Slingbox 700U Wins Gold, Best in Show at IDEA Competition

Sling Media’s Slingbox 700U has earned a Gold Award and one of just three Best in Show Awards in the Industrial Designers Society of America’s 2010 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) competition.  The product was selected from a pool of 1,855 entrants.

“IDEA10 is the most prestigious design competition in the world and we’re elated to be honored with our partner New Deal for the hard work and creativity we have put into this product,” said John Paul, executive vice president of Products at Sling Media.  “At Sling Media our focus has always been on great design and this award takes us to the next level in delivering beautiful, innovative products.”

Sling Media (a wholly owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corp.), in conjunction with New Deal Design, designed the Slingbox 700U to be crafted from a single piece of recyclable aluminum in the form of a honeycomb which serves as both the product enclosure and an efficient heat-sink.  The smallest Slingbox to date connects with a single USB connection to a DVR.  In real time the Slingbox 700U decrypts incoming video, transcodes it and finally, re-encrypts it for secure Internet playback anywhere in the world using very little power.

“The absolute but meaningful reduction of the elements and the resulting functional clarity and aesthetic are as close to poetry as one can get in industrial design,” said IDEA 2010 judge Stefan Pannenbecker from Nokia.