‘We didn’t change anything,’ Sling Media’s John Santoro told Ars. ‘AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us,'” Foresman reports. “Santoro explained that SlingPlayer Mobile has always contained code to adapt the stream quality to the given network conditions. AT&T has been in discussions with Sling since it was first released last year, but AT&T never asked the company to make specific modifications. No changes were made to the app’s 3G streaming capabilities between its being barred from AT&T and now.”
Foresman reports, “‘Whatever the reason, we’re just glad AT&T has approved it,’ Santoro told Ars. ‘We’re just waiting for Apple’s OK, now.’ The revised app has been submitted, but has not yet been approved for the App Store.”
Full article here.
Did I miss something here? They didn’t change anything, but they have a revised app?
They had to revise it because the current version is restricted from working on 3G. They had to turn that ability back on.
Something had to change in the App to allow it to run on 3G now, since it was Wi-Fi only before.
The code was there, but 3G was blocked at ATT’s request. The “revised” app simply unblocks the 3G streaming capability that always existed.
Ohhh! Well that makes sense then.
Hmm, that SlingPlayer is expensive… Were there no other apps to watch tv over 3g in the US before? Here in Europe you can get channels from the US live over 3g for free, for quite some time…
@Asterix
No, the content providers here are draconian in their approach to allowing access to their media. Not sure why they’d be any less strict in Europe, unless it’s a regulatory thing.
Finally…..now if we can only get Skype to fall in line we’re all set.
Nobody changed anything.
ARS reported it wrong when their reporter wrote that AT&T;said that Sling modified the app to make it more efficient on their network.
AT&T;never said that. AT&T;never asked Sling to do anything.
Once AT&T;tested it thoroughly on their network, they approved it.
Did I miss something? I thought Apple and AT&T;told Congress that AT&T;had no say in app approval.
@MrMcLargeHuge
It seems at least here in Switzerland it isn’t very strict. For example, I can watch Snooker (sports) live on my iPhone with BBC2, which isn’t possible via satellite, because the BBC sold the exclusive rights to a sports-channel called Eurosport… I am wondering myself why this is possible on the iPhone, I mean that an app like this gets approved. You can watch many US-channels like HBO, MSNBC, many FOX, CSPAN, and sports stuff. All over 3g.. So I am not sure whats the problem with the US. To slow 3g-network? Here we have two carriers with iPhone, one private and one public, and ok the private one is sloow, but the Public one (run by the governement) is really fast.
What this means is AT&T;is trying not to look like it was all their decision, when the reality is they are just now getting around to upping their network to support more broadband 3G.
@asterix: Elgato has their EyeTV app here in the USA that allows users to stream their home TV to their iPhone over wifi. It works great, and it only costs $5. I think the Sling app is way too expensive at $30. The EyeTV app also “secretly” worked over 3G if you knew the secret way to activate it in the app (since disabled in a later update version of the app). But they also released their 3G web-app version which runs under Safari on the iPhone. It works – not as well as the wifi app but not bad, limited primarily by the strength of AT&T;’s 3G coverage (which is pretty mediocre at present).
Now that Sling has gotten permission to stream video over 3G with their app, I’m wondering if AT&T;feels confident that they have finally upgraded (or are very close to upgrading) their capacity to handle all these new video intensive apps that all of a sudden have gained official (i.e. “no jailbreaking required”) approval, such as Ustream Broadcaster, Qik, Sling, etc. And hopefully Elgato will be able to issue a revised EyeTV app too that streams from 3G without having to use Safari as a delivery platform.