Slingbox

How TV coverage of a cricket match can be sent via the Internet to a distant laptop-even a mobile phone –using the slingbox (arrow)

  They were all talking about the slingbox, a palm-sized gadget which, attached to your TV grabs the content flowing from the cable, digitizes it and sends it through the internet to anywhere in the world for you to catch it- with a laptop or PC.

          Even as the US media raved about it, the latest avatar if the Slingbox was on display at the annual developer conference of Texas Instruments(TI), which ended here on Friday.

             Its ticking heart is a special digital signal processing chip from TI. The Slingbox was designed and developed just one km away from the conference venue by a small team of Indian engineers.

             The newest model costing $110(Rs.4000), worked with all popular smart phone operating systems- which means you can catch a Bollywood movie or cricket coverage from your home TV, virtually anywhere in the world, even on a mobile phone or pocket PC.

 Features:

             “Clip and Sling”- the ability to record and share portions of the content, with friends, using a few clicks

 “Slingcatcher”- the ability to download content directly from the Internet without having to use a PC.