Sling Player coming to iPad, H.264 support


While assumed, it appears that Sling is in fact working on an iPad app for its streaming video box. Dave Zatz at the Zatz Not Funny digital media blog has a tidbit about the Sling app for the iPhone OS.

"When it makes a noticeable difference in quality, we will definitely provide higher resolution streaming," Sling's Mobile Product Marketing Manager was quoted. "The iPad is a good example of a device where we are hard at work on this, but unfortunately it won't be there at the April launch."

Sling currently is available on the iPhone OS, which allow linked Sling set top boxes to stream content from your home. Essentially you hook up a Sling box to your cable box, antenna, or DVR and the device stream content over your home network. If you're network is set up to be externally accessible, the content can be viewed virtually anywhere with a sufficient network connection, including 3G on the iPhone.

Users should be able to run the iPhone app just fine on the iPad, however, to view in full 9.7-inch glory the video image will have to be doubled. A native iPad app should deliver higher resolutions, which would be a pretty cool thing.

Higher resolutions will require more network bandwidth, so it will be interesting to see how things work over 3G. Zatz also reported that the company is working on H.264, which may help address the bandwidth issue.

What's Next for SlingPlayer Mobile? (iPad!)