Sling Media, the makers of the Slingbox set top box and SlingPlayer software have taken the beta label off the company's BlackBerry client. What that means is if you own a Slingbox and have it plugged into your home theater setup, you can stream live TV to your BlackBerry - for a fee. The SlingPlayer Mobile client will set you back $30. There's a 30 day free trial if you don't want to commit without trying the software out first, but you'll also need to have a Slingbox. There's no way around that constraint (unless you've got a friend who's willing to let you login to his or her Slingbox account).

Sling also has mobile clients for Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian. And it looks like an iPhone client is on its way. There's a new SlingPlayer for iPhone web page which shows a software demo video, and you can sign up for an email notification when the program is added to the iPhone App Store.

If you have a SlingBox and a BlackBerry, get ready because on December 30th you'll be able to download SlingPlayer Mobile in a free public beta. The public beta supports BlackBerry Bold, Curve 8900, 8820, Curve 8320, Pearl Flip 8220 and Pearl 8120. Firmware must be version 4.5 or higher.

Some EDGE-only models will also work but due to slow video streaming and other versions it is not officially supported in the public beta. SlingPlayer Mobile is already available for PocketPC, Windows Smartphone,Palm OS and Symbian S60 and UIQ.

What does it all mean? You can carry a TV around in your pocket! The SlingBox set top box captures your home cable or satellite signal and allows you to watch it via the internet using the SlingPlayer software. I generally use mine while traveling - my parents don't have cable at all - so at their house I can snuggle up with my laptop and watch whatever is on at home.

I would think the BlackBerry would make for some tiny TV viewing, but it could certainly pass the time in airports and other places where you spend a lot of time waiting. And if you have one of those careers where you carry a BlackBerry because you need to know what is going on in the world, well, this would be the perfect way to be able to watch CNN and other news stations when you need information.

The public beta is free, beginning on December 30th. Other SlingPlayer Mobile players have a 30 day free trial before purchase is required. SlingPlayer Mobile is $29.99. You can expect the BlackBerry version to follow the same pattern after the initial public beta is over. You also need a SlingBox to make everything work and those start at $179.99.

Sling Media has officially launched its Sling.com online video portal, which we first checked out a few weeks ago while it was in beta. If you have a Slingbox, this site is all kinds of awesome, because it will allow you to watch live TV streaming from your home on any Windows PC with Firefox or Internet Explorer.

If you don't have a Slingbox, right now Sling.com is just another online video site that has an assortment of TV shows and movies from Fox, NBC, CBS, Sony, MGM, and web content providers like College Humor. Honestly, you can find most, but not all of the same content at Hulu.

Sling does plan to upgade its software so that Mac using Slingbox owners can also stream live TV. But right now anybody with a Flash enabled web browser running Windows, Mac, Linux or something else altogether can watch the web video streams from Sling Media's content partners - provided you're in the US. The content won't play outside of the region.

Online video portal Sling.com is set to open to the public on November 24th. It's currently in private beta, but we got an early peek at the service. The online video player is easy to use, and there's plenty of content from a number of major US television networks as well as ton of videos from web sites like College Humor and 60frames.

While the selection of videos is pretty extensive, that's not really what makes Sling.com special. In fact, the content library looks pretty much like what you can already find at Hulu. That makes sense, since many of the TV episodes and full length videos are coming straight from Hulu.

What makes Sling.com unlike any other online video site is the way it works with the company's Slingbox hardware. If you have a Slingbox plugged into your TV set, cable or satellite box, or TiVo, you can use Sling.com to watch live video over the web. Sling Media has offered the ability to stream video over the internet since the company's inception. But Sling.com allows you to access live, pre-recorded, and web video all in one central location.

If you have a Slingbox, there's plenty of reason to choose Sling.com over Hulu. If not, the case isn't quite as compelling at the moment. Eventually Sling Media plans to roll out social tools that let users do things like record clips of TV shows and movies using a Slingbox and share them with other users at Sling.com. But that feature isn't available yet.

You can watch Sling.com's web videos in pretty much any browser. But if you want to watch live TV, you'll need to be running Windows and using Firefox or Internet Explorer. Mac support is coming soon. I also noticed a glitch during my test that caused Firefox to crash every time I switched from watching a live program to watching web video, and then back to live video again. Hopefully that issue will be worked out by the time Sling emerges from private beta later this month.

It looks like Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox place-shifting hardware and software are finally preparing to launch Sling.com, a new online video portal first announced in January, 2007.

TechCrunch reports that Sling Media is sending out emails to some beta testers letting them know how to request an invitation to the new site, which will be launching in private beta soon.

So what exactly is Sling.com? In one sense, it will be an online video portal like Hulu or Joost, with content from partner sites including CBS and about 60 other content providers. But Sling.com will also let users with Slingbox hardware record short clips of television broadcasts and upload them to the site to share with others using a new Clip+Sling feature.

The site will also have a "preview of the web-based SlingPlayer software" which will let users watch live TV. I'm guessing this will be a limited feature. If you could actually watch unlimited live TV streams at Sling.com without buying a Slingbox, the company would be shooting itself in the foot.

Sling.com will only be available to US testers at first.

SnapStream Media's BeyondTV application for Windows is one of a handful of applications that should make anyone think twice about purchasing a TiVo or cable company DVR. Like Windows Media Center, SageTV, and MythTV for Linux, BeyondTV lets users record and pause live TV on a PC and do a whole bunch of other things like shrink videos using DiVX or Windows media compression. But one thing that BeyondTV hasn't done a great job of up until recently is allowing users to placeshift or watch video recorded on one PC on another machine.

But the latest beta version of BeyondTV adds a nifty placeshifting feature utilizing Microsoft's Silverlight technology. Users can login to the web administration interface for their accounts to see a list of recorded programs. In the options menu is a button that says placeshift. Click it and BeyondTV will analyze the recorded show and your internet connection and transcode the video in real-time for streaming over the internet.

In other words, if BeyondTV is a TiVo killer (for ubergeeks who would rather build their own, anyway), BeyondTV 4.9 beta is a Slingbox killer (again, for the ubergeek set).

BeyondTV is available for $70 or you can download a free trial version.

Slingbox from SlingMedia is one of my favorite things to use. Being rather addicted to watching the Food Network and TLC's What Not to Wear it's great to just grab my laptop and check out what's on wherever I am. My favorite time to use Slingbox? In the car on long road trips.

Normally to watch your cable or satellite box you have to be there, in front of your TV. With a SlingBox you can shift your viewing to any PC after downloading the SlingPlayer and entering your administrator password. A SlingBox can range in price from $129.99 to $229.99.

Today the SlingPlayer for Windows 2.0 was released with some nice updated features. First, and my favorite, a new program guide. Simply click view, choose show program guide and you no longer have to remember what channels are your favorites from memory. You can scroll through the program guide, just like on your home TV. This makes things much nicer to use in my opinion. You can finally find movies with just a click of the mouse.

Another new feature is the live buffering feature which works like a DVR or Tivo in the sense that you can pause, rewind and record up to 60 minutes of TV. Great for when you need a break to go to the kitchen or also if you are getting a crappy signal for some reason you could record a large protion before playing it so things wil run more smoothly.

The third major new feature is the use of Sling Accounts. Basically if you have a SlingBox and you set up an account you can then use your SlingBox on any computer with SlingPlayer. I can see how this could be useful when I visit some of my relatives who don't have cable TV.

If you've got a TV tuner in your home PC, you can turn your PC into a streaming web video server using software like Orb or SageTV Placeshifter. Now Monsoon Multimedia is getting into the game with the announcement of HAVASoft.

Monsoon Multimedia is probably best known these days as the first company to be sued for violating the GPL. But they also make a set top box that allows users to stream live video over the internet. You know, kinda of like a Slingbox, but less popular.

While Monsoon might not be a household name, their upcoming software does appear to have a few nice features. For example, it will bring some of the cooler features of the Hava set top box to the PC, like the ability to stream video to multiple users simultaneously. If you have a home network, you can also install the software on one PC with a TV tuner installed and use that tuner to record shows on another computer using Windows Media Center.

There's no word on pricing yet, and the release date is listed only as "early 2008," but we're going to wait until we try HAVASoft before we write it off as an also-ran.

Sling Media is announcing the next generation of its SlingPlayer software to go along with the next generation of Slingboxes the company is showing off this week at CES. If you're not familiar with the Slingbox, it's a contraption that you plug into your TiVo, DVD player, TV, or other video source that lets you stream live video over the internet and effectively watch live TV from any PC, Mac, or mobile device running the SlingPlayer software.

SlingPlayer 2.0 includes a couple of nifty updates including a 60 minute buffer that lets you pause, fast forward, and rewind videos instantly, without having to send a signal over the internet telling your PVR to pause first (which can take a few seconds). You also get a new electronic program guide based on your local TV lineup, which makes it easier to flip channels from your PC. And Sling Media has also added the Clip+Sling feature, which will let users save clips from TV shows and movies and share them with friends.

SlingPlayer 2.0 is a free upgrade for current and new Slingbox customers and should be available sometime in the next few months.. There's no word on when we'll see Mac or mobile clients of SlingPlayer 2.0.

Just a few days after open-source developers took Monsoon Multimedia to court over alleged copyright violations, Monsoon has admitted guilt and has begun negotiating a settlement.

What makes this interesting is that the copyright Monsoon Multimedia violated was technology protected by the General Public License or GPL. In other words, Monsoon had every right to use the open source technology. What they were not allowed to do was release a closed source product based on the open source technology.

Monsoon makes the Hava place-shifting box, which lets you stream audio and video content from your TV/cable box/DVD player etc to any internet connected PC. It works much the same way as a Slingbox.

The company used a modified version of the BusyBox software in its Hava software. As part of the settlement, Monsoon will make that code available on its website soon. This was the first copyright case that had gone to court involving the GPL license. Since the case is being settled out of court, the question of whether all the provisions in the GPL are enforceable will have to wait for another day.

It's been a cruel, cruel summer without our beloved NFL football, and pre-season games don't really cut it. Fortunately, kickoff is tomorrow (not a moment too soon for the rabid fans around here) and we'll able to get our fill of long punt returns, bone-crunching tackles, and (hopefully) more hilarious MasterCard commercials.

If despite your best intentions to stay on the couch and catch all the games, you end up needing to be out being, you know, social or something, you can always avail yourself of the latest technology and take the games with you.

Mike Spitalieri over at Laptop Magazine takes a look at five ways to make your football games follow you wherever you go. Unfortunately, only one option is (almost) free, but that's mainly a symptom of a sports league trying to squeeze every last nickel out of fans.

If you need something to keep you occupied between games, be sure to add AOL's FanHouse blog to your RSS feed. Go Bears!

The only thing worse than not owning a TiVo digital video recorder is owning a TiVo unit but not being able to use it the way you want. TiVo fans were disappointed to discover recently that the TiVo Desktop software which allows users to transfer recorded shows to a computer via a wireless network doesn't work with Windows Vista. Although the company claims they are releasing a Vista-compatible version "very soon," for hardcore TiVo users it's not soon enough. Fortunately there are a couple of things you can try that might make the wait a little easier.

In today's mobile Minute, we'll take a look at some of the latest news and software related to Windows Mobile devices.

Silverlight coming to Windows Mobile

Microsoft's Silverlight technology is taking aim squarely at Adobe's Flash, which currently dominates interactive video on the web. But one area where Flash implementation has never been very good is mobile devices. It looks like Silverlight could be the platform of choice for interactive mobile web applications.

Check out this interview with .NET Compact Framework Principle Product Unit Manager Scott Holden for a look at a prototype of Silverlight running on a Smartphone.

After spending several weeks in public beta, SlingPlayer for Mac OS X turns 1.0 today, with hundreds of bug fixes and a redesigned GUI based on user input..

SlingPlayer is Sling Media's software for watching video streamed over the internet from a Slingbox attached to your TV, DVD player, personal video recorder, AppleTV or other A/V devices.

Probably the biggest updates from the beta version include support for remote control of several new Apple products, including Front Row, AppleTV, and the iPod in a Universal Dock or an iPod Hi-Fi.

SlingPlayer for Mac supports PowerPC and Intel processors running Mac OS X 10.3.9 and later.

There's been a ton of news out of Sling Media during the first few days of CES. This morning, the company officially unveiled SlingPlayer Mobile for PalmOS.

A public beta of the Palm client is due out by the end of January, with an official launch date scheduled for the first quarter of 2007. There's no word yet on pricing, but seeing as SlingPlayer Mobile for Windows Mobile has been available for a while with a price of $30, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the Palm version will be comparably priced.

Sling also announced today that they'll be bundling some of their software with new HP notebooks, and they're demonstrating that SlingPlayer works with Vista, although I think the big surprise would have been if their software didn't run on Vista.