Slingbox takes the shows on the road | CNET News.com

Slingbox takes the shows on the road | CNET News.comSlingbox takes the shows on the road

By The Hollywood Reporter

Story last modified Tue Jan 03 05:17:00 PST 2006

Sling Media plans to announce Thursday that consumers can use a wide range of mobile devices to watch their home television from anywhere in the world.

The company is set to unveil new software that adds this capability to its Slingbox hardware this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Jason Krikorian, Sling Media's co-founder and head of business development, said support for mobile devices has been part of the company's vision but that the initial focus was on the PC because of the broadband connection.

"There are solutions for live and recorded TV on mobile phones, but now for the first time you can have full access to every single channel you've got at your house," he said. "It's not just a TV experience on your phone--it's your TV experience, like you have at home when you're on your couch."

The new mobile software works with any device that uses Microsoft's Windows Mobile Platform versions 4.0 or 5.0. A visual version of a remote control pops up on the screen, making it a fairly straightforward process to choose whether to watch television live from one's home cable set-top box or satellite receiver or something on a digital video recorder.

"You can watch your home TiVo from the backseat of a car driving on the 101," Krikorian said.

"You can watch 'Lost' the day after it airs without paying two bucks," added Sling Media's public relations director Brian Jaquet, in a reference to the television programs sold on Apple Computer's iTunes store for viewing on an iPod.

Sling Media does not collect any fees beyond the initial $250 purchase price of the Slingbox hardware. The only additional cost is for the mobile data service at whatever rate the person's carrier charges.

Krikorian said the new software also improves picture quality, besides including more customization options and other enhancements for accessing home entertainment from a remote computer.