Sling Box

[questionmotives]

I did a brief search and did not find any thread on this. Mods, feel free to move to a different forum if you feel necessary, but I thought it was appropriate here with the number of posts I see asking how people can watch Flames hockey when outside of Calgary.

With a bit of extra time on my hands I thought I would share my thoughts on the SlingBox, a device that allows you to watch your home television from your PC. If you have ever listened to the Jim Rome show you would have likely heard about it already.

I purchased a SlingBox Solo a few weeks ago for my Dad, who recently moved to Turkey and has no access to North American programming. It cost $250 with taxes, and are sold at Best Buy and Future Shop.

The SlingBox itself is quite small and sleek looking, and the set up was relatively easy. It requires hooking the box up to your satellite/cable receiver and also your router. Once set up, all you need is to create an account (no charge) and enter your password and in seconds you are watching exactly what you would be at home.

Let me say the thing works great! There is a few second delay, but as long as your internet connection is decent it plays great.

If you are a person that travels a lot, or works out of town this is a great option. A PVR receiver is a good idea, as you can then record whatever you like and watch it when you have time. I guess it depends on your time zone.

Anyways, just thought I would share this with CP. Now you have no excuse to miss a Flames game, EVER! If anyone else has one of these I would like to know your thoughts.

[Kybosh]

Agreed, the slingbox is great. Like you said though, a good/reliable hi-speed internet connection is vital. I could not for the life of me find a fast enough connection anywhere in SE Asia. Also, for you guys that use ipod touch or iphones, there is a slingbox app that works really great. The slingbox picture is surprisingly good on those handheld devices.

[spartan]

Originally Posted by Kybosh

Agreed, the slingbox is great. Like you said though, a good/reliable hi-speed internet connection is vital. I could not for the life of me find a fast enough connection anywhere in SE Asia. Also, for you guys that use ipod touch or iphones, there is a slingbox app that works really great. The slingbox picture is surprisingly good on those handheld devices.

Is it worth 30$ though? I am still on the unsure side of things mostly due to the lack of 3g support. If it worked on rogers internet I would certainly dish out 30$ but for wifi support only it limits where i can use the sling.

[The Ditch]

Love my slingbox it's great. Also, when I had my blackberry the app was awesome it worked over 3g an honestly wasn't bad at all for what it is. Sucks that the iphone you need a wifi connection to use it. Guess I don't have much to add but when I'm travelling it is the best, especially for watching Flames games.

[CETokyo]

I've been using my slingbox since 2005 and it works great.
The box is in Calgary and I'm in Tokyo.
Having a good upload connection speed for the slingbox is probably the most important consideration.
The latest versions (2.0) of the windows slingplayer software are buggy and messy.
I find the connection speed is much more important for the recent versions than it was with previous versions.
I have a newish PC (i7 CPU) and still had trouble with slingplayer 2.0.
I have reverted to using slingplayer ver. 1.5 becuase its very stable and can connect even on a slower speeds.

If you have trouble with slow connection speeds try the older slingplayer versions.
I got slingplayer 1.04 to run on a 10 year old Toshiba Portege laptop and it works great.
Older slingplayer versions don't have the latest bells and whistles but it works well - the new version doesn't work as well for me.