Watching What You Want, When You Want With Slingbox

Joining me this week on PowerTalk is Brian Jaquet, senior marketing manager  of Slingbox. We discuss not only about the past, present and future of place shifting but also what it means for Sling Media and how the company looks to compete in this next battleground. This is what Ted Loeonsis, the acting CEO of Groupon, partner at Revolution Growth and owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics says about Slingbox:

“Slingbox, which turns my iPad into a television, has become an invaluable app for me. Everything that I have on my home TV's satellite setup I can now watch on my iPad, wherever I am in the world.

Over the last year or so we’ve talked with a number of people at a variety of companies. This week we’re venturing into some new territory as we hone in on what I think is one of the next battleground to be fought in what I call the connected device space. That’s a key part of my Always On, Always Connected PowerTrend.

We’re in the middle of what I call the smartphone bloodbath between Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Blackberry, LG, and a number of others. 

We’re starting to see the same dynamic take shape in the tablet space as well. 

The area that I’m talking about is the Connected Home and the living room in particular. Odds are you have a set top box, maybe a DVR already and perhaps even a gaming console sitting under your TV. 

You’ve probably noticed that given the rise of the DVR and on demand programming, you and people like you that lead busy lives are abandoning what’s been called appointment TV. 

Instead, we’re seeing a sharp rise in what’s called placeshifting.

In fact I bet some if not most of you are placeshifters

That’s a person who consumes content on one device even though its stored on another one.  Slingbox  invented placeshifting back in 2004 and during the ensuing years"Slingbox" has become to placeshifting what Kleenex has been for tissues.

Over the last decade, the ability to store, watch, send, has not just grown, its exploded as first mobile phones then smartphones, tablets and connected TVs have shipped not by the millions, but by the billions. I’d argue the concept placeshifting has expanded and  now include areas like document synchronization, file sharing and other cloud-centric features from companies like Boxee, Dropbox and cloud applications by Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and others as placeshifting ones. 

Brian and I discuss not only about the past, present and future of place shifting but also what it means for Sling Media and how the company looks to compete in this next battleground. Trust me, this isn’t a conversation you’ll want to save and listen to later.