Slingbox Discontinued, Services Sunsetting

Slingbox will no longer function as of November 9, 2022. Sling Media, a subsidiary of DISH, announced that they were closing shop on November 9, 2020. At that time, they said that all Slingbox servers will be permanently taken offline 24 months after the discontinued announcement date (which is, again, November 9, 2020). When November arrives in 2022, ALL Slingbox devices and services "will become inoperable."

Per the announcement, Sling said "most Slingbox models will continue to work normally, but the number of supported devices for viewing will steadily decrease as versions of the SlingPlayer apps become outdated and/or lose compatibility." That goes for every single Sling device you've ever owned or (barring madness) will ever own in the future.

In a general Q&A session posted by Sling Media, the sunsetting of services was explained. "We've had to make room for new innovative products so that we can continue to serve our customers in the best way possible." This might seem like an absolutely goofy way of saying there'll be different sorts of Sling products in the future, but the company went on to say that they will not be releasing any new products, point blank.

Sling Media's Slingbox products will be discontinued. Sling Media is owned by DISH. It's entirely possible that some of the functionality included in Sling products in the past will be moved to DISH products in the future. But don't hold your breath.

If you somehow managed to purchase a Slingbox product any time recently, Sling suggested that "The Slingbox warranty is for 1 year," and that "if you purchased your Slingbox from an authorized dealer in the United States or Canada and have a copy of the receipt, your warranty will be covered under the original terms and conditions."

Slingbox will not be shipping any product from this point forward. Per the release this week, "most authorized resellers have been out of stock for a couple years."

If you're using any sort of Sling product right now, be it hardware or software, we'd recommend you stop as soon as possible. This is a period of time where the ending of development for products (especially software) means malicious parties can potentially gain a foothold in the security of said services. As Sling is ending services, they'll be far less concerned with the concerns of users than they would have been in the distant past. Time to look for Slingbox alternatives – starting with NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV.