Slingbox, one of the older names in streaming media hardware, will soon be no more. Sling Media announced that as of November 9, 2020, the Slingbox line of products are officially discontinued, as spotted by Slashgear. What’s more, the company says Slingbox servers will be taken offline 24 months after the announcement, meaning all Slingbox devices and services will effectively cease to operate at that point.
In an FAQ page, the company says it made the decision to drop the venerable line so that it could “make room for new innovative products so that we can continue to serve our customers in the best way possible.”
As for the related SlingPlayer app, the company says maintenance updates will continue for some time on specific versions, but no new development work is expected. To recap, here’s a list of platforms still offering the SlingPlayer app:
- iPhone/iPad (paid)
- iPad (free)
- Android phones (free)
- Amazon Fire TV
- Amazon tablets
- MacOS
- Windows
- Chromecast
Apps for Android tablets, Android phones (paid), Roku, and Windows Phone have already been discontinued and you can’t redownload them.
As Sling Media itself points out on the FAQ page, the company isn’t shipping new hardware and most resellers have been out of stock for some time. In fact, the company announced it was halting production of new Slingbox devices back in 2017. So this announcement impacts existing customers much more than any potential new users, but it does add on a final chapter in what has been a long-running name in the industry. For those unfamiliar with the line, Slingbox was first developed back in 2002 as a way to remotely view pay TV, DVR, and other content — a practice that has evolved by leaps and bounds over the past two decades.
If you’re a current Slingbox user and you have questions or concerns about the announcement, you can check out Sling Media’s FAQ page here.