Maybe I’m a wild-eyed optimist, but I’m hoping that Sling will eventually be permitted to add 3G support, and that those of us who have paid thirty bucks for this first version will get free upgrades.

Then I sort of forgot about the whole thing, since I rarely used the Wi-Fi version of the app. (In fact I stopped using my SlingBox much, period–I still can’t figure out why the iPhone version was verboten but the Windows Mobile one was OK..) But I hadn’t hoped in vain. Today, AT&T and Sling issued a joint press release saying that the 3G version of the app now passes muster. It’ll be available (and a free upgrade to existing customers) once Apple approves it.

“Just as we’ve worked with Sling Media in this instance, we look forward to collaborating with other developers so that mobile customers can access a wider, more bandwidth-sensitive, and powerful range of applications in the future,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “Collaboration with developers like Sling Media ensures that all apps are optimized for our 3G network to conserve wireless spectrum and reduce the risk that an app will cause such extreme levels of congestion that they disrupt the experience of other wireless customers. Our focus continues to be on delivering the nation’s most advanced mobile broadband experience and giving our customers the widest possible array of mobile applications.”

Good news, even if the process moved at a glacial pace. Presumably there are some interesting possibilities for video applications that developers didn’t even bother to consider after Sling was forced to hobble the original version of SlingPlayer. Now writing them won’t seem like a pointless exercise.

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Beyond the WiFi-only iPhone Slingbox client, neutered by Apple and AT&T, it’s been a very quiet year for Sling. No new retail products. Insignificant firmware and software updates to existing products. And fire sale SlingCatcher pricing. Combined with near radio silence, I figured EchoStar has been winding down the Sling line. However, all is not lost, as I received this CES invite earlier today which promises:

You’ll experience an up close view of Sling’s new placeshifting products including WiFi television, ultra-slim Slingboxes, and a next-generation touch screen device.

Of course, a WiFi television was shown at CES last year (pic above). Where it was pitched as a DISH Network accessory for Echostar’s yet-to-be-released “SlingLoaded” VIP 922 Echostar DVR. If I had to guess, that touchscreen device similarly accessorizes the 922 — as a Sonos-esque remote controller. I’m not entirely opposed to a slimmed-down Slingbox, but noticeably absent from this pitch is reference to a next generation Catcher… that lives up to its billing. Stay tuned, as I intend to find out more (with pics) next week in Vegas.

(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

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Today, eleven months after Sling announced it was working on SlingPlayer for iPhone, the app showed up in the iPhone App Store. In many ways, the iPhone was born to run SlingPlayer–video looks great on its sizable screen, and the software makes excellent use of a touch-driven user interface that pops up only when you need it.

Except…

Apple only accepted the application after Sling removed the ability to watch video over the iPhone’s cell connection. Unlike other incarnations of SlingPlayer Mobile, it’s Wi-Fi only.  Still a neat application, but one that won’t work in many of the places where I used to enjoy the Windows Mobile version, such as airport gates and my car.

(Clarification: It would work at airports, but I’d have to pay for the Wi-Fi in most places. And no, I don’t watch TV while driving…but I did used to call on SlingPlayer Mobile’s audio-only option, which both the Windows Mobile and iPhone versions offer.)

Apple isn’t saying why it forced SlingPlayer to go Wi-Fi only. But even if it had 3G access, using it would violate AT&T’s terms of service, which were recently rewritten to prohibit rerouting of a TV signal to a mobile computer. AT&T says that apps like SlingPlayer would simply hog too much precious bandwidth if it permitted them; the rule seems kinda arbitrary, considering that there are multiple iPhone apps that stream full-length video programming, such as CBS’s TV.com. And is AT&T busting folks who use SlingPlayer Mobile versions for other platforms?

On one level, I get AT&T’s concern–hey, its 3G network seems to clog up easily even without people streaming TV from their Slingboxes. But the release of a fundamentally crippled version of SlingPlayer for the iPhone is a sobering reminder that today’s wireless networks aren’t capable of supporting everything that we’d like to do with them, and the problem will only get worse as millions of people buy smartphones such as the iPhone. And it leaves me wondering whether any upcoming iPhone version of Hulu–which is, in many ways, a SlingPlayer-like service that doesn’t require a Slingbox–is going to be similarly dumbed down.

SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone and iPod Touch is $29.99–the same price as other versions, but the most I’ve paid for an iPhone app by a factor of about 3X, and pricey given that it doesn’t do the one thing that many Slingbox owners would like it to. Maybe I’m a wild-eyed optimist, but I’m hoping that Sling will eventually be permitted to add 3G support, and that those of us who have paid thirty bucks for this first version will get free upgrades.

After the jump, some screenshots of iPhone SlingPlayer in action (and I repeat–except for the network restriction, this is a nicely-done application).

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Second Android phone finally arrives.

Samsung announces an Android phone.

Here’s the first Android netbook.

Mouse Factory ready to Hulu.

Countdown to Kumo (Bing, Hook)?

So long, tax-free Internet.

Flip HD videocam with HDMI.

IBM computer to play Jeopardy.

Sling: “optimistic” about iPhone SlingPlayer.

Rumor: Apple, Verizon talk iPhone.

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iPhone SlingPlayer: Cross your fingers!

iPhone Skype’s due soon, too.

How Google could go wrong.

Arrrgh: Tech-company layoffs galore.

Netflix adds new personalization features.

Apple sells contract-free iPhones.

Yes, stars use Twitter ghostwriters.

College computer labs are obsolete.

Eee PC gets optical disc.

Apple announces developer conference dates.

A no-tech hour? Naw.

Get more out of Craiglists.

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CEO Blake Krikorian, co-founder and Senior Vice President of Business Development Jason Krikorian, President Jason Hirschhorn, Chief Creative Officer Ben White, and Vice President of Sales Greg Wilkes have all left the company, and sources indicate the departures are immediate.

For all intents and purposes this leaves Sling without any executive direction, save for those higher up in DISH. It’s a shame too — I really do not see a future for Sling as a standalone product without Blake at the helm.

No doubt, within a few years Sling will only be a feature in DISH boxes. It’s already happening as the company plans to add the functionality to its DVRs in the near future.

PaidContent was first with the news, and got an interview with Blake on his decision to step away from the company. “I’m out of there now. I want to just cut it … it’s best just to get it done because it’s not easy. It’s like a break up but it’s time to get on. It’s bittersweet, for sure.”

One has to wonder what exactly was going on behind the scenes. No transition period? It’s two founders just walking out the door? Something tells me that it wasn’t on very good terms… call it a educated guess.

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And then…nothing happened. For a long time. But I met with Sling co-founder/CEO Blake Krikorian today, and am happy to report that the release of Slingcatcher, which Krikorian said turned out to be a more challenging engineering project than anyone expected, is imminent. It’s not exactly the box that Sling unveiled in 2007: It offers a wired Ethernet connection but not the Wi-Fi it was originally going to include, and costs $300 rather than the sub-$200 pricetag that Sling targeted. But it’s still an intrguing product, and one which–like the Slingbox–is unique.

The SlingCatcher is a small box which looks like a close relative of the Slingbox: You plug it into a high-def or standard-def TV via its HDMI, component, or composite video connectors, and hook it up to your home network via Ethernet. It includes no on-board storage, but a couple of USB ports let you add capacity via external hard drives or thumb drives.

The box lets you watch video from your PC–both stuff residing on its hard drive, and stuff you can stream across the Internet. And it does so in two ways:

–SlingProjector. This is the SlingCatcher’s most inventive feature: the ability to watch any video you can watch on your PC on a TV, regardless of format or copy protection. It involves a piece of Windows software that lets you select a window or region on your PC’s display; the software then “projects” that selection, complete with audio, across your network to the SlingCatcher. The SlingCatcher plays it in full-screen mode, using the same video-processing technology seen in the Slingbox to maximize crispness and maintain smooth playback.

According to Blake Krikorian, SlingProjector will work with absolutely any video. (At the moment, that video needs to be in a windows that’s open on your desktop, but he said that the Windows Vista version of the software will soon let you minimize the window once the video’s playing, so you can watch Internet video on your TV while doing something else on your PC.) As a test, I asked Krikorian to project video from PCWorld.com, which uses a proprietary player and doesn’t have a full-screen mode. It worked–and even though the video plays in a teensy window on the PC, it looked better than I expected in full-screen mode on an HDTV.

The bottom line with SlingProjector: Unlike other Internet-video-to-TV solutions such as Apple TV, it’s it’s designed to let you watch YouTube, Hulu, video from providers such as network sites, or anything…including video sources that don’t exist yet. And it looks like it should work.

–SlingSync. This piece of Windows software finds video, audio, and photos on your system, converts them into formats that the SlingCatcher can deal with as necessary, and lets you copy them to a USB hard drive or thumb drive. You can then attach the drive to the SlingCatcher box and enjoy your media using the included remote control.  SlingCatcher supports tons of formats, including lots of obvious ones and some not-so-obvious ones, such as VOB files (which lets you watch ripped DVDs, though SlingSync won’t do the ripping itself), DiVX, and formats used by DV camcorders.

What SlingCatcher can’t do right now is to stream or download video directly from Internet sources–unlike Apple TV and Vudu, among other devices, it requires a PC in the equation. (And both SlingProjector and SlingSync are Windows apps, although Sling is working on Mac versions.) But Krikorian told me that Sling intends to upgrade SlingCatcher later with “native” services–video programming it can grab across the Net without a PC as middleman.

Oh yeah, the SlingCatcher has a third major feature: It lets you sling video from a Slingbox to another TV, either across a home network or the Internet. (Until now, Slingboxes have only been able to transmit content to PCs, Macs, and phones.) That’s not necessarily a moneysaver, since the SlingCatcher costs the same as Sling’s top-of-the-line Slingbox. But if you’ve got a TV in the living room with cable or satellite and/or a DVR, it’ll let you send that programming across the house to a home office, or over the Net to a vacation home.

Krikorian also told me about another Sling product, also due shortly: the Slingbox PRO-HD. This $300 Slingbox variant, which replaces the Slingbox PRO, is the first one that can stream HD content and preserve its high definition on the other end. In the demo I saw, the improvement in picture quality was instantly obvious.

So what to make of the SlingCatcher? My impulse wass to compare it to the Apple TV, but they’re really more different than alike. Apple TV provides extremely simple access to a limited selection of content at a price ($229) that’s lower than that of the SlingCatcher, with a 40GB hard drive thrown into the equation. SlingCatcher is aimed at folks who want all the video the Web has to offer on their TV, and are willing to set up the “projecting” part on their PCs–and if they’re folks who also own Slingboxes, all the better.

Speaking of which, I asked Krikorian whether Sling would build a box that was both a Slingbox and a SlingCatcher. He called the idea “SlingKing” and said that Sling would like to do it when it can figure out how to do so at a price that makes sense.

I also asked him about the possibility of a SlingPlayer client for the iPhone: He said that the company’s working on one and hopes to have it ready for Macworld Expo next January.

More thoughts on SlingCatcher once I’ve had a chance to try it in the comfort of my own living room…soon, I hope.

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