Hands-on with SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone

By Jeff Bakalar on 13 May 2009, 11:21am

After some serious procrastination in the development process, Sling Media has finally released SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone. The app works with your Slingbox at home, and lets you control and watch streamed video from your satellite or Freeview box and PVR on your iPhone or iPod touch.

All of the functionality found in previous SlingPlayer Mobile platforms is still intact. You'll have access to a menu bar that'll let you use a remote-like interface on-screen to control your box, as well as switch Sling devices and manage your favourite channels. What's new are a few gestures that'll allow you to scroll through them more easily.

SlingPlayer Mobile will work with new Slingbox and legacy devices, but Sling officially won't support the Sling Classic, AV and Tuner models -- that means that if you've got a problem with one of those devices, Sling won't be able to help you troubleshoot your issue.

Now here's the real bad news: SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone only works with a Wi-Fi connection, meaning you cannot use the 3G network to stream video. The App Store description says it "only supports streaming over a Wi-Fi connection at this time" (our emphasis), hinting 3G support may be available in the future. We should note that SlingPlayer Mobile will probably perform better on your home network rather than a public Wi-Fi spot.

Performance wise, the software worked well. The gesture response is slightly sluggish, but overall it does work. Picture quality will always depend on your connection, but during our testing it was very good -- although not as smooth as a video you'd play natively off the device's internal storage.

SlingPlayer Mobile costs £18 at the App Store, which is similar to what the company has charged for the software on other platforms. If you're an iPhone or iPod touch user and you've already got a Slingbox at home, the mobile software will really let you get the most out of your Slingbox. The ability to control your DVR will come in handy, though you'll need to find a hotspot to connect.

That said, if you don't own a Slingbox but do have an iPhone or iPod touch, buying one solely for use when you find a public Wi-Fi hotspot isn't exactly practical.

Annoyingly, the other versions of SlingPlayer Mobile on PalmOS, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile phones do allow you to stream video over your phone network (and the PC and Mac versions of the software are free).