Sling has lifted the curtain on a new "AirTV Player"—a set-top box that combines IPTV with an OTA antenna for local channel reception.
Like every other set-top box on Earth, the AirTV Player hooks up to your Internet connection and plays video, and here the SlingTV service is the primary provider. As a bonus you get Netflix, local TV, and access to the Google Play Store.
Thanks to Zatz Not Funny, we know the device is powered by Android. The site found the FCC docs for the AirTV Player, which indicates it was built by a company called "Technicolor." In the results database for Geekbench, a popular Android CPU benchmark, there is a "Technicolor AirTV Player" listing. The listing shows a device running Android 6.0 on a 1.2GHz ARMv8 SoC with 1GB of RAM. We're not sure if that means it's a custom build of Android or just Android TV.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday December 27 2016, @03:14PM
Only available in the US. Very annoying.
I use something called an HDHomerun device that's similar. It's about the size of a paperback. Plug an external antenna into it and it uses its two HD tuners to stream channels over your local network. It's supported by my TV directly, and by MythTV, which I can't say enough good things about. It's a great setup and made cutting the cord very painless. MythTV especially made my cable PVR look like a toy. And, all of this is available outside the US. Not that I'm bitter.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday December 27 2016, @06:39PM
+1000 on the HDHomerun. Simple and elegant...one Ethernet port and one coax (apparently it has an internal splitter for the antenna). My MythTV backend is very old and I had three pcHDTV HD-5500 cards in it (yes, old old PCI 2.2 cards). One recently died and I bought a new HDHomerun connect. Totally awesome for sure. Now I have four tuners. When my other PCI cards die I'll just throw another one of those on the network.
The hdhomerun_config command line program is great too...took me no time to figure out how to check signal strength etc. Great stuff in every way.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday December 27 2016, @07:26PM
There's actually a nice little Android app that makes it easy if you're up in the attic moving an antenna around as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @07:57PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software) [wikipedia.org]
That will let you finish cutting the cords, forever.