Sling Media Inc. is an American technology company that develops placeshifting and Smart TV solutions for consumers, multiple-system operators and set top box manufacturers. The company is based in Foster City, California, and was a subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation (acquired in the fall of 2007). Their initial product, the Slingbox, debuted on the US market on July 1, 2005. The EchoStar business unit was part of a corporate assets exchange with Dish Network at the beginning of 2017 and now operates as Dish Technologies Corporation under Dish Network.
TV Placeshifting Moving to the Mainstream
Download: https://tweeat.com/2vGkTC
In 2007, Sling introduced the Slingbox SOLO, a third generation box that was a "streamlined version of the Slingbox Pro".[7] It provided a high quality standard definition video stream and a lower price point. This model was followed up in 2008 by the Slingbox PRO-HD, a high-end device that supported placeshifting HDTV (1080i) video and currently is the only Slingbox to include an ATSC tuner for over-the-air HDTV broadcasts.[8] The Slingbox SOLO was also later repackaged as the Slingbox 120 for special vertical and international markets.[9]
The Slingbox 500 was positioned as a platform for next-generation Smart TV capabilities. In addition to placeshifting, the Slingbox 500 included streaming apps from Dish Digital, including Dishworld and Blockbuster On-Demand, as well as the ability to manage and view personal media, including video. The Slingbox 500 had Wi-Fi networking and HDMI passthrough capabilities. However, because of restrictive HDCP DRM, Sling still recommends that customers use component cables for placeshifting.[12]
Early in its history, the Slingbox caused widespread speculation of its possible legal implications.[30] High on the list of issues cited by critics, was the ability to provide a loophole around proximity control, potentially allowing people outside the approved viewing area for events, especially sports, in which distribution traditionally has been restricted by time and region. However, the practice of placeshifting is not unlike that of timeshifting, which has been upheld in courts across the world due to the personal nature of a timeshifted rebroadcast, which is deemed "non-infringing fair use". Furthermore, Sling Media's technology limits access to a single authorized user, which prevents unauthorized or multi-user access thereby maintaining the personal nature of the placeshifted content, and keeping it within the "private use" terms and conditions set by most copyright-protected content.
In January 2013, EchoStar and Sling Media sued Belkin and Monsoon Multimedia for infringing on five patents related to placeshifting.[39] In March 2013, Sling Media also initiated a complaint with the ITC to block the importing of Belkin and Monsoon Media products[40] related to the @TV and Vulkano products, respectively. The ITC complaint also targeted chips from C2 Microsystems.
Sling TV is an American over-the-top internet television service that is owned by the Sling TV LLC subsidiary of Dish Network. Unveiled on January 5, 2015, at the Consumer Electronics Show, the service aims to complement subscription video on demand services for cord cutters, offering a selection of major cable channels that can be streamed through smart TVs, digital media players and apps.Sling TV is led by CEO Roger Lynch, who formerly served as the executive vice president of advanced technologies for Dish Network. The services precursor, the ethnic television service DishWorld, was also brought under the auspices of Sling TV LLC and was rebranded as Sling International. Sling TV officially launched on February 9, 2015, after offering the service on an invitation basis in January of that year. As of November 2015, the service has approximately 394,000 subscribers.Dish Network began to trial over-the-top ("OTT") internet TV in 2012 with the launch of DishWorld, a service providing access to over 50 ethnic and international television networks that was initially made available through an app for Roku digital media streamers. In carriage deals struck during 2014 with companies such as A&E Networks, The Walt Disney Company and Scripps Networks Interactive, Dish Network began to acquire rights to distribute their networks as part of an over-the-top television service ? a move that served as a stepping stone towards a mainstream OTT offering from the direct broadcast satellite provider.In November 2014, Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen explained that the company planned to launch its OTT service by the end of the year, and was aiming to have it cost around $30 per month. He explained: "the regular linear MVPD business is a mature business. You cant just go back every day and say Im going to raise my rates to make my budget. You have to figure out other revenue streams and get other people to pay for your product and watch more minutes of your product."The OTT service was officially unveiled as Sling TV on January 5, 2015 in a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas; the service is co-branded with the Sling brand owned by Dish Networks former parent Echostar, which also co-branded and provided placeshifting technology for the providers Hopper with Sling multi-room DVR system. Dish did not provide any specific details on when the service would be launched, beyond "soon". The DishWorld service will be absorbed into the Sling TV subsidiary and rebranded as Sling International, while there are also plans to launch a Sling Latino offering, an OTT service that would incorporate Spanish language networks, in the future.Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch explained that the service was designed to target the viewing habits of the 18?35 demographic, which he believed was being ignored by the traditional pay television industry (and is also represented by its slogan, "Take Back TV"). Lynch argued the services approach required Dish to be selective in how it built the services lineup, stating that "it would have been easy for us to do deals earlier on if we just agreed to say let?s just take these big pay TV packages and put them online. We would have ended up with $60 or $70 bundles. We dont think that is the way to reach that demographic. We spent a lot of time working with programmers to make sure we had smaller bundles, lower costs and more flexibility". He also noted the importance of reaching a deal to include ESPN in the service, which he felt was a sign of validity for the provider.After an invitation-only beta, Sling TV officially launched on February 9, 2015. That same day, Sling announced a carriage deal with AMC Networks, allowing networks such as AMC, IFC, BBC America and SundanceTV to be included in the service as well. On February 16, 2015, Sling TV announced an agreement to carry all four channels of Epix as a premium channel option to its customers.On April 1, 2015, as part of a wide-ranging deal between Dish Network and Time Warner that included the renewal of its carriage agreement for the Turner Broadcasting, Dish announced that it would add HBO to Sling TV as a premium channel add-on, which would include the primary linear channel (although excluding HBOs six multiplex channels) and on-demand programming content. The premium channel was added to its service on April 9, 2015.Sling TV debuted Sling Latino on June 4, 2015. The service features two Spanish-language packages, "Paquete Total" and "Paquete Esencial". Customers can purchase two additional add-on packs, "Colombia" and "España". This service does not require the purchase of the "Best of Live TV" package.Sling TV is not designed to be a full substitute for a "traditional" pay television provider, such as Dish Networks satellite service, but as a complement to subscription-based online services (such as Hulu and Netflix) and broadcast television. Its base service costs US$20 per month, as opposed to the upwards of $60 to $90 (depending on the tier) that subscriptions to other pay television services cost; customers are not required to sign a contract after subscribing.
Like many of the components of computers, motherboards have not always been as advanced as they are today. Motherboards on early PCs did not have many integrated parts located directly on the board. Instead, most of the devices, such as display adapters and hard disk controllers, were connected through expansion slots. As technology advanced, more and more devices were built in directly to the board itself. At first, this began to create problems as manufacturers began to find that if one of the devices on the motherboard was faulty or in some way damaged, that the entire motherboard must be replaced. This led manufactures to change the design in a way that allowed them to remove faulty parts easily and replace them, especially parts that are growing and changing so quickly, such as the RAM or CPU. Today, a motherboard comes equipped with many parts working in conjunction with each other. One can find anything, from back up batteries, keyboard and mouse connectors, to cache memory chips, in close proximity to the CPU. The computer is able to do tasks faster as its components continue to be closer to one another. The advancement of technology has allowed for these parts to become smaller and more powerful, allowing more surface area on the motherboard to fit more devices. It is common today to find even audio and video components built into it as well. With technology moving as fast as it is, one may wonder what a motherboard will be capable of containing in the near future.[9]
Since solid-state drives (SSDs) are hard drives that use flash memory technology instead of hard disk platters they have no moving parts. They also no longer make noise, consume less power thus generating less heat, and are much faster than hard drives. Since they are much faster than hard drives, the performance of the computer would also be improved. Running programs, opening files, saving things to the disk, even browsing the web will be much faster. Also with a mechanical hard drive, physical heads have to move around to read data from the disk while in a solid-state drive data can be read and written on any location thus there is no penalty in performance. Not only are solid-state drives faster but they have also become less expensive that upgrading to them is much more affordable and reasonable. Even further, installing solid-state drives is not too difficult or complex. It is basically the same as installing regular hard drives. Also if the decision of upgrading to solid-state drives seems a little too final, it is possible to just add a solid-state drive alongside the hard drive. Thus not only having more space, but also having the ability to keep the old mechanical drive.[29] 2ff7e9595c
Comments