Slingbox on Iphone?

[NativeTheory]

Is this something some brilliant hacker could do or would this have to be officially done by the people who make the sling box. Just wondering because it would be amazing to be able to access my sling box on my iphone...

[ashraf@samawi.com]

i agree with you 100000% percent

[RVN84]

unless something has changed very recently only sling themselves would be able to do this as their protocol is closed...

[dogzilla]

With a little bit (well, ok...a lot) of hacking, you can do this yourself. I have it running. The various parts are: an eyeTV Hybrid, an IRTrans infrared controller, VLC for conversion and streaming, and a custom PHP script that creates and runs applescripts via the osascript command to glue everything together.

The one fly in this ointment is that I can't seem to find a mac TV Tuner that will do buffering of analog cable. I've found a few that will do it for HDTV over QAM or TASC, but what I really want is live buffering of analog cable to give me access to all my channels.

Right now, I have on-demand access to my entire movie library on the iPhone, but that was just a simple conversion/downsampling for EDGE delivery, a quick database and a simple PHP script. It would be much more interesting to have access to my entire cable box, including on-demand channels, remotely. This would be trivial to add, if only I could find a TV Tuner for my mini that buffered live analog TV - then I could just point VLC at that rolling buffer and serve it up via a web page.

[RVN84]

right, but it isnt Slingbox, its a PC capture card, simiar to say, orb?

the nice thing of the slingbox is it is a selfcontained 1 box, nothing to tweak, no computer to leave on, etc... plus, its portable and all...

[dogzilla]

Yes, it *is* a nice machine. And ultimately will be cheaper than a roll-your-own solution. But...as was mentioned before, it uses a closed protocol, pretty much guaranteeing that development is up to Sling Media. I think they've said they want to release a client when/if Apple offers a real SDK. I doubt they would release a client based on a third-party SDK such as we currently have.

And just to be clear: the SlingBox *is* a computer with a capture card that you leave on all the time, different from a Mini only in that it only does one thing, while the Mini can do a number of things if you choose.

[BustAGroove]

Here's the official response I got today:

From: Sling Media Support <Support@SlingMedia.com>
Date: October 18, 2007 2:52:50 PM PDT
To: BustAGroove
Subject: Re: Sling Media Web Form Submission (KMM207798I51L0KM)

Dear BustAGroove,

Thank you for contacting Sling Media support.

I understand that you want to know if for next year, the Slingbox will be able to run on IPhone and ITouch.

I will be more than glad to help you.

At this moment, unfortunately, we have no plans to get Slingbox working with IPhone and ITouch.

Hopefully, in the near future, there could be a possibility. Please keep checking our web site for further information.

If you need any future assistance please contact the Sling Media Technical department at 1-877-GO-SLING from 7AM to 7PM from Monday to Friday Pacific standard time and Saturday from 8AM to 5PM Pacific
standard time.

For future reference your Sling Media email support ticket number is 54862.

Best Regards,
Randall
Sling Media Support

Original Message Follows:
------------------------

Form Message

My question: usage
Description: Apple has announced that Apple's Software Development Kit will be available in February 2008 for developers to create third-party software for the Apple IPhone and ITouch. Does SlingMedia have any plans to create software to support this device for usage as SlingPlayer?

I have been a SlingBox/Player user for a few years and have had experience as a Sling beta tester and as a tech-saavy user on Windows Mobile 5/6, Windows XP and Macintosh OS. I am very anxious to hear of SlingMedia's plan and to apply as a beta tester for IPhone-to-SlingPlayer.