Slingbox

The Slingbox is a TV streaming media device made by Sling Media that encodes local video for transmission over the Internet to a remote device (sometimes called placeshifting). It allows users to remotely view and control their cable, satellite, or digital video recorder (DVR) system, at home from a remote Internet-connected PC, smartphone, or tablet as if he or she were at home.

Customers have also connected their Slingboxes to other video sources, including Blu-ray players and security cameras.

The Slingbox was first developed in 2002 by two Californian brothers, Blake and Jason Krikorian, who were avid sports fans. They supported the San Francisco Giants, a Major League Baseball team, whose games were broadcast regularly by their local TV station. However, when travelling away from their home state, they found they were unable to watch their favorite team, as their games were not carried by television stations in other parts of the United States, and could not be found free-of-charge online. The first edition of the Slingbox came to market in late 2005.

The traditional Slingbox embeds a video encoding chip to do real-time encoding of a video and audio stream into the SMPTE 421M / VC-1 format that can be transmitted over the Internet via the ASF streaming format. Later Slingboxes also support Apple's HTTP Live Streaming, which requires support for H.264.

The Slingboxes up until the Fourth Generation (or Next Generation Slingbox) used a Texas Instruments chipset. Current generation Slingboxes and OEM products are built around a ViXS chipset.

Control of the hosting video device, usually a set top box, is done through an IR blaster, which, on older Slingboxes, required the use of an IR blaster dongle. Current generation Slingboxes have built in IR blasters on the box itself, though customers can opt to continue to use the IR blaster dongle.

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