Sling Media SlingCatcher SC100-100 Universal Media Player for TV

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Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 4.3 x 9.1 inches ; 3.6 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000VXD2S8
• Item model number: SC100-100
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,248 in Electronics (See Bestsellers in Electronics)

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• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 11, 2007

Product Description

From the Manufacturer
Sling Media released a software update on October 28, 2008 for SlingCatcher that fixes some critical video streaming quality issues from both Slingbox and SlingProjector. All new customers setting up a SlingCatcher on 10/28/08 or later will receive the new software as part of their first time setup process. Existing customers may download the software update over the Internet directly to their SlingCatcher by going to the Settings menu and selecting Software Update.

SlingProjector users should have a high-performance PC for the best experience. Minimum requirements are a 1.6 Ghz Intel Core Due or 3.0 GHz Pentium IV/Pentium M CPU with Windows XP or Vista 32-bit.  64-bit Windows Vista is not currently supported. The MAC OS is also not currently supported. As with any video or CPU intensive application, virtual operating systems such as Fusion and Parallels are not recommended.


Watch Your Digital Media on Your TV

The SlingCatcher is a universal media player for your TV. SlingCatcher's on-screen interface and remote control provide easy access to TV from your Slingbox, Internet video from your PC, or personal media from your USB hard drive. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the digital age on your TV screen.


 

TV from your Slingbox
Access your Slingbox on another TV in your house or anywhere in the world.


Internet video from your PC
If you can watch a video on your PC, you can use SlingProjector to project it wirelessly to your TV.
 

Personal media from your USB hard drive
Attach USB storage to SlingCatcher and view your favorite media files on your TV.

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  Access Your Slingbox on Another TV


Simulated TiVo interface shown here - Slingbox works with over 5,000 devices.

The SlingCatcher allows you to access any device connected to your Slingbox* on another TV in your home or even a TV in another location.



DVRs are great, and anyone who has ever used one can't go back to the old way of watching TV. But if you have multiple TVs in your house, your DVR content is usually stuck on one of them. The solution? Hook up a Slingbox to the DVR and a SlingCatcher to another TV. Instantly you can watch and control your DVR and all its programming from that TV too--with no additional monthly fees.



Going away to college can be tough. You leave your family, friends, and local sports teams behind. With a SlingCatcher in your dorm room, you can connect to your Slingbox at home, and it's just like having a really, really long cable. You can hijack your parents' TV or watch shows and games together--virtually, of course.

* HD Streaming from a Slingbox ProHD is not supported at this time.

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Project Internet Video from Your PC to Your TV




SlingProjector software for 32-bit Windows XP and Vista* lets you select any window on your PC to project full screen onto your TV. This is ideal for watching an ever increasing amount of Internet video content on your TV instead of a laptop screen. Clips from YouTube or Hulu, full episodes from CBS.com or NBC.com, even streaming feature length movies from NetFlix can all be projected to your big screen, so you can sit back on the couch and enjoy. SlingProjector works with most web sites and video players.** Check out a few of these examples:



Everyone knows YouTube. Whether you find the millions of hours of user-generated video funny, disgusting, educational, or a good way to veg out on a Sunday afternoon, now you can easily share your favorite moments with family and friends on your big screen TV rather than hunkered around a tiny laptop.



Hulu is a popular video Web site with lots of clips, full-length TV episodes, and movies. Using SlingProjector, simply select the video frame and watch away!
 


If you have a NetFlix account, you already know you can stream thousands of full-length TV shows and movies to your computer. That's great if you're a lonely guy living in a 6' x 6' box. But if you want to watch a show or movie with your family, you probably want to sit back on the couch with a bowl of popcorn. Now you can. And you never have to wait for your DVDs to arrive in the mail.

* 64-bit Windows XP/Vista and Macintosh support not currently available. SlingProjector is not supported when run in a virtual environment like Parallels, VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC.

** Projection of HD-DVD and Blu-ray video from a PC to SlingCatcher is not supported. For more info, visit our support site for details

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Watch Your Personal Media on Your TV


 


Watch Home Movies from Your USB Hard Drive
If you have kids, you probably have lots of video tapes full of great moments, and you just haven't gotten around to compiling and burning DVDs so you can share with the rest of the family. Now you can store those movies on a portable USB hard drive. Just plug it into the SlingCatcher, and you have instant access to your entire video library -- to share with friends and family.


 
Watch Podcasts from Your USB Hard Drive
Video podcasts let you keep up with the latest on every imaginable or niche topic. From comedy to news to personal health, you can subscribe to podcasts 'til your hard drive is overflowing. The problem, of course, is that you have to watch them on your tiny phone or small computer screen. With SlingCatcher, just plug in your USB drive or memory stick filled with podcasts, and you can sit back on the couch and watch to your heart's content.


To get started with SlingCatcher, you’ll need at least the following:

• A television (standard definition or high definition)
• A broadband Internet connection (DSL/Cable modem)
• A home network

Watch TV From Your Slingbox

• Access live or recorded video from any device connected to your Slingbox.
• Currently supported streaming resolutions vary from 320x240 to 640x480, depending on network connections and Slingbox in use.

Watch Internet Video From Your PC
Using the free SlingProjector software, display any region from your PC screen on your TV (up to 1024x768 based on PC performance)
System and network requirements:

• High performance PC required for best results
• Virtualized PCs such as Parallels, VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC are not supported
• Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP with SP2
• (64-bit Windows Vista and 64-bit Windows XP not currently supported)
• 1.6 GHz+ Intel Core Duo or 3.0 GHz+ Pentium IV/Pentium M CPU
• 1 GB RAM for Windows Vista and 512 MB for Windows XP
• Display resolution of 1024 x 768   
• 50 MB available disk space for installation
• SlingProjector requires a consistent 5 Mbps wired/wireless network connection in your house between your PC, router, and SlingCatcher

Watch Personal Media From Your USB Hard Drive
Requires optional USB 2.0 hard disk drive or USB 2.0 flash memory stick accessory (all sold separately)
Supported media formats:

• Video: WMV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, Xvid
• Audio: MP2, MP3, WMA, AAC, AC3
• File formats: .avi, .vob, .ifo, .ps, .ts, .mpg, .wmv, .asf, .mov, .mp4,.m4v, .mp3, .wma, .mp4a, .m4a, .wav
• For more information on supported file formats and other My Media specifications, visit slingmedia.com
• Coming soon: a file conversion and media management application for Windows XP/Vista PCs

System Requirements

• A television that supports any of the following: 480i (NTSC), 576i (PAL/SECAM), 480p*, 576p*, 720p*, or 1080i* (Note: SlingCatcher supports Standard Definition streaming from any Slingbox regardless of input video format)
• A broadband Internet connection (DSL/Cable modem)
• A home network that supports consistent 5 Mbps wired/wireless connection between your PC, router, and SlingCatcher

* Requires component or HDMI cable purchased separately  

 Box Contents

• 1 SlingCatcher set-top box
• 1 AC adapter (100-240V, 50-60 Hz)
• 1 Ethernet cable
• 1 Composite AV cable
• 1 Remote control with 2 AAA batteries
• 1 User guide

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 127 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a disappointment!, October 18, 2008

By	Veleno "AP" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I have been waiting for this product for 22 months, having seen the announcement and demo at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronic Show in January 2007. I have long been a fan of Sling Media and have used its products for close to three years. I have also recommended them to many friends and colleagues. I am a technologist and a "gadget freak" and seldom return products. Even less frequently I write reviews.

I received the SlingCatcher yesterday, after pre-ordering it on Amazon, and I could not have imagined, 24 hours ago, that I would now be packing it to return it. In a word, this product is a disaster. It is expensive for the features it offers (I paid $299 at Amazon, and I note that the product is already discounted two days later) and it is poorly implemented.

The installation was the only positive part of the experience. It was very simple to install (even simpler than a Slingbox) and recognized the network immediately. I have a wired, 1 Gigabit network available at the right location. The SlingCatcher does not have WiFi. The only peculiarity is that it took several minutes to download a software upgrade. Given that I have one of the first units to come off the boat, I wonder how many bugs were discovered during the trip from China to the USA. I should say that I did not experience any of the installation problems mentioned by other users.

The SlingCatcher lets you do three things (according to what's written on the box): watch video from the Internet; watch video from a Slingbox; and watch video from a PC. But be careful about making assumptions about what these descriptions mean!

Watch video from the Internet -- while you might think that this feature would allow you to browse the web and stream videos from it, it is not quite so. You have to have a computer on your network running a software program called "SlingProjector," which allows you to "project" whatever you can play on your computer onto the SlingCatcher (and your TV.)

I downloaded the SlingProjector software to my laptop (which I operate wirelessly) and to my home computer which sits on my 1Gig network (iMac running Windows because there is no SlingProjector software for the Mac OS yet!) I was able to go to the web from my laptop and stream software which in turn was streamed from my computer to the SlingCatcher and my TV. In order to stream a Hulu or Youtube video, the software lets you capture the portion of the screen where the video is being shown via a "cropping" feature. This works reasonably well, but the resulting quality is not that great. Part of it is a function of the quality of the incoming video, but I think that the fundamental problem is that as you stream the signal twice, you lose quality. In addition to that, you are showing the video on a large screen TV, and that is bound not to look as good as on the computer. So, expectations are high and quality is lower than it could be. Not a good outcome.

I then streamed videos from my home computer on the 1G network, with similar results. Note that in order to do that, you better have the SlingCatcher, your computer and your tv in the same room, otherwise you have to go back and forth all the time. I was watching a video and all of a sudden a computer message popped up right in the middle of the screen, which required going back to the home computer to click on the message.

But the worst part of the SlingProjector was that it did not work in some instances. I wanted to show a PowerPoint presentation on the tv screen, and in order to do that I did not use the "cropping" feature, but I put the SlingProjector in full screen mode. After opening the PowerPoint file, it was not possible to get the thing going from my laptop to the SlingCatcher. I managed to see a screen, but then the whole thing would freeze and I could not make it work even after restarting and resetting the box. After a while I gave up.

The second feature is the ability to connect to a SlingBox and watch on a TV what you would until now watch on your computer. That feature seems to work, though I found the menu system quite cumbersome. The quality also did not seem that great. I would have thought that having two hardware boxes talking to each other would allow Sling to optimize protocols and provide high quality and speed. Not so. Perhaps you can get better results with the HD box, which I do not have (it would have been the next purchase probably.)

Finally I thought I would get good results with the third, "slam dunk" feature, "Watch Video from your PC." Note that even this description is misleading. Watching video from your PC means implementing the Sling version of "Sneakernet" -- copy your files on a USB stick from your computer and walk it over and plug the stick into the SlingCatcher. But much to my surprise, this did not work at all. I tried both a USB stick with a few files, and then attaching a 500GB USB external hard disk full of media files. In the first case it found nothing, in the second case it told me that the files were unreadable. So much for the slam dunk feature.

So, I am disappointed at two levels. First, because the product is buggy and does not work as advertised. I knew what I was buying, because I have been reading about this for almost two years and despite the misleading descriptions, I knew enough not to be surprised. Even so, however, the product just does not work!

At another level, I am very disappointed in Sling. This was a huge opportunity to corner the market as the "media center" device of choice. For $300, why didn't the company include a web browser, so that I could go on the web directly and stream video from there as opposed to having to do it twice, with the additional inconvenience of having to use a computer in the middle? Was that not possible, given that the product is 2 years late and they charge $300? How much more would that cost? Some additional memory maybe?

Second, what's the deal with Sneakernet? Have we gone back 20 years? If you can read from a USB device (which you can't even make work) can't you allow me to read from devices on my network? I have several computers on the network as well as a NAS. My Playstation allows me to browse all these devices, retrieve and stream videos in HD, retrieve pictures and music and play it at high quality and flawlessly on my TV. If you can do it from a USB device, why can't you do it off the network? Even if it requires people to upgrade to a 1Gigabit network for HD video, it is still better than not having the feature at all.

In conclusion, I am very disappointed. The SingCatcher is under-featured and overpriced. Most importantly, it is a buggy product, which is incredible for something that's been in the works for over two years.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars works great for slingbox-to-catcher..., October 27, 2008

By	wrong side of the chasm (CA USA) - See all my reviews

feels like i waited 2+ years for the slingcatcher. happy to have it in hand. no regrets. has worked flawlessly thus far for my application.

i pre-ordered @ amazon, and have now set it up in california to catch signal from a slingbox pro in asia and another slingbox pro within california.

BUMMER:
-> as other reviewers have noted, no mac os support (yet?) for using your computer as a signal source.


PLEASANT SURPRISES:
-> picture quality is good. other reviewers complaining about picture quality may not have adjusted the "resolution" settings within the menus, i.e. you have the option of specifying the "hoped-for" resolution from your slingbox. my slingcatcher by default set this resolution to a lower quality setting. for now (after i switched the resolution to the higher setting) i feel that the picture quality is essentially on par with the average picture quality i have achieved using the pc and mac os software clients.
-> the learning remote: comes with a basic learning remote (for TV on/off, input select etc.). nice touch.

SUGGESTIONS:
-> wish it were cheaper: $199 or less would be ideal. or add some local, on-board DVR (tivo-like) functionality (fine if you require we add an external HD) and i will gladly pay the $289.

overall, two thumbs earnestly up.

five stars if pricing is revisited (as above) and for incremental UI improvements (current UI is good, not great. granted, it's a difficult challenge. steal what you can from mac os). others: show your support to ensure good tech like this keeps coming.

*** 090329 UPDATE **
as of march 29th, 2009 the price has dropped to $160ish.

haven't seen any software updates that have drastically improved the product. however, i still use it daily: 2 units at my place for local and remote streaming and 1 unit at my in-laws. i would never say this is a perfect product, but it certainly is a good value for $160ish.

would love to see:
+ update that provides higher picture quality and punchier control response times (e.g. a local HD slingbox over gigabit switches and cat6 cabling should yield better results than currently observed)
+ how about the option to purchase a universal remote? the included remote suffices, but is weak. imagine a $100ish remote with backlit, touchscreen lcd that rendered the various remotes you need. or how about this 80/20: an iphone universal remote app.?

41 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Slingprojector is terrible, October 15, 2008

By	Peter Singh (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I really wanted for this gadget to be useful. I have been waiting for it to release for a long time now and was particularly interested in the slingprojector capabilities to be able to stream Internet video from sites like Hulu, Netflix etc. to my TV.

I hooked it up via HDMI and gigabit ethernet to my router. The setup was pretty painless. I was able to connect and view my slingbox at a remote site effortlessly. I was a little disappointed at how bad the video looked but attributed that to upload bandwidth from the remote site as opposed to any deficiency with the slingcatcher.

Then the problems really began. The slingprojector software recommends projecting a window at a time as opposed to the entire screen since this is supposed to improve video performance. Window sizes however are limited to 1024/768 which means you have to resize etc in a non-intuitive manner.

Video quality despite various performance changes I made was choppy and unwatchable. I stream video to my apple tv all the time so I know that the network supports high quality streaming. There is nothing I could do to render a decent video image. Even the regular computer screen i.e. non video tasks exhibited a lot of lag between the keystroke on my machine and when it showed up on the monitor. The slingprojector software is also a performance hog and noticeably slowed down the machine.

Finally, to add insult to injury the computer lost its connection to the slingprojector and despite reboots would not connect again. it took a reinstall of the client software and then a factory reset of the slingcatcher to get it to work again.

I will be returning it promptly. I guess it is fine to use as a standalone client to watch a remote slingbox but if you are buying for the sling-projector functionality as I did, I would be wary.