Do I love Seinfeld? Absolutely. Big Bang Theory? Without a doubt. Colbert Report and Daily Show? Yea, buddy. And now, thanks to the guys over at Sling Media, I, along with all the other Android users, never have to be without said shows again.
Let me start out by saying this: I don’t have a SlingBox. (SlingMedia allowed me to connect to one of theirs for this review) However, after having time to review the SlingPlayer app for Android and use it on a daily basis, I may consider getting one… after bumping up my cable subscription, that is. But, hey, who cares about MY needs? Let’s get to the good stuff.
I downloaded the app, “SlingPlayer”, from the market. It set me back a pretty $29.99, but downloaded relatively quickly. Here’s where things got a little tricky, but probably does not apply for most users. I have an HTC Hero on Sprint, rooted and running a custom, overclocked ROM, “darchdroid 2.7″. After downloading the app, every time I would try to open it, it would spin my screen to landscape, and then go straight back to the home screen. After contacting tech support about the issue, running through some basics (autokiller apps, data connection, etc.) and then telling them about my ROM, they responded with:
“Ah – yeah – custom ROM. That’s almost certainly it – particularly cause our app is so processor intensive and we read settings and do things differently based the hardware specs that we see.
We don’t support custom ROM’s unfortunately. So I’m not sure what we can do for you on that device.
Sorry…”
Helpful? Not specifically, but with that being said, I went ahead and threw a different rooted, overclocked ROM on, and the app worked just fine, along with about 5 or 6 other custom ROMS and a stock 2.1 ROM I tried out over the following days. So, note to the readers, MOST custom ROMs should be just fine, but there are a select few that will not support the app, resulting in Sling Media also not supporting you. Moving on! I also took a bunch of screenshots from my Hero, so you can see what the app actually looks like for the consumers.
When I first got the app to load, I was presented with a login screen. As I stated before, I do not have a SlingBox, however the wonderful folks over at Sling Media were nice enough to let me use one of theirs. Once logged in, I was presented with a directory screen:
After randomly choosing “Sales 117″, I was asked for the SlingBox password. Once I typed that in, SlingPlayer informed me that it was “locating”, then “loading”, and finally “starting”. And viola… TV! Channel 3 started playing automatically.
My initial reaction, as a non-SlingBox owner, was a little bit of confusion. There are a lot of options and controls in SlingPlayer, and I didn’t really know where to start. After about 4-5 minutes, I had the controls down, and was ready to give it a whirl. Let’s take a look at some of the features.
Tapping anywhere on the screen gave me the basic controls. All the most-used buttons that would be on any remote are here: left, right, up, down, ok, back, page up and page down. This was easy enough to maneuver. Any click of up or down would – you guessed it – change the channel. One of the things that was nice about getting to a new channel is that it still displays all the channel information at the top of the screen, just like it would if you were watching the TV itself.
This process can be a bit sluggish; After hitting up or down, the video would get very laggy for about 5-7 seconds, then the channel would change, and after about 5 more seconds, I would get the actual video on the new channel. Total time to change a channel: roughly 10-15 seconds. I also noticed some menu choices at the top of the screen (see above), and decided to start messing with them.
When tapping the play arrow at the top, I was presented with this screen (see above). It didn’t take me long to realize that these were controls that were mainly designed for DVR playback. Note: There was no DVR connected to this SlingBox that I was using, so I did not get a chance to try DVR playback.
I then tapped the group-of-buttons icon at the top, or as I lovingly call it, the ClusterButton.
This presented me with a set of number keys. I was able to use these to change to a channel of my liking. Nothing interesting, persay, but a really nice feature to have, so that you don’t have to cycle through the channels one at a time.
The next button really interested me. What can I say? I’m a sucker for “miscellaneous” menus.
“Wow.” I remember specifically saying that out loud… wow. It was here that I was able to see just how versatile this app is. This app isn’t just the basics of watching television. It allows you almost the exact same control, if not more, than you would have sitting on your sofa in your underwear with a bag of Frito’s. So, just out of curiosity, I hit the “Menu” key on the phone itself, to see what else it would bring up.
I was presented now with some of the same options I had in the Misc menu, along with an aspect option. This was wonderful, because it allowed me to switch to widescreen mode. I then tucked the menu away by hitting “back”, and got back to digging around in the Misc menu. Here are some screenshots for your viewing pleasure:
PROGRAM GUIDE:
SEARCH:
Both of these menu choices worked wonderfully, and I was able to use them with no problems. The standard controls I mentioned earlier integrated just fine.
But here’s the big question: How is the quality? When I was connected via EVDO (3G), the video was skippy, even with full signal. the shows would lag about every 30-60 seconds, and then skip to catch up with itself. Certainly not unbearable, but slightly annoying at the least. However, when connected to wifi, I (obviously) had much fewer skips… about every 5 minutes, and only by about half a second, just enough to notice, not really enough to annoy. In an hour with SlingPlayer on wifi, I watched two 30-minute episodes with a total of 9 skips, lasting no more than a second. However, on 3G, I counted a total of 16 skips in the span of 30 minutes, some lasting up to 4-5 seconds. To be fair, most of the skipping happened in the beginning, and then the stream seemed to level itself out. The app is a bit of a battery drainer as well. I noticed my phone getting quite hot over the EVDO network, and my battery dropped by about 17% after 30 minutes. But, hey, what can you say? It’s streaming video over a cell network. That has ALWAYS been a drain on battery.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
This app is truly wonderful and innovative. The amount of work that has gone into making this program intuitive and simple is quite obvious to this writer, and I must say, I am impressed. The streaming quality over the cell network could be a little better, and perhaps a “quick start guide” or tutorial when firing up the app for the first time would be a nice thing to see as well, but hopefully these are things that will be worked out in future releases. And with a price tag of $29.99, I initially thought that the app was too expensive. However, after seeing everything that it’s capable of, I would say it is being offered at a much more reasonable a price than I originally gave it credit for… although seeing it drop down to $25 or even $20 wouldn’t make me complain. All in all, I give this app an 7.8 out of 10, based on the following:
- Video Quality: 6.5/10
- Ease of Use: 8/10
- Intuitiveness: 8/10
- Menu Controls: 9/10
- App Appearance: 8/10
- Battery Usage: 7/10
- Pricing: 8/10
- Total: 7.8/10
If you’re the kind of person who does a lot of travelling, or just cannot stand to be without your favorite TV shows anywhere you are, and you have a SlingBox, I think that SlingPlayer is an app that you’ll want to add to your collection.
An original article by Dustin Karnes
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