SlingCatcher MyMedia - An Introduction

The MyMedia function of SlingCatcher was one of the key features I was looking forward to being able to use with this device.  I really didn't have the need (or so I thought) to stream my Slingboxes inside my own home, but I do have a large amount of digital video files in multiple formats... and the MyMedia function of the SlingCatcher has shown great promise for that.

I was fortunate enough to be a part of the beta test team for the SlingCatcher. Now that I've seen it - what do I think?  Well, I know Sling has worked really hard on this and when it works - it works very well.  But, it is still a bit rough around the edges.  The good news is that the SlingCatcher can play a large number of different types of media files.  The bad news is that some files play, and some don't.  The SlingCatcher has a fairly narrow range of video and audio bit rates that play, however, I expect the playability of files to improve.

Setting Up SlingCatcher

In order to play media files on the SlingCatcher, you'll need to attach a FAT-32 formatted USB hard drive to one of the USB ports on the back of the unit.  Yes... I said FAT-32!  Keep in mind that if you attempt to format a large FAT-32 drive in Windows, that you will be limited to 30 gigabytes of space.  In order to format disks larger than that, you'll need to use a third party utility.  Sling is going to have documentation on their website to help users to this.  The other disadvantage with FAT-32 is that there is a 4 gigabyte file size limitation.  Therefore, you will need to make sure that all of your media files are smaller than 4 gigs.  This includes any DVD .iso files.  If you have ripped full DVD archives, these are typically around 7 gigabytes or so.  If you have these stored as .iso files, they will not copy on to the hard drive used by the SlingCatcher.  The SlingCatcher uses WindowsCE for Set-Top Boxes as its operating system, and it is my understanding that the choice of FAT-32 was due to a limitation of this OS.

One advantage for those of us who use Mac OS X is that OS X can easily format any size FAT-32 partition, and it is the only Microsoft Windows partition format that can be easily written to (NTFS partitions are Read-Only in Mac OS X.)

Why network attached storage was not used with the SlingCatcher is unknown to folks outside of SlingMedia.  As in the case of FAT-32, it could be an operating system limitation.  It would be so much easier than having to plug in a drive to the USB port.

When you first plug your USB drive into the SlingCatcher, it is recognized and will begin scanning the drive for media files.  Once the scan is complete, you will have access to all of your media content.

The MyMedia Function of the SlingCatcher can be reached from the main menu:

If your drive has a partition that is not recognized, you will see an "unsupported" item in your list of media drives.  If you select that item, you will get a message telling you that only FAT-32 is supported:

Once you select a supported drive, you will get the following set of options:

Your videos can be arranged on your hard drive in folders.  You can choose categories of shows or content such as "Action", "Suspense", "Kids", "TV Shows", etc. You would set these folders up on your computer at the time you copy the files to the drive.

The "My Videos" selection takes you directly to a list of all your videos on the drive.

The Search Function allows you to enter a few characters in the name of your item, and the SlingCatcher will search the drive for it:

There is one more menu that is not shown in the image above, and that is "Favorites."  You can select any of your videos to be in your Favorites list.  Note that the Favorites list shows up at the top level of MyMedia.  As such, if you have multiple drives plugged into the SlingCatcher, it will list the favorite items from all the drives.

As I said, the MyMedia function is somewhat rough around the edges when it comes to playing back media files.  Click over to the next page to see what the SlingCatcher does well, and the areas in which it can improve.

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