I have a Slingbox from years ago, but the problem is that it doesn’t support HDTV. And although we have some nice HDTVs in the house, I find that the family uses them far more than I do. I don’t watch much television — live sports mostly — but it’s becoming more difficult to find an unused screen in the house. Then again, I have plenty of smaller screens between my tablets, smartphones, Chromebook and 27-inch iMac. So I reached out to our resident cord-cutting expert, Janko Roettgers, and asked what might be the best solution to watch broadcast television on these devices.

Janko recommended the HDHomeRun, which he featured in a Cord Cutters episode last year. I was able to snag a new HDHomeRun for $85 on Amazon, which is far less than a new Slingbox. So what is it?

Essentially, the HDHomeRun is a small box, roughly the size of an Apple TV. You attach an antenna to it — I have a very small one that works fine — and connect the device to your home router. That’s it. Inside the HDHomeRun are two over-the-air tuners; both of which use the same antenna for a signal. The tuners pull in local broadcast digital television and then make the content available over your home network.

That works out well because I just upgraded my network router to take full advantage of our 75 Mbps home FiOS connection. I was getting around 15 Mbps wireless speeds with an old Apple AirPort Extreme, but now see 70 Mbps and up from the new Asus RT-AC66U router, which is future-proofed with 802.11ac support. These network speeds are easily capable of streaming HDTV around the house.

My original intent was to use the HDHomeRun to watch content on my iMac and it works flawlessly. I paired the included HDHomeRun tuner software with VLC to view television shows. There are better alternatives out there that I’ll look at in the future, but for now, this setup is fine. But after a day, I decided I didn’t want to be tied to my home office just to watch TV.

Mobile apps to the rescue!

After a little investigation, I found InstaTV in the iTunes App Store. I tried the free Lite version and it works as advertised. The software automatically recognized the HDHomeRun tuner, scanned for channels and in a few minutes, I was watching the local news on my iPad mini. The free version limits you to a low resolution, small window for content, so I upgraded to the full version for $9.99 which supports full-screen playback at native resolution.

Of course, I use multiple devices and platforms, so I set out to find something that would work with Android. Turns out I had great timing.

Earlier this week, a third-party app called HomeRun TV landed in the Google Play store. I found out about it by reading the HDHomeRun user forums and immediately bought it for $2.99. I figured if it didn’t work, I had 15 minutes to get a refund. There was no reason to be concerned however. After a configuration tweak and one additional download — I had to get VPlayer for the video output — I got the software working on my Galaxy Note 2 and caught the late-morning local news.

If you’re going to go this route with HomeRun TV on Android, note that there’s one setting to check. By default, the app is designed to watch television that’s streamed from a PC, likely because there are USB tuner sticks for Windows on the market. To get streaming to work on my Android phone, I had to modify this setting by telling the app to “Stream Video Directly to Device.” Prior to that, I was getting error messages.

While I opted for the HDHomeRun over a new Slingbox, there is an advantage to the more expensive, latter option. It’s fairly easy to get a Slingbox to provide access to content over mobile broadband while away from home. I don’t really need that option, but it’s worth a mention for those that do.

I’m also fairly certain there are a few software options that will let me use my iMac as a DVR for content from the HDHomeRun, so I’ll be looking into that as well. For now, I’m just glad that I can watch a football game on a Sunday afternoon on any of my devices while the 60- and 70-inch HDTVs in the house are in use. You can do the same on any iOS or Android device with this setup.

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The hardware

First, here’s all you need to know about the new hardware in a nutshell: Sling has been an innovator in the space of place shifting, making it possible to stream your TV signal from your cable box to PCs and mobile devices inside and outside of your house. That’s pretty much what the new hardware offers as well, with some added bells and whistles: The new Slingbox 350 is an entry-level model that sells for $180. It’s essentially like the older Slingbox solo, but with a more compact form factor. Also new: Up to 1080p streaming and an integrated IR blaster, so you won’t have to fiddle with extra cables and anymore to control your set-top-box.

The new Slingbox 500.

The Slingbox 500 adds an HDMI connection to the mix, making it possible to daisy-chain it between your cable box and your TV – something that may look familiar to anyone who has ever checked out a Google TV device. And it has two USB ports, which will eventually offer the option to add external storage for personal media – more on that later. Sling has also redone its software, offering new players for mobile devices and the option to beam photo slideshows straight to your TV.

The value proposition

Sling’s media team recently invited me to a demo and briefing about the new units, and their pitch sounded pretty compelling. The basic gist of it: The Internet was supposed to make TV more convenient, but it got actually more complicated. You’ve got apps from operators that work inside your house, but not on the go, apps that have some content but not other shows and apps that work on some carriers, but not elsewhere “This isn’t TV Everywhere. This is TV all over the place,” Sling’s Vice President of Marketing Jay Tannenbaum told me.

Sling thinks that it’s instead easier to get back to the basic idea of place-shifting, which makes your entire TV subscription content available everywhere. Of course, this means that you still need a traditional TV subscription – Slingboxes have never really been about cord cutting, and the new iteration is even less so, as none of the new models features an integrated ATSC tuner capable of receiving over-the-air broadcasts. Sling plans to eventually sell an USB adapter for that purpose, but Sling’s Senior Vice President and General Manager Raghu Tarra told me that over-the-air usage in the past has been “in the single digits.”

The actual experience

Sling send me review units of both devices to test, which made me wonder: who of my friends still has cable? Eventually I found someone gracious enough to host me in his living room for a few hours, and I thanked him by unhooking all of his TV equipment – only to stumble onto a number of bumps on the road. I concentrated on the more capable Slingbox 500 with its HDMI ports – but quickly found out that HDMI simply wouldn’t work with the setup I had at my disposal.

The problem: Some TV operators encrypt the digital signal on HDMI, something that’s known as High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, or HDCP. And in my case, using a Motorola set-top box leased by Comcast, every single channel seemed to be encrypted. Sling is anticipating these hick-ups and thus asking consumers to also connect the box via component cables.

These can theoretically transmit 1080p as well, but it’s unclear if every set-top box will serve 1080p via component. There is definitely one added step of converting the signal to analog and then back to digital, and in my case, the signal looked considerably worse. That alone is kind of a deal breaker for something you would permanently make part of all of your big screen TV viewing.

The other problem is that this fallback hook-up makes the whole set-up unnecessarily complicated, in my case adding probably an extra 40 minutes as I tried to figure out what exactly was going on with the HDMI signal. Said my host: “I would have put it back in the box 30 minutes ago.”

The bigger issue

Of course, I may have stumbled across the worst-case scenario. The Sling folks told me that Dish, for example, only encrypts its HBO channel via HDCP, and they hope that even that will eventually go away. “We don’t crack HDCP,” said Tannenbaum, adding that the company’s own encryption of streams could help to get studios more comfortable with place shifting. “We hope that this will open up a dialog,” he said.

But the bigger issue seems to me that Sling got its value proposition backward. It is launching with new devices that out of the box don’t add that much functionality over the previous generation. Sure, 1080p is nice, but matters little on a phone screen, and just a little more on an iPad.

Meanwhile, viewing has evolved, and the traditional place shifting approach may not work as well anymore as it used to. In many households, people are now watching multiple programs on multiple screens at the same time, with only one of them being a TV, and others including iPads and laptops. But with place shifting, everyone is still watching the same – your cable box simply can’t serve more than one stream, no matter the cable connecting it to the Slingbox.

Sling potentially has some solutions for these problems, as I was told that the box will eventually get access to a VOD service. The company is also looking into second-screen functionality, making use of the fact that its boxes are sitting in between your cable box and your TV, which could allow all kinds of overlays. However, don’t expect the Slingbox to turn into a full-blown media streaming device with a plethora of apps. “We don’t think the world needs another app store,” said Tannenbaum.

Where’s the vision?

And then there is the personal media angle. The new boxes include functionality for Airplay-like photo slide shows from your mobile devices, and I was shown advanced functionality that inlcudes the ability to constantly synch all of your mobile phone’s personal media to a hard drive attached to your Slingbox – and then consume it on any screen. That’s neat, but doesn’t seem world changing. I already have two services backing up all my camera phone photos to the cloud, and a NAS for local copies. So why add yet another media hub to the mix?

Sure, you might say, that’s you – and admittedly, I’m not the average consumer (and being a cord cutter, not part of Sling’s target audience anyway). But I’d argue that the average consumer won’t spend $300 on a Slingbox either. Instead, they’re gonna just install the HBO Go app, and their cable company’s app, and find that it works well enough, despite all of the aforementioned shortcomings.

What’s missing from the new generation of Slingboxes is a vision. Something grand, something that would change TV like place shifting and time shifting have done in the past. The Slingbox 500 may technically be capable of delivering this, but and may get much better over time – but with its current iteration, it’s just a slightly updated version of something that was cool four years ago.

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Showcased Monday at the Cable Show in Boston, TiVo Stream enables users of TiVo Premiere or Premiere Q digital video recorders to view video from their multichannel subscription on devices including the iPad on iPhone.

The transcoding product is similar to EchoStar’s Slingbox, but differs in that it streams or downloads programs to multiple mobile devices without disrupting living-room viewing.

In addition, TiVo also unveiled a new IP set-top box that allows Premiere Q users to view live or recorded TV from any room in the house.

TiVo will debut both products at retail, or through partnerships with multichannel TV service providers including DirecTV, Charter Communications, Suddenlink and the UK’s Virgin Media, later this year.

The offerings come as TiVo has finally re-captured some of its long-lost momentum. Infused by its Virgin deal, the company posted a net gain of 387,000 subscribers using its boxes and DVR interface in 2011, its first usage uptick in several years.

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“SlingPlayer for Logitech Revue now works with the Slingbox to extend your complete living room HDTV experience to another TV in your home, or wherever you want to watch. Access the SlingPlayer app from Google Spotlight and change channels, navigate the program guide, or watch and schedule recordings on your DVR – all on the big screen.”

Sling Media, which is owned by EchoStar, rolled out a dedicated Boxee app for SlingBox owners last month. These apps are a welcome addition for any SlingBox owner, but also seem like an attempt to stay relevant in an era where TV viewers rapidly move to over-the-top and VOD options. Sling admitted as much with its Google TV roll-out when it reminded users who “haven’t used (their) Slingbox in a while” to update their firmware.

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Reached in New York Thursday evening after his first Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) board meeting, Krikorian talked about some of his reasons for joining the board headed by Jeff Bezos. “The combination of Amazon’s proven dedication to being the world’s most customer-centric company and the management team’s passion to continually innovate, makes this a very attractive opportunity.” Krikorian is a longtime Bezos fan.

Amazon hasn’t admitted that it’s near release of a Kindle tablet forked from Android and Krikorian isn’t talking about it either. He should be particularly useful in that area though, as well as the e-tailer’s digital media expansion — including its interest in online video portal Hulu, being shopped around by owners Disney (NYSE: DIS), News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS), Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) and Providence Equity Partners.

On the tablet side, Krikorian is well versed in iOS and Android and has developed for both. He’s also friends with Andy Rubin, who heads Android for Google (NSDQ: GOOG). When he started developing home automation, he initially planned to use iOS to operate the system in his own home but opted instead for more flexible Android.

As for digital media, Sling Media spent considerable resources developing its own video portal. Krikorian and his brother Jason sold Sling Media in 2007 to Charlie Ergen’s Echostar (NSDQ: SATS) before its split into two companies. The second company, Dish, is one of the companies looking at Hulu. With or without Hulu, Dish already owns Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) and is building a video service that would compete with Amazon Instant Video. Krikorian stayed with Sling Media until early 2009 and knows Ergen well.

As an added bonus of sorts, he’s already familiar with Amazon Prime as a consumer. Amazon Prime is the $79 annual subscription that provides special shipping rates. In the last year, Amazon has added and expanded access to streaming movies and TV shows through Amazon Prime Instant Video and it looks like the service will play a key part in many of its other plans.

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EchoStar’s SlingBox allows users to stream live and pre-recorded videos to remote web browsers and a growing number of mobile devices. The set-top box, which has been sold directly to consumers for years, is finally getting more support from service providers. The Time Warner Cable promotion follows the release of a Sling-enabled DVR being offered by EchoStar’s sister corporation and satellite TV provider Dish Network.

Time Warner Cable is making a big push behind high-speed Internet services, with CEO Glenn Britt telling the Wall Street Journal that it’s beginning to think of broadband as its “anchor service.” That push makes sense, particularly as more traditional video subscribers flee the operator.

Over the last several years, while Time Warner Cable has seen a gradual decline in video subscribers, its broadband users have grown. In the second quarter, for instance, video subscribers declined to 12.1 million from 12.7 million a year before. In the same period, the number of people paying for broadband increased from 9.3 million to 9.7 million subscribers.

Giving away a SlingBox for free could provide an incentive for more high-speed Internet customers to upgrade to the Wideband service, which provides a 50 Mbps connection to the Internet. But priced at $99 a month, it’s a pricy step up from Time Warner’s standard 10 Mbps broadband service, which is priced at $29.99 a month.

Not only will the rebate promote its top-tier Internet service, but it could also create some leverage with cable and broadcast networks as Time Warner Cable negotiates carriage fees and rights to distribution of content online. Having a Slingbox will enable Time Warner Cable subscribers to access live and DVR content wherever they are — without the operator having to negotiate TV Everywhere rights to that content.

Time Warner Cable has been aggressive in its efforts to make its programming available to subscribers on a number of devices. The strategy, according to Time Warner Cable Director of Digital Communications Jeff Simmermon, is to make “any content available any time, on any device, anywhere.”

Earlier this year, it launched an app that allows subscribers to stream live shows on an iPad, as long as they’re connected to their home network. That caused a bit of a rift with programmers like Viacom, which sued the cable operator over rolling out the app without securing new rights to its content.

At the same time, Time Warner Cable has been slower than some operators to strike deals with networks to give its subscribers access to TV Everywhere services. While it was the first to make ESPN available for streaming online and on devices like the iPad, it has yet to make a deal for HBO Go content.

As more cable networks and broadcasters like Fox seek higher fees in exchange for broadband and mobile access to their content online and on mobile devices, Time Warner Cable subscribers could use their Slingboxes to get around those restrictions and access the same content anywhere, live or on demand.

Photo courtesy of (CC BY 2.0) Flickr user Fred von Lohmann.

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Xtranormal Videos Run Rampant on Web, Make Their Way to TV; Startup rolls out characters that look a lot like Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer and Andy Rubin. (AdAge)

Watch Slingbox on Google TV; The initial Google TV app isn’t actually an app, but rather a Flash website optimized for the platform. (Zatz Not Funny)

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Samsung Expands Blu-ray and Companion Box Lineup; Company officially announces two Google TV devices. (press release)

Amazon Must Fast-Forward Video Plans; Hollywood executives say Amazon is trying to license content from major film studios so it can start a Netflix-like unlimited subscription service for streaming movies or TV shows. (Wall Street Journal)

Orb BR software comes to PS3 and other Blu-ray players, 1080p streaming for $20; you pop the software into your internet-connected PS3 or Blu-ray player and magically it turns into a top-shelf media streamer. (Engadget)

Users will be able to access live programming from anywhere, as long as they’ve got the right equipment at home. Using the Dish apps will either require an existing Slingbox, or an upgrade to Dish’s SlingLoaded DVR. And since it’s based on Slingbox technology, it will also come with the same restrictions, meaning that you won’t be able to watch a channel on your iPad and a different one on your TV unless you have a DVR with two tuners.

Dish parent company Echostar bought SlingMedia three years ago for $380 million, but Dish has been slow to integrate SlingMedia technology into its pay TV products and services. A DVR with Slingbox features was announced in early 2009, but has only been available to customers since April.

SlingMedia has continued to market its products independently of the Dish brand, publishing apps for the iPhone as well as Blackberry and Android handsets. The company states on it website that it will add “full iPad support” soon.

This essentially means that Dish’s iPad support won’t be anything that customers of other pay TV subscribers won’t have access to — but the closer cooperation of the two corporate entities could give SlingMedia an important promotional boost as well as offer Dish an alternative to other company’s TV Everywhere efforts.

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