Slingbox for high definition and other Friday links

Sling Places Hi-Def Bet [The Bauminator]

If you're a Slingbox user like I am (I watch our service in each of our districts, no matter where I am), the announcement that you can now place-shift your HD programming is great news. For those of you unfamiliar with the Slingbox, it's an Internet appliance that connects to your cable set-top box, sending your cable signal out to the Internet, allowing you to watch your TV channels wherever there is a high-speed Internet connection.

Now, with the new Slingbox PRO-HD, you can sling not only SD channels but your HD channels. One caveat if you're interested in this new product - you'll need a beefy upstream broadband connection at the Slingbox end (1.5 Mbps). Insight Broadband 20.0 provides this level of upstream speed.

For now, just enjoy.  But HD streaming uses far more bandwidth than SD and widespread use of this and other big bandwidth consumers exasperates ISP's bandwidth consumption concerns.  I welcome innovative new uses of broadband but I encourage you to keep a level head and an open mind about what it means, in the long run, for the current all-you-can-eat model.

Discovery shakes hands with YouTube on content partnership [Engadget HD]

Are you a fan of programming on the family of Discovery Channel networks? Discovery Communications has announced a partnership with YouTube that will provide a "robust collection of clips from Discovery's family of world-class network brands."

You can check out the Discovery Channel's YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/discoverychannel. Right now, they're featuring a "Mythbusters" viewers challenge, encouraging the YouTube community to submit videos of myths for the Mythbusters to bust. 

C-SPAN launches gadget-fueled ‘Debate Hub’ as social, political destination [ZDNet]

I don't think anyone knows whether or not we're going to have a presidential debate this evening, but I want to pass along this link, just in case. C-SPAN has announced the ultimate companion to the presidential debate, and they're calling it C-SPAN Debate Hub. Watch the debate and simultaneously watch the reaction of web users nationwide in real-time. The Debate Hub will feature videos that you can embed into your blog, updates from Twitterers on debate topics, and blogger reactions.

This tool looks fantastic - an aggregator of all the debate information one could ever want to peruse. Check it out at http://debatehub.c-span.org/.

Speaking of C-SPAN, have you seen those man-on-the-street commercials asking regular folks who funds C-SPAN?  Only one person guessed.  Not the government, not some big media company, not advertisers.  It's a consortium of cable operators.  Brian Lamb came to us 25 years ago with this far-fetched idea that we put cameras in the House and Senate to follow the proceedings.  All he needed was a pile of money which we raised from the cable companies in the US cable industry in 1983.

Today, C-SPAN is three television networks, a radio network, a go-to website for Congressional information and a huge archive of the proceedings over the past 25 years.

Hitwise: Facebook growing fast, MySpace still on top [CNET News]

There are some interesting stats out on social networking web sites. While Facebook has experienced strong growth over the past year, it's still only the second-most visited social networking site to MySpace. Surprisingly, overall visits to social networking sites were down 17 percent during the last year.

In the U.S., MyYearbook, Tagged, and Bebo round out the top five social networking sites.

Internet service providers want to set industry guidelines for online privacy [LA Times]

Here's a summary article of yesterday's Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Internet privacy. Along with Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon proposed an ISP self-regulatory approach toward safeguarding users' private information on the Internet.

This article from Computerworld also indicates the ISPs represented at the hearing endorsed an opt-in principle for behavior-based advertising.

Comments

[Chris Buechler]

Standard def Slingbox can chew up over 3 Mb from what I've seen on one hosted on a business class 10 Mb up and down Internet connection, so the 1.5 up on Insight 20.0 can't even provide the best quality with standard def much less HD. Hard to say exactly without seeing the product, but it's safe to assume you'll need 3-5 times the upload that Insight offers to use Slingbox HD and actually get HD quality. A secondary problem is having the downstream at the location where you're playing the content, even if your Insight connection had the upstream to push 5-6+ Mb for HD, many places don't have that kind of downstream connectivity which the player would require.

[Daniel]

I just started hosted TV service that compliments the above device - http://parkmytv.com hosts my place-shifting device so I get ‘excellent’ bandwidth and video quality PLUS don’t bother those watching TV at home while I change channels on them :) I don’t have to figure out how to install, wire, wifi just fedex my device to them OR buy through their service - works like a charm for me :) They are in limited trials so was fortunate enough to get in early…