12 months ago, all I wanted was to stream what the slingbox was already outputting directly to a TV, rather than have a laptop or PC in the middle. However, it seems sling have decided to make this product an all things to all men type box, which has obviously delayed production, increased costs, increased complexity and will ultimately end in a worse product I feel.

Isn't it trendier to bring out the box ASAP, then update the firmware later these days anyway?

Every single one of these type of devices (remote media playback for tv/radio) requires you to install the special (usually windows only, mac if you're lucky) software on a PC before it can access any media.

Why can't they log onto a samba or NFS share, is it really that hard? Not all of us have windows based servers that they wish to leave on and logged in all the time.