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A gadget that does what it claims to do, the Slingbox

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The Slingbox from SlingMedia is a small little device that looks like three jumbo pieces of silver chocolate. The goal of the device is to allow you to plug it into your existing AV system, and share your TV, Video etc. over the network to either a remote machine or a machine within the same network. The device has a few caveats but nothing too serious, namely:
  • Only has Windows 2000 and Windows XP client software (are there any other OS's out there? )
  • Only one machine can connect to it at a time, this makes sense as the machine has control of the remote etc. but it would be nice if my Brother and my Niece could watch at the same time.

The device was a breeze to setup and if your network router has support for Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) it even automatically configures the port forwarding etc. for the device. The device doesn't need a computer to function, which is a good thing, for as crazy as it sounds I don't have one in the house. We had a Tivo in the office which wasn't really getting used so now the Tivo is the frontend to the Slingbox, so now my Niece can go in and watch episodes of Malcolm in the Middle, or the upcoming Desperate Housewives and my brother can go in and watch the huge collection of Family Guy episodes.

Performance and picture quality is pretty good, with it adjusting the compression depending upon available bandwidth, so with my cable modem it tends to stream out at about 340k, which is only 10k less than the advertised 350k up on my cable connection. Obviously it's not DVD or real TV quality, but considering you could be accessing your home TV from a hotel room it's perfectly good enough.

The Software comes with a virtual on-line Tivo remote so you even get access to all the Tivo features, 30 second skip hack etc. are all there. I do wish the software had a feature where you could hide all the borders etc and just have the tv in a small window.

The Device is currently only available in NTSC so doesn't help my brother share his TV for me, but we're trying Orb out on his machine so we'll see how that performs (Orb is free).

There was a special offer on the Slingbox over the holidays, so it was $199, $50 less than the regular price.

There are a few items that could make the device better, and I imagine if SlingMedia are smart they will come with time:
  • More client support, Macintosh, I don't have one, I would love one, but I know other people do have them and this device could hook in really nicely to the Mac
  • A web front end, currently you have to install local software to access the Slingbox, it would be great to be able to visit any browser and get access to your Slingbox, either an ActiveX or Java applet.
  • A Palm client, I know they're working on a Pocket PC version, how about my little Palm?
  • Allow multiple viewers, this would probably impact the performance, but it would be nice to have the option, even if to turn it off
  • PVR like capabilities built into the SlingBox Software, or offer a hosted service that connects to your home system but records the video onto a SlingMedia server somewhere that you can access

So in conclusion a great little device that does exactly what it says it does. Highly recommended.

slinbox.jpg

Comments

Gravatar Image1 - Given the way I watch TV, this would have been good 2 years ago. I do travel 60% of the time, and I have a few shows I really like to watch (Sopranos, Entourage, Desperate HWves, the Shield, etc).
So at first glance, I would be likely customer.

However with my 10+ Mbits ADSL line, and with Bittorent, it takes me 30 Mins to download a TV show, or about half a day to download the entire season. I have a 300 GB HD on our Home PC, and I will basically copy whatever I feel like watching on my Thinkpad before leaving.

Also my Satellite receiver has a smart card used to decode the satellite signal, so I guess the Slingbox would have to be hooked up behind the satellite box, so it would only broadcast that 1 channel.

So not sure this actually works for me.


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