that offers Internet apps (BBC iPlayer is up first), it also provides integrated Slingbox placeshifting capabilities. Allowing one to enjoy those 150 free satellite channels around the home… or anywhere beyond.
The inscrutably named HDS-600RS is available for pre-order from Amazon, ships next week, and clocks in at £350 — which equates to about $575 USD. On one hand, that seems somwhat pricey and you’d think EchoStar might have provided something more than a 500GB drive or thrown in the mobile apps to sweeten the deal. On the other, there’s a lot of functionality to be had here and it’s not like owners will be burdened with box or content subscriptions/fees.
Slashgear went hands on with a company rep and shot video of the box in action (and where I swiped the UI shots from) – check it out!
Click to enlarge:
Some additional thoughts…
They’re reusing the SlingCatcher remote, which I wasn’t a big fan of. And speaking of the SlingCatcher, EchoStar’s UK pitch included the Catcher as a possible accessory. As far as I knew, that product was dead, dead, dead. Hm.
Also, this unit is much more compact that EchoStar’s US SlingLoaded offering tied to DISH Network (VIP 922). Wonder if we’d ever see an OTA variant here in the US? As the Internet apps proliferate and folks consider dropping pay TV services, there’s a potential market. Boxee has made their intentions clear, but who else might be game? TiVo obviously works over the air, but that subscription fee is a barrier to entry.
OT Dave, but you should get another pic gallery thing on this site. its not navigation friendly. it says to click to enlarge, when i do, it takes me to another page. from there i cant go to the next picture in the gallery. i have to go back on the browser and so forth.
I agree – it’s on my wish list. I’m using the built-in WordPress gallery function and my (older) theme has no hooks to do anything smart with it. I’ll revisit some of the photo plugins at some point. Never enough time…
I like the GUI because it shows a decent amount of time vs. channels in the grid. Can’t wait for more providers to up the resolution here in the states.
The hardware is pretty nice looking. Compact, neat LED’s on the front, nice segmented LCD display. You don’t see that much on equipment these days.
Also agree with Al’s OT. I commented on this before though.
capitalism vs socialism
in the UK you can setup free Sat and get 150 channels. That makes a DVR well worth it without any IPTV stuff.
in the US, with OTA you would be well served to get 10 decent channels OTA (my guess) and the IPTV stuff is the part that will drive OTA DVR’s to any meaningful hardware configuration like built in slinging.
You wnat 150 channels in the US – you pay the private company that supplies them. That is fine by me, I use cable myself but I am not likely to cut the cord to cable anytime soon as long as I can afford the bill. It makes content aggregation easy.
I can’t imagine ever cutting the cord. But I may replace the coax with Ethernet. Right now it looks like the best over the top (OTT) plays will be brokered by the cable companies and ISPs. But there will come a time when some try offering subscriptions directly to the consumers and removing the middle man. So how about a OTA DVR where I can load a Showtime app with service running $3.99/month or whatever.
cypher, yeah I know. Basically family and work come before blog. And what little free time I have left is generally dedicated to the writing portion. I do have a new look/theme I’m futzing with now and then – haven’t tested its gallery feature yet. Ideally, I’d keep the builtin WordPress hooks so prevent a long term marriage to a third party plugin. So what I’d like to see is when you pull up a gallery page you get a link back to the source article and a film strip of the other images below.
The new theme is no smarter. In fact, it’s worse as I lose the link back to the post. Hm.
Like you say the interesting question is when/if this will ever come to the US. All the satellite stuff is locked up, you’d need cablecard support (ugh) to do cable, etc. Like you say seems like the only viable approach would be an OTA DVR + IP TV box. If they wait a year it might be a little more obvious where the OTT box competition (Boxee, Apple TV, Google TV etc) is at–is there space for a competitor bringing DVR too, where are prices, do they need app support, etc.
I’d guess this will never come to the US if you want my prediction.
Off topic, once again… consider it a hack job for now. Hopefully we do something better at some point in the future. Now when you click on an image, you’ll go to the image page as before but it has the post title, and linked, then under the image are thumbnail images for previous and next. It’s not great. But maybe 8% better than what we had this AM. If I get a Lightbox script in there, then we’ll be able to enlarge the primary image as an overlay. One day.
Prices in Europe are always inclusive of VAT, so the actual price is abt 20% lower: $460
I don’t think there is enough of a market in the US for an OTA-only DVR. Every attempt so far has bombed and left the market or faded into obscurity – there is still an version of the DTVPal DVR out there, isn’t there? Or did that fully die now too?
I would like to see this come to the US, but they’d need to go with CableCARD. AllVid is too far off.
Seems like a good move, finally getting sling functionality properly built into equipment so you don’t have to rely on those stick-on remote control things!
On the Slingcatcher story I could really see the use for it if I were living elsewhere and wanted more long term access to my slingbox at home on a big screen….even then though I think times have moved on and this should be possible with an App.
Sling should speak to Philips and get a Slingcatcher App created for Net-TV!