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After waiting for the oft-delayed device, Slingbox fans can finally be happy again.  The Slingbox PRO—HD has begun shipping.  The PRO-HD is the first Slingbox to offer broadcast of digital signals.  Previous devices converted HD video to SD standards before sending them out to your laptop or whatever device it was being viewed on.  The Slingbox PRO-HD will broadcast up to 1080i.  While it isn’t 1080p, it’s still better than SDTV, and unless you own a very large laptop, 720p is probably fine anyway.

The press release says that HD can be broadcast “to a laptop or desktop computer both in and around the home or remotely while preserving the best possible picture quality,“ which makes me skeptical about the use viewing of HD outside of a home network.  Although, using the new SlingStream 2.0 technology Slingbox claims it will have good quality audio and video “in both high and low bitrate environments.“  Without anything to test that theory with, it’s hard to actually prove, but would be nice if it does work.  The SlingMedia 2.0 will have a buffer for live video so you can pause, rewind, and track through video easily.  Unfortunately Mac users are left out of that as of yet, with only 1.0.4 of the SlingPlayer available as of now, and there is no mention of any linux version now or ever. 

The Slingbox PRO-HD costs $299.99, which is a bit expensive considering there are other ways of place-shifting.  The easiest way being Orb.com, a free-to-use program that broadcasts your media over the internet for viewing on other internet-enabled devices.  It can broadcast to anything with a web browser, as well as an Xbox 360 on the same network as the computer hosting the video.  it does require a TV tuner for your computer to broadcast TV, which can be found on Newegg.com for as cheap as $16.99.  Of course, there are other, easier ways, such as using hulu.com for some TV programming, putting video files on an external hard-drive and carrying that around, or just putting video files on a laptop.

Read [Business Wire]

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