Slingbox Starts Retailing Online In India. But There May Be A Slight Problem

SlingBox PRO HD

Sling Media, maker of the television streaming media device Slingbox, has announced that it has teamed with prominent Indian e-commerce portals like eBay India, Rediff.com, and Infibeam, to allow consumers to purchase Slingbox online in India.

While Slingbox has been available in physical electronic retail chains like Croma and Reliance Digital for quite sometime now, this announcement marks the online entry of this device into India.

It will be available in two different variants, namely Slingbox SB 120, and Slingbox PRO-HD. While Slingbox SB 120 will be available for Rs 7,999 ($162.5), Slingbox PRO-HD will start retailing for for Rs 14,999 ($305).

Along with this, the company also announced the availability of Slingbox accessories like Slingbox TURBO, which is a plug-and-play device, which connects your Slingbox to your router if they are in different rooms of your house. SlingBox TURBO will be available for purchase at Rs 4,999 ($100).

For those who are not familiar with Slingbox, it is a television streaming device which allows you to watch and control a live TV source through your computer, tablet, or mobile phone from anywhere in the world, provided you have a working broadband Internet connection. This TV source can either be your cable box, satellite receiver, digital video recorder (DVR), or your video camera.

Speaking at the launch, Raman Venkatachar, general manager and head of operations, Sling Media said:

I see great potential in online shopping as it gives the customer the freedom to shop at ease and choose from a wide range of products, all under one roof. We at Sling are extremely happy to be associated with eBay India, Rediff.com and Infibeam.com and believe this association will help us see online traction in terms of accessibility of our products to our  customers, especially with the festive season around the corner, where gifting is a prominent trend.

Will It Gain Traction?

I’m a little sceptical about the traction this device may get, considering how bad the Internet speeds in India are. We think this device will appeal to only high-end consumers who possess fancy portable gadgets and a high speed Internet connection.

While the Internet scene is slowly improving in India, there is another factor that might hinder the usage of these devices. That is the frustrating Fair Usage policy from Indian broadband service providers, which caps the Internet speed of consumers after a certain amount of data transfer, which varies per service provider.

While I haven’t tried Slingbox myself, consumers are bound to get capped within a week or two every month, with such heavy video usage as purported by the device. After the cap is in place, the speeds will sadly drop down to such a point where this device will be become practically unusable.