Echostar Wants To Sling To Cable
If you have been reading The Satellite Dish for any length of time you will notice that I keep mentioned a number of time that the Dish Network DVR’s are the best DVR’s I have ever used. This is a comment I stand by, however I keep forgetting that the DVR’s are not Dish Network’s but are made and designed by their corporate cousin Echostar.
Echostar is also the owner of the popular Slingbox technology. Echostar purchased Sling Media back in 2007. Earlier this year at CES Echostar made an announcement that caught the interest of many folks. Echostar announced it was taking its award winning DVR and were building in a Slingbox in the unit. The news of this swept the technical news sites like wildfire and the Slingloaded ViP 922 won numerous awards at CES.
Shortly after showing off it’s Slingloaded 922 DVR Echostar wowed cable operators by showing off its true2way Slingloaded T2200s at the National Cable and Telecommunications Show in Washington DC.
The 922 is a receiver being made for Dish Network, while the T2200s is like a 922 but built for cable operators. Since being announced I have spoken to a number of cable folks and all of them told me they love the technology, but all of them also noted that they were leery with doing business with Echostar do to it connection with their arch rival Dish Network.
Since then we haven’t heard much on the T2200s and it appeared to me that cable companies did not want their perceived competition making their equipment.
This week the folks at Echostar have been meeting with cable operators at the Independent Show in Grapevine, Texas.
At the show Echostar was hinting that a few cable operators are interested in the T2200s, but in bigger news Echostar mentioned they were interested in licensing their Slingbox technology to other manufacturers.
To me this is a very smart move on behalf of Echostar and I applaud them for this move, with this announcement MSO’s can now put the amazing Slingbox technology at their customers fingertips.
Almost anyone who has used a Slingbox will tell you how amazing the technology is and how useful the place shifting application is. By allowing others to license this technology enables more people to use this technology without cable companies worrying about opening up their networks to a company they perceive as their competition.
It would not surprise me see a number of MSO’s work to add Slingbox technology so that their customers can enjoy their cable services anywhere.
I give the folks at Echostar a big thumbs up for wanting to make their amazing technology available to others, in my opinion everyone should have a Slingbox.
LanceHer commented:
Whu the hell is SCOTT
Reaper commented:
I'd love to see FiOS adopt the Echostar box but there's another BIG downside to Echostar's admittedly best in class DVRs, the pending Tivo litigation.
Roger commented:
The grammatical errors here make me go cross-eyed.
midu commented:
Was Scott drunk when he wrote this? How many grammatical errors can you have in one paragraph?
J commented:
All MSO execs know who profits from slingbox and market adoption will be very close to zero. The chance Motorola or Cisco/SA will license this is also very close to zero. Maybe they'll get some business internationally - all the key pioneers of slingbox have moved on. Doubtful of any long term success.
DodgerKing commented:
I am waiting for Barry to come and say something negative about Scott's article or Scott himself. LOL
DodgerKing commented:
Rad,
I was reading Scott's article and the bandwidth issue was the first thing that came to my mind as well. If they do not limit bandwidth, which most do, their will have a hard time keeping up with the bandwidth demand of all of the sling activity.
RAD commented:
IF a cable company did implement a Sling product in their STB's it would be interesting to see how they would handle bandwidth used by Sling. TWC wants to go to metered bandwidth, Comcast has their usage caps and Sling usage sure would make add a fairly large chunk to customers data usage. Would cable exempt Sling usage or look towards it as a new profit center?
