A member of the Sling Community disassembled his Slingbox Pro in order to document the “major chips” — in the process, he discovered what appears to be an IR receiver. Not one to sit on the sidelines, I tore apart my SB Pro to confirm his report. I’m no electrical engineer, but it does indeed look like an IR receiver is hidden behind the Sling logo. Purpose? Like all Slingbox units, the Pro model is networked with both AV inputs and outputs. So one possibility is SlingCatcher functionality: providing the ability to watch a remote Sling feed on TV, controlled by a yet-to-be-released SlingRemote. Or maybe the box could leverage the network connection to stream YouTube video or display information like the forthcoming Wii’s Channels. I’ve got a query into Sling Media and will report back if they choose to publicly comment.

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I scheduled this post to run at 11:23PM EST… By the time it’s published, you should be able to download the public beta of the Mac SlingPlayer (and I should be sleeping). I haven’t seen a press release, in fact I don’t know if there will be one. But I can tell you I’ve seen the SlingPlayer in various forms over the last few months, including a hands-on demo of alpha software in California, participation in the beta group, and more hands-on time with a late beta at DigitalLife. It’s been amazing to watch as the Sling team constructed a Mac Windows Media Video (WMV) decoder and put this thing together. The software is free and supports all versions of the Slingbox, both the original model and the new higher resolution trio.

Being a beta, there are still some kinks to be worked out but overall the software is in great shape: Specifically, core audio and video streaming is beautiful. Sadly there appear to be some technical challenges and/or perhaps prioritization that limits support to Tiger for now… Hence the install screengrab above on Panther — that’s the best I can do with my eMac. Maybe it’s about time I pick up that MacBook!

UPDATE:

• Sling Media Mac OS X FAQ
• Message from Sling CEO Blake K
• Sling Community review with pics
• Sling Community Mac beta forum area

Various media groups continue to choose sides in the brewing placeshifting battle. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has vocalized their support of the Slingbox as a means of remotely viewing content a consumer has paid for for, while Major League Baseball and HBO suggest placeshifting may break service agreements and violate copyright law. Now the BBC’s television licensing board and Sky are chiming in. Sky doesn’t support international place shifting while TV Licensing says placeshifting is only permissible via battery power when in a home without a television license.

What Video and High-Definition TV writes: According to TV Licensing it’s legal to use place shifting devices if your own home has a TV licence. If you’re using the device in another place that also has a TV licence (say your friend’s home) that’s not a problem, but what if the place doesn’t have one? TV Licensing says you can still use your placeshifting device, but only in battery mode.

(Thanks for the scan, Ken Westmoreland!)

One of the pranks I used to play in college was to dial the phone number of one of my friends, who typically was having relationship problems, and as soon as their phone would start ringing, I would immediately put them on conference call and dial their recent ex and then sit back and watch as both people thought that the other person was calling them. In retrospect it probably wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but the results were always unpredictable and hilarious.

Sometimes they’d just start fighting, other times they would actually make up, but most times there would be a certain awkwardness as both parties thought the other had called, but couldn’t figure out why. While it may not have been the nicest practical joke, today Forbes magazine played a similar version of this gag when they invited some of the top technology firms to interact with Hollywood fat cats at their MEET (Media Electronic Entertainment Technology) 2006 conference.

The list of technology experts was a literal who’s who of the geek world. TiVo, Sling, Netflix, Apple, Google, YouTube, you name it, the list went on and on. While many of these technology companies came to court Hollywood into embracing them as business partners, they faced a tough crowd and a hard sell for an industry that hasn’t been forced to make significant changes in the last 30 years. In a nice overview of the conference, Paul Bonds with The Hollywood Reporter, gives a great run down on some of the more memorable recaps.

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Never enough time…

• Summary of 3Q Netflix subscribers and finances. (Hacking Netflix)
• TiVo, the thrill is gone. (Denver Post)
• Q&A with Sling Media’s European VP. (e-consultancy)
• AT&T U-Verse getting HD model and web console in November. (EngadgetHD)

Over on the TCF a disgruntled Apple owner posted a note he received from TiVo when questioning the status of Mac TiVoToGo. I’m not sure TiVo initially gave this initiative the appropriate amount of attention, but I do appreciate what appears to be a frank response — despite calling Apple out (what’s a closed platform?) and despite not offering a target date for release.

My name is Jim Denney, I am in Vice President of Product Marketing for TiVo’s retail products. Tom Rogers forwarded your message to me. I wanted to thank you for your email and apologize for the delay in TiVoToGo for the Mac. I am sorry that you feel we have not paid attention to the Mac community. That is certainly not our intention. We are aware of our subscriber’s desire to get TiVoToGo on the Mac. Believe it or not, we are actively working on the project and have been for the past year in various forms. Unfortunately, developing on the Mac platform has been a little more difficult because of its closed nature. We are working through the issues we have encountered. They are not simple to solve given the needs that we balance in TiVoToGo. We don’t have a release date for the feature yet.

We have gotten ourselves in trouble in the past when we estimated it would be out by mid year this year, we obviously missed that date. In the interest of setting the right expectations this time we want to wait until the feature is actually ready. We are not ready to make that announcement yet. That is why our customer care representatives have been instructed to give the answer they gave you.

We can let you know when the feature is ready for launch. We are listening to you. Until it is ready, we appreciate your patience.

In other Mac development news, the Sling folks plan to release a public beta of OS X software on 10/31.

Never enough time…

• Apple planning satellite radio integration? (Orbitcast)
• $4k gets you a Blu-ray + HD DVD media center PC. (EngadgetHD)
• Slingbox Pro receives 4/5 star review. (PC Mag)
• YouTube faces copyright penalty of $150,000 per clip? (LA Times)