SlingPlayer and Tubestick: Streaming television for iPhone

Anything you can do on your computer, you will soon be able to do a version of it on your iPhone. Or at the very least, there’s a developer trying to make that happen. While Apple wants you to buy your videos from the iTunes store, two companies—Sling Media and Equinux—are going to make it easier to record from your TV and stream the video to your iPhone and iPod touch.

Slingplayer, which I spoke about briefly, works as an internet-based remote control. You set the Slingbox (the hardware component) on your TV, and it uses LEDs to control your DVR over the internet. With an onscreen remote control, you can change channels, set up shows to record, or watch the stuff you’ve already stored, from anywhere in the world with a broadband connection.

At Macworld, they’ve been demoing their new SlingPlayer iPhone client. It works on the same principle: find a WiFi connection with enough bandwidth, and you can remote into your TV from anywhere and stream video live. You flick the screen up and down to change the channels, and since it’s WiFi based (Edge network not recommended), it works with the iPod touch.

Tubestick goes about the same issue in a different way, turning your computer into a DVR by using a USB dongle to connect to over-the-air broadcasts or a coaxial cable. Once you’ve got that set up, you can watch TV on your computer and set it to record shows. The amount of space a program takes up depends on the video quality, one hour of HD for a particular program worked out to about 3.5GB of hard disk space.

If you’re using your iPhone on the same network as your computer, you can stream live video to the iPhone and use it as a remote control to pause or change the channel. To get the video on the internet, however, you’ll have to choose the program you want to watch before hand, and upload it either to MobileMe or an FTP site. From there, the tubestick software will compress the video for the iPhone, making it easier to stream. Again, this works over a wifi network, so it’s compatible for the iPod touch.

Both of these iPhone clients are expected to be available “soon;” Sling expects to have their app ready by the end of the first quarter, and Tubestick thinks theirs will happen sooner than that. It’s all part of the dark and mysterious Apple approval process.

Products [Slingplayer, Tubestick]