Sling Media’s SlingPlayer Mobile apps get a lot of attention for allowing Slingbox users to hook a box up to their TV, cable, DVR, and other equipment and stream live and recorded video over the web to their phones. But Sling isn’t the only game in town anymore. Competitors Monsoon Multimedia have just launched mobile apps for BlackBerry and Android that let customers with Monsoon’s Vulkano set top box do pretty much the same thing.
You’ll need to install a Vulkano box in your house in order to use the mobile apps, but while Sling charges for access to its mobile apps, Monsoon is making its Android and BlackBerry apps available as free downloads from the Android Market and BlackBerry App World.
The Vulkano mobile apps let you stream video from your home theater to your mobile device, with support for play, pause, fast forward, and rewind. You can also schedule recordings using the integrated electronic program guide.The recordings are stored on the Vulkano’s hard drive.
You can stream videos with resolutions up to 1080i, although they’ll be converted and compressed before they’re sent to your device. The apps stream videos using H.264 and MPEG-4 codecs with bitrates of 150kbps and up.
Vulkano set top boxes run $233 and up
You can check out some more screenshots after the break. Monsoon also offers PC and Mac apps for viewing your content as well as mobile apps for the iPhone and iPad.
