Digital Trends

In the world of technology there are a few companies whose names are held in high regard by early adopters for their creativity of products. One is Apple with its iPod, another is Tivo and its digital video recorder. And still another working its way into this ranking is Sling Media with their Slingbox.

What is the Slingbox you might ask? In the simplest of descriptions is the word placeshifting. This 21st century buzz word, according to Wikipedia, is defined as “watching or listening to live, recorded or stored media on a remote device via the internet or over a data network”. And there is apparently no one doing it better at the moment then Sling Media.

Sling Media CEO and co-founder Blake Krikorian recently took time out from a busy schedule to do an interview with Digital Trends regarding the founding of his company, their quick rise to stardom and how they continually need to reinvent themselves to compete in the ever changing consumer electronics marketplace.

Blake and his brother Jason were milling about the San Francisco Bay Area office of their firm id8 Group Holdings, which both advised industry-leading companies on product strategy and invested in new product creation, one afternoon during the summer of 2002. Both being die hard San Francisco Giants fans, they wanted to watch a game via their computers. Surfing the Web brought them to MLB.TV, which they signed up for a subscription to. It was then when they went to stream the game that they got nothing but virtual static. The culprit? Because they lived in the same market as the Giants, the game was blacked out.

“At the end of the day from a consumer perspective this is nonsense,” said Krikorian. “Why the heck can’t I just watch living room TV anywhere I am with any display on I am?”

With this thought in the back of his mind and also armed with knowledge about the coming convergence of mobile phones and PC related content, the Krikorian brothers set out to make a prototype device which would let one “sling my media to anywhere I am”. They teamed with Sling Media co-founder Bhupen Shah during the prototype’s development, eventually folding id8 Group Holdings and starting Sling Media in 2004.

The basic idea behind the Slingbox technology is to let one watch their television, DVD player or Tivo at home, wherever they have access to a broadband Internet connection. A box is connected to the video source or cable outlet as well as being connected to a home network router. Special software installed on a variety of platforms such as laptops and cellular phones works in conjunction with streaming technology to connect remotely to the Slingbox and view whatever video is available from the source as well as offering control options for that source such as changing channels or adding a program to a recording queue on a DVR.

With a prototype Slingbox now developed, they took the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show by force as they wowed press and others alike with their device’s placeshifting technology. They netted multiple awards at CES that year and, more importantly, scored deals with giant CE retailers Best Buy and CompUSA to distribute their fledgling product.

“We got pretty lucky in that the retailers got really excited about it,” said Krikorian.