While Sling Media is the king of place-shifting with the Slingbox and SlingPlayer, they’re not the only player. HAVA is probably the next best known brand, but Sony is a player in the market too with their ‘LocationFree’ products. Now Sony is branding the LocationFree products under their VAIO name in the US. The VAIO LF-V30 Base Station is the first LocationFree product to get the new branding. This follows an earlier announcement that they would be bundling the LocationFree Player Software onto VAIO notebook PCs.
LocationFree is a bit more accessible than HAVA – while HAVA is limited to just Windows PCs and Windows Mobile devices, LF works on Windows PCs, Macs, Windows Mobile devices, and the PSP. (Software for the Mac and WinMob sold separately.) Still not as broad as the support for SlingPlayer, which works on more devices.