SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry Now Generally Available

Sling Media recently let us know that its SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry has officially exited public beta and is now available as an over the air download from mobile.slingmedia.com using a BlackBerry Smartphone’s web browser. It is available for a one-time charge of $29.99 and you can try it out for free for 30 days to see if you like it. As we discussed before, SlingPlayer Mobile lets you use your cell phone to remotely view and control your Slingbox connected to your TV at home.

Sling claims they made several enhancements to the software during the beta period, including:
• Ability to add/edit Slingboxes and Channel Favorites directly on SlingPlayer Mobile, not just via SlingPlayer 2.0 for Windows, which in the past was then propagated down to the BlackBerry
• Additional setting to optimize low bandwidth streaming
• Additional convenience features, e.g. current connection type indicator, volume level indicator, keypad lock, in addition to general UI improvement
• Enhanced aspect ratio/display mode support
• Audio track selection if available as part of the channel program

Among the list of supported models are BlackBerry Bold, Curve, and Pearl. While Storm users are still left in the cold, Sling Media says it is working with Research In Motion to bring SlingPlayer Mobile to additional BlackBerry smartphones. Device support is also dependent on geography and carrier in some cases, so subscribers are encouraged to reference the complete list.

As I think about the Sling Media and RIM partnership, it strikes me that this interface is a great example of the promise of “quadruple play”, or the combination of voice, video, data, and mobile applications. You use 1) a mobile voice device (your cell phone) to send a command over a mobile network that is 2) connected over the Internet to command a box back at home (Slingbox) that is connected to a video device (your TV), which then 3) streams in real-time the video output of that TV over the Internet to an IP-connected device including a PC or a mobile phone. I guess the only thing missing is the ability of the baby-sitter to use the Slingbox to make a voice call to the remote user to stop switching American Idol over to the locally televised Red Sox game. :-)