Things took an odd turn when we went to add our USB storage devices. When we plugged in our WD PassPort, Sling’s user interface told us it was unsupported. This turned out to be because the PassPort is formatted with NTFS, which is a file system the SlingCatcher doesn’t recognize. To solve such issues, Sling Media has a utility called SlingSync that is part of Sling’s desktop software download. SlingSync will not only reformat a drive with the Sling-friendly FAT32 file system—which we didn’t do because that would have destroyed our PassPort’s WD Sync configuration—but it will also transcode a wide range of file formats into formats compatible with the SlingCatcher. To do this, you simply have SlingSync scan your desired media folders to index the contents. Compatible files will be shown with a green dot next to them. Files needing conversion show up with a yellow dot. Simply highlight these and hit the Convert button. (You can also multiple-select files and batch transcode them by hitting Convert All.) When SlingSync is finished, you won’t see the file name change, but each file will now have a green dot next to it. Just hit the Transfer button and select your USB storage drive as the target. If you get serious about using the SlingCatcher, we’d recommend exclusively using SlingSync to load your USB drive with files to avoid unintentional headaches.