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Is there any other clients in the works? PSP, Linux, Palm?

Let's just say that we don't view the SlingPlayer as a Windows Mobile only platform, per say. We view it as a Windows Mobile flavor. All of those things that you mentioned are certainly on our roadmap, and it's about priorities for us... we're just trying to knock one down at a time.

What about an SDK that would let developers build their own Linux player? I think you'd get some enterprising developers out of the early adopter community. You guys do the hard work, and the community makes the client.

I think that that's an excellent idea. Whether or not it gets implemented as an SDK or other tools. In general, the whole concept that you're raising is that you got a community of people that are passionate, or want to create something for their own needs or just provide for others, which is amazing about the Internet. It's amazing what some people will do for other people, whether it's information, software, or whatever. We definitely are interested in leveraging that, whether it's skins or clients...stuff like that. Again, it's about priorities and timing, but we definitely want to leverage that.


It seems to me more of a trend that CE companies, in general, are turning more towards an open source kind of model, to see what happens.

We'll see. I think there's always a balance between opening it up and controlling the experience a little bit to make sure it's delivered the right way. Even though we've had some really good success early, it's still very early in our company. So, there's always a balance of controlled experience versus opening it up, and we'll just constantly try to reevaluate where we are on that, and leverage the power of the community.


Once you pluck down the $250 to buy one, is it reasonable to expect the consumer to think it's going to be an increasingly valuable experience? I say this because I've noticed through my own experience that I download something, and I get new features and functionality that didn't before exist. To me, that makes the Slingbox a different kind of product.

That's an extension of our early discussion about continuing a relationship with the customer. It's like here's this product, we care about how you're using it, and we care about making it better. A lot of it is a technical architecture approach as well that lends the ability to do that because we've done everything in software; even the hardware device is just embedded software running on a DSP. So we are constantly working on improving the resolution, improving Lebowski/SlingStream algorithms so we're better taking advantage of the capacity of a given broadband connection; that's a living, breathing thing, and it gets better every day. It's core technology that will continue to improve, and we'll push that to customers as they want it.


You mentioned Lebowski. Is it still Lebowski or not? We've heard that name was going away.

It's funny you ask. It came about because we're just big fans of the movie...simple as that. I can't remember what event it was... maybe right before CES last year. We had a press release Blake and I were reviewing right before it needed to go out, and it was late [at night]. We didn't really know what to call this thing, instead of making a commitment to what it really was, like SlingStream which kind of sounds "corporatey", we said let's give it a code name, because we always enjoy doing code names, and Blake came up with calling it Lebowski. We went with it, and it get laughs, people remember it. What I like about it is that maintains a little of the personality and it's not so corporate, but it's kind of weird (laughs). In meetings, we have a hard time resisting the impulse; when we say SlingStream we always say "codenamed Lebowski...." even though there isn't a code name anymore.


One last question. Is there anything that SlingCommunity members, and other early Slingbox owners, can do to help spread the word?

I think one of the challenges that most consumer products companies face is driving awareness. And, there's always awareness on a couple different levels. There's the type of awareness you get from some of the ads we're doing on the radio, where it's like Slingbox, Slingbox, Slingbox, and if I were to introduce myself as the founder of Sling Media, they may say, "Oh! The Slingbox." That's great; the first level of awareness, but that doesn't mean they understand what the product does, and most importantly how consumers use it. So, maybe the most important thing is to share personal experiences about how they use the [Slingbox]. For me, it's working late, which seems to happen all the time, and watching the Warrior's game from my office. I don't have a TV there, but I get to watch while I catch up on e-mail for the day. So, the main thing is use scenarios. Show people how you use it; talk about how you use it.


We'll certainly do that. Thanks again for taking the time to talk with us, and thanks from all of us early adopters for creating such a great product.


The SlingCommunity Team would really like to thank Jason for sitting down and sharing some of his time and insights. We certainly hope to bring you more conversations with Jason, and other Sling Media employees in the future.

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