Multimedia Streaming: Product Thoughts and a Sony Sale

A promotion I recently saw on Dealnews and Techbargains has prompted me to get some long-planned thoughts down on cyber-paper. Sony's LF-PK1 LocationFree Player, which originally sold for $350, is now $89 at eCost (and, I just noticed, $100 at Amazon). That's a great deal, particularly considering that it includes the LFA-PC20 one-license-per-PC software package that is $30 standalone.

I had the chance to test-drive both the LF-PK1 and its primary competitor, Sling Media's Slingbox, while on sabbatical last summer. The intent of both products is to enable streaming of live or pre-recorded television and other multimedia content to network-connected clients, both LAN and (after opening necessary firewall holes) WAN. The table below summarizes some of the differences between the two products, based both on published specifications and my experiences. Note that I tested the original Slingbox (which Maury's also a fan of), a product that's also now selling at an aggressive discount to the original MSRP.

The LF-PK1 can wirelessly connect to the Sony PSP either in a peer-to-peer fashion or via a more traditional router intermediary. Full LocationFree support is built into newer PSP firmware revisions; I was generally quite pleased with the delivered image quality. The LF-PK1 streams audio and video to the PSP using MPEG-4's Advanced Simple Profile codecs; for PC playback, it auto-selects between MPEG-4 AS and MPEG-2 depending on the detected amount of available bandwidth. Note that the LF-B10 and LF-B20 (the former without access point support, the latter with it), the replacements for the LF-PK1, also support H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC, aka MPEG-4 Part 10), as does the PSP. H.264 will likely deliver enhanced image quality versus MPEG-4 AS at a given streaming bitrate.

I tested Slingbox playback both to my PC (over both Wi-Fi and CAT5) and to my iMate SP5m (over both Wi-Fi and EDGE). I was frankly amazed at the very watcheable video quality over the now-archaic 2.5G cellular data connection, although I wouldn't recommend attempting a streaming session over an even older, slower GPRS link (unless, of course, you're into Max Headroom stutter). Interestingly, over a less bandwidth-constrained Wi-Fi connection the SlingPlayer Mobile Smartphone client still restricted the streaming bitrate to around 200 kbps.

The original Slingbox has also been superseded by several next-generation models with varying combinations of A/V inputs, as well as the presence or absence of an NTSC tuner and of infrared control over a tethered video source. The Slingbox A/V, for example, is essentially a first-generation Slingbox minus the analog TV tuner. The high-end Slingbox PRO additionally supports both high-definition (if you shell out an extra $50 for the necessary cabling) and widescreen video sources, although streaming high-def from a LAN-based Sling Media box to a WAN-based client requires more upstream (note the emphasis, reflective of where the multimedia data is originating) bandwidth than many ISP's guarantee with consumer broadband accounts. Sling Media claims that all three models, being commonly based on an upgraded Texas Instruments video processor 'engine', deliver higher Windows Media Video quality at a given bitrate than their predecessor.