The Sling folks pinged me from London, where they’re attending the Symbian Smartphone Show. Today they will announce support for S60 and UIQ Symbian phones — first launching in Europe and Asia in Q4, followed shortly by an American release. If you recall, new Slingbox packaging clued us in a few weeks ago… but it’s nice to get an official announcement and time frame: Now I know which model I’ll need to pick up.

Sling Media writes: The new SlingPlayer Mobile for Symbian OS software package will enable users to transform their supported Symbian smartphones on S60 and UIQ into personal, on-the-go digital TVs providing anytime, anywhere access to their living room television experience.

To date, over 82 million Symbian smartphones have been sold worldwide to over 250 major network operators. According to Gartner, Symbian accounted for about 71 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2006.

Never enough time…

• Sony Ericsson PMP prototype? (Ubergizmo)
• Broadcast photos onto cable TV. (TechCrunch)
• Unimpressed with TiVo’s online services and KidZone. (Washington Post)
• Slingbox powers remote football scoreboard feed. (Broadcasting & Cable)
• DirecTV adds HD locals in 25 markets. (EngadgetHD)

So let’s review… T-Mobile’s rendition of the HTC Excalibur, branded “Dash”, hits the streets next week and kicks butt if you can put up with Windows Mobile and EDGE. Neither TiVo nor Sling put Apple fanboys first, but both will be offering support in the “near future” — if I were a gambling man, and sometimes I am, Sling’s will hit first. Both the Neuros OSD and ITVN devices caught my eye and I’m working on getting review boxes. Sony got my attention with their new LocationFree line (including receiver!) and electronic book Reader. Several of the savviest people I spoke to at the show had very positive things to say about Infrant’s network-attached servers for media hosting. I’d like to get my hands on one, though Seagate’s rep offered me any product in their catalog. Hm! Pepper Pad still doesn’t do it for me, and neither do voice-powered remote controls.

No show is complete without tons of schwag! Most of it is junk, but I did see (and collect) some notable items. Palm and TiVo had the best stuff. At their 680 press event, Palm gave away gift bags including a 1GB SD card, nice notebook and pen, and a non-slip dashboard pad — Treo not included. TiVo had goodies too, and I don’t think they were limited to VIPs (bonus!): TiVo bubbles, mints, stuffed dolls, KidZone lanyards, and sturdy nylon sackpacks. The Alienware bag had a throwaway t-shirt and mouse pad, but they kindly included a nice leather luggage tag which I will use. Over at ShowStoppers I ended up with a 256MB Kensington USB stick, Linksys/Cisco mini screwdriver thingy, and a glowing pen from TeleNav. I thought Movielink’s boxes of popcorn were clever (and a fine source of blogging sustenance).

After the jump, check out a few more pics from the show…

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Despite Amtrak breaking down and delaying my return, I made it home safely though fatigued. I’m not sure if less vendors attended DigitalLife this year, or if less vendors I cared about were present. Overall, I wasn’t very excited about most of the tech on display (other than the Dash) and am glad I only took one day for the event.
Two products in particular appealed to me as a geeky consumer — though I question their viability in the commercial marketplace.

First up is the revamped Neuros device, known as the OSD. The Neuros OSD is primarily designed to encode video, from whatever source you choose, and save it as an unprotected MPEG-4 onto a variety of memory cards or devices (PSP, iPod). The networked device also has the ability to playback this video at up to DVD resolution. But where it gets really interesting is that the OSD is open-source (Linux) and Neuros is offering cash bounties to developers who extend the feature set. For example, an EPG and Skype integration are in the works.

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DigitalLife officially kicks off in NYC today. Unlike CES which is industry oriented, DL caters to gadget loving consumers. There will be plenty of opportunity to play with all sorts of stuff (they even have video game tourneys), so if you’re near NYC anytime until the 15th pick up your free tickets and get down here. If the quantity of email and calls I’ve been receiving is any indication, this year’s event is much larger than prior events and looks to be a good time.

Like most bloggers, I do have a day job and I’m into negative PTO these days… So we’ll just have to see how much I can cram into only 9 hours on the ground. To maximize my limited time, I probably won’t be updating ZNF as frequently the last time I journeyed north.

I don’t imagine we’ll see many (any?) product announcements today, though there have been rumors a new Treo will be unveiled. I plan to spend a decent amount of time with various portable devices, check out the home media hardware, and see if Orb will finally reveal their business model. Obviously, I’ll be dropping by the TiVo booth (last year I got fresh with their mascot) and I intend to hook up with the Sling guys who’ll be roaming the floor. But wait, there’s more! I also have two classified meetings, and several interesting people to touch base with… so stay tuned.

The eagle has landed: I’m all checked in and ready to go! I’ll hit the floor as soon as my hot date, Peter Rojas, arrives. Peter, of course, founded both Gizmodo and Engadget and now you can see him weekly on TV.

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I just got off the phone with the Sling PR folks and have confirmed the current version of SlingPlayer Mobile for Smartphones is not compatible with the T-Mobile Dash (likely my next phone, despite the lack of EVDO). Sling is aware of issue and already has a beta build in testing for release in the “near future.” Once distributed, the updated software will also have improved support for all Windows Mobile devices.

And yes, a publicly available version of the Mac SlingPlayer is still slated for release this month!

Go get ‘er!

What’s new in SlingPlayer Mobile for Pocket PC v1.1 BETA2:

• Widescreen (16:9) menu option added under Display Mode (available only when connected to a Slingbox PRO, Slingbox TUNER, or Slingbox AV)
• Shows correct number of Inputs for the Slingbox PRO, Slingbox TUNER and Slingbox AV

Interface changes:

• The task bar now has Favorites toggle button to hide Favorites and the SlingRemote icon is moved away from Play/Stop button
• Control mode ON/OFF option added to Player Mode section of the Player menu
• Fast video input switching supported with the Slingbox PRO, Slingbox TUNER and Slingbox AV (reconnection no longer needed)
• Optimization time reduced when switching from Portrait to Full Screen mode and vice versa New graphics-based tutorial at first startup