Until now, you would have used a PC or mobile phone to receive television streams from your Slingbox, but that was all before the SlingCatcher. Sling Media is about to reveal the SlingCatcher, their new device that allows you to 1) receive video and files from your PC to your TV and 2) TV streams from your Slingbox and other connected devices either in your home or on the road.

There's a ton of buzz around this and they become rather confusing as they make it sound like the SlingCatcher actually sends content from your PC to TV. On the contrary, the SlingCatcher will be on the receiving end allowing you to display streams from your home-connected PC or Slingbox.



The new device comes with an array of ports to connect to your TV and Internet including component video ports, S-video, HDMI, an ethernet port, USB ports, and is wireless-enabled.

Sling Media will also release an updated version of the SlingPlayer that will allow you to sling content from your PC.

Reuters interviewed Sling Media Chief Executive Blake Krikorian, who said the product differentiates itself from other "media adapter" type products by not limiting the content that one can steam. "The beauty of the Internet is the totality, it's all of it," he said. "You give people subsets and it just doesn't fly."

According to Krikorian, that's why Apple's new iTV product is limiting. "Maybe it will connect to the iTunes service, or a couple of different Web sites that have been reformatted for the TV, or certain videos in formats and not others. That's one major reason why they fail."

"With SlingCatcher you’re able to wirelessly project anything you have on your laptop, any type of media, any Web site, or Web-based video and project it wirelessly at the push of a button onto your television set. I can go to any site, any video content, any formatted content and get it to play on my big screen TV. That’s a huge difference between what we’re doing and what others are doing."

SlingCatcher will be available in mid-2007 for around $200.