Sling.com launches its joust with Joost
Sling Media has launched the beta of Sling.com for watching online video content or remote Slingbox content from a user's home. It's not nearly as splashy a beta as when Joost first arrived on the scene.
Sling.com is one part destination video site, and one part remote access to home Slingbox content -- sort of like Hulu for Slingbox owners. In fact, a majority of the programming initially available on Sling.com comes directly from Hulu -- at some points, the content actually says so in the lower right corner.
Like Hulu, users may create a profile through which they can subscribe to shows and create their own programming feeds. But the real appeal of the site is the ability to access home cable, satellite, and DVR content from anywhere a high-speed connection is available without having to download the SlingPlayer software client.
In BetaNews tests this afternoon, we found that some of the Sling.com content that did not come from Hulu...did not come from anywhere else, either. Shows that were featured on the front page of the "WB Classic TV" channel would link directly to a page that says, "This video is no longer available | You may have mistyped the address or the page may have moved." If you think about it, technically, both cases can't be simultaneously correct: Either the video no longer exists, or the thing the user requested wasn't really a video. So not the friendliest dialog we've seen -- all of which makes us eager to try out that little "Feedback" button hovering along the right side.
This particular problem was probably more related to Sling.com's handling of pages, as content featured elsewhere on that same channel was retrieved for us with no problems.
Our tests reminded us of a critical scene from the movie "Tucker: The Man and His Dream." Specifically, the parts of the showcase that are closest to us are the ones that were polished to perfection, while the parts tucked away seemed somewhat slapdash. For example, the description line for WB Classic -- "It's not old. It's classic." -- could have gone a bit farther in describing what one would actually find on that channel. And the description of content for the MSNBC channel did not match what was actually there. While the description reads, "Stay current with daily news with MSNBC," what was actually there were excerpts from the TV channel's documentaries, all of which were dated no later than last July -- not exactly daily news.
Currently, the Web-based SlingPlayer supports Windows XP or Vista running either Internet Explorer or Firefox.
"The problem is, expired videos crept back into our promo marquees," Hirschhorn told BetaNews. "We have the fix in place on QA, which will be released in tomorrow's publish."
When BetaNews checked the site this morning, indeed, the links to non-existent videos were replaced with fresh links to videos that did play, including on the "WB Classic TV" channel.
Earlier in our e-mail exchange, Hirschhorn remarked, "They don't call it beta for nothin'!"
11:55 am EST December 3, 2008 - Letting it be known that the battle is effectively joined, Joost this afternoon let BetaNews know that it has signed on eleven new content partners to its online program list of 46,000 entries, by its own count.
"All of the video on Joost is professionally produced," a Joost spokesperson told BetaNews this morning, "and streams on-demand to people around the world for free in a high-quality format."
Among Joost's new content partners this morning are the producers of a regular series of videos from Animal Fair magazine that features pet rescues; the agency which represents the producer of a documentary on the lives of the members of rock band Guns N' Roses; India-based mobile Web series producer Rajshri Media, which syndicates "Bollywood" shows; automotive enthusiasts' video producer WebRidesTV; and the producers of what is described as an "international hit TV series" called "Cheaters," which follows the lives of people as they cheat on their own spouses.