True Convergence Emergence: The Sling Media Story

Sling Media was founded by brothers Blake and Jason Krikorian, and Bhupen Shah. Together, the founders have more than 45 years of experience defining and developing media "convergence" products for companies such as General Magic, Philips Electronics, Microsoft, Samsung, Toshiba, Hitachi and Dazzle Multimedia (There may have also been a few summer jobs manning the drive-through window as well, but that’s neither here nor there).

The Slingbox™ product vision came during the 2002 baseball season when the San Francisco Giants were in the middle of their World Series Championship hunt. Blake and Jason, being San Francisco natives, were disappointed that they were not always able to see the Giants in action while traveling (this didn’t stop them from bringing foam finger carry-ons, however). So after some experimentation with various commercial products, they quickly realized nothing available in the consumer market could do want they wanted, which was to watch their own TV while they were not at home. They pooled their collective expertise with Bhupen, and the resulting development became a small refrigerator sized Slingbox (although storing beer in it was inadvisable, as trial and error soon proved). But over several months the box began to shrink and the video quality got better. Much better.

Today’s Slingbox has a sleek industrial design and works with many different TV sources allowing you to not only watch, but also control your favorite video playback device. So whether you're in your backyard, your local Starbucks, your three hour snow delay in Chicago, or your vacation home in the south of France, you can stay current with your local news, your favorite TV shows, or even that Big Lebowski DVD.