SlingCatcher delayed--again

This is just getting silly.

The makers of the popular Slingbox have been promising the SlingCatcher for almost a year and half now. And once again, the projected release date will come and go quietly.

Sling Catcher delayed again. This time, they're crossing their fingers for a release date sometime before the end of this year.

(Credit: Sling Media)

Gregg Wilkes, vice president of sales for Sling Media--which is now owned by EchoStar Communications--told a frustrated customer in an e-mail that the goal to release the device during the second quarter of this year will not be met.

Wilkes writes: "Will the catcher ship in Q2? No. We are upgrading the user experience and making enhancements to the feature set. These may or may not all ship at the same time. Will the Catcher ship in '08? All indications point to this happening in 2008."

The SlingCatcher is a set-top box, separate from the Slingbox, that brings video content from a Slingbox to another TV in a house, or from an external hard drive. The SlingCatcher also lets users project Web content to a TV screen, either wired or wirelessly, through an application called SlingProjector.

The device was originally introduced at CES 2007, and shown again at CES 2008, which was when Sling was floating the Q2 time frame.

[hevans]

already done?

Hasn't Apple Computer already done this? Why wait and wait for
something that's already on the market?

[afterhours]

eyeHome or AppleTV fits this niche

Been using an eyeHome and eyeTV with an old Mac G4/500 for
years as a media server. Paid maybe $400 for the whole kit three
years ago. AppleTV does pretty much the same thing.

Pity elgato didn't keep the interface or product line up -- their
eyeHome was way ahead of its time.

[gck105]

This is nothing like AppleTV. This device will stream content from a DVR, Cable Box, DVD Player, or Satbox to another TV, in your house or not. It "catches whatever your slingbox is playing. AppleTV doesn't do that.

[gavotter333]

The Sling catcher and Apple or Crapple TV are nothing like each other. One fills arrogant Mr jobs pockets with your money for highly overpriced content. That takes days to download and the sling catcher is a portal to your own content/cablebox and I imagine Echostars media offering. The apple TV is pertty much a flop for non apple adicted clooneys and I cant ever see it being anything than a glorified Ipod video sort of HD. I have been using sling boxes since there release and its one of the cleverest devices that has ever come to fruitician. I have them all over the world and very excited not to have to use a mac mini to do the job on my HDTV. Sort of makes everyone else look like there fumbling in the dark and missed the boat.

[tsailipu]

In addition to showing Slingbox content, I really want to show/stream wirelessly whatever I can see on the desktop -- if I remember correctly, this is their so-called "Sling Projector" feature. Come on, I have wanted this feature since 4 years ago. AppleTV doesn't do it right, and we are still waiting for SlingCatcher? Sad affairs for these media companies. There are so many thing to watch on-line now that just simply allowing consumers to stream wirelessly whatever they can watch on the computer is already a good enough step to start with.