Sling Media Sling Catcher media streamer

Sling Media is best known for its Slingbox devices that send television over the internet. This new product, however, plays video rather than sending it.

The Sling Catcher needs to be connected to your network using an Ethernet cable, as there’s no built-in wireless.

It connects to your television via composite, S-video, component video or HDMI, and supports both standard Pal and high-definition (up to 1080i) TVs.

The Catcher has three modes. The first is to watch and control a remote Slingbox. We tried this with a Slingbox Solo, itself connected to a cable set-top box. The results varied massively.

With a fast network connection delivering video at 4Mbits/sec, the Catcher provided an excellent picture that looked every bit as good as the original, and using the remote to control the cable box worked fine.

On occasions where the video stream stuttered down to below 200Kbits/sec, however, the results were unwatchable. You’ll need a good home network to get the best from this mode, but we found that Sling Media’s own powerline kit did the job.

The Catcher can also watch video sent from a PC’s screen using the Sling Projector software. We were sceptical, but the results were impressive: the projector is easy to use and makes it easy to select an area of the screen to send. We projected a two-hour TV programme playing in Windows Media Player, and it only stuttered twice. You’ll need a fairly powerful PC to use the projector, though. The Catcher can also show video files on a connected USB device. This works well, with a wide range of formats supported.

All in all, the Catcher is a good – if expensive – product for a niche market. If you have a Slingbox or want to watch online videos on a television, it does the job well. On the other hand, we wish it supported UPnP streaming, as well as Sling’s proprietary systems.