14 DAY TRIAL // While the Apple TV has seen a lot of interest from the hacker crowd and a lot of effort has been put into making it work and do things it was not supposed to do out of the box, the hackers are not alone. Companies are jumping on the wagon and getting their devices to work with Apple's.
In a recent interview with CNET, Brian Jaquet from Sling Media, confirmed that they were hard at work, testing their Slingbox with the Apple TV. When ready, the two devices will let you stream anything in your iTunes library to a mobile device via the Internet. Such a possibility looks truly enticing, especially considering that the upcoming iPhones don't come with a lot of storage built in. Streaming would make the storage a non-issue when it comes to digital media.
Dave Zatz blogs on the subject, "Yes, I can confirm this is accurate. (I work for Sling Media.) The Slingbox currently supports over 3,000 AV devices (cable boxes, DVRs, DVD players, etc) via IR and we've got many more in the pipeline. For Apple TV, you'd use the component pass-thru on a Slingbox Pro with HD Connect to remotely view, or listen, to your content. Our SlingPlayer software (computer and mobile) offers an audio-only mode, so we're not just talking iTV [sic] video here? Select an iTunes playlist, switch to audio-only if you'd like (reducing bandwidth), and listen to your music anywhere you've got Internet. I don't have anything to say on availability other than we're currently in testing and it is coming?"
The Apple TV and Slingbox could potentially be a very powerful combination, allowing access not only to movies and music, but also to podcasts and video podcasts, without the need to actually sync them to portable devices.