Technologizer

SlingPlayer for Boxee: A TV App for ‘Cord Shavers’

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I’ve been thinking about getting rid of cable-TV service since at least early 2009. The idea gives me great pleasure. The reality is another thing. For all the Internet video I watch, there’s still some stuff–especially live news–that keeps me paying my monthly tithe to Comcast.

I am, however, interested in melding cable TV and Internet TV–so I’m intrigued by a new feature for the Boxee Box, the Internet-streaming gadget based on a pioneering piece of cord-cutting software. The Boxee Box will now be able to play live TV, thanks to an app that integrates with the SlingBox, the venerable box which hooks up to your cable-TV connection and reroutes the video feed across the Internet.

Now the Boxee Box can snag live TV from a SlingBox, whether they’re in the same house or halfway around the world from each other. The new capability lets Boxee’s hardware–which already gets Netflix, Vudu and vast quantities of online video–double as a virtual cable box. Boxee calls this mashup of cable and Internet “cord shaving,” and it sounds cool.

I’m still looking forward to the day when I’m not paying a large amount of money each month for hundreds of channels of appalling reality-TV programming I’ll never watch, just so I have access to the handful of shows I care about. How’s about 2015 as a new deadline for getting it done?

MORE: Why the World Still Needs the Slingbox