Slingbox

Hi Gary,

I hadn't even heard of one until I read your post. Think I'll wait until we go away on holiday before getting one. The next generation model will be out by then! :)

Gary, I Have Got To Get Me One of These!!!

Cary

I want to try one before i buy ......... i wonderred if 'hexus staff' had one ?

just sent Bob an email , i'll see what he says #?

We used one here in the US For a while
Curry's is supposed to sell them in the uk for about 180 quid
http://www.slingmedia.com/uk/

Here is a US take on it

IMO the should have had a wireless capability built in to it, so that connecting in your home would be easier, as it stands you need to have the box by your devices you want to get video from and connect it to your router.

You need to be able to get to your specific IP address externally, which can be trickey in some cases if it is dynamic and you are not at home to check what your current ip address is

It is uploading, and in a lot of cases your download ability on your network connection is far faster than your upload, and of course quality is related to the bandwidth

It controls 2 remote controled ir devices (us version at least) and there is no LEARNING MODE, which is sort of silly, so if the codes are not included, you are stuffed.

if of course takes control of the device it is getting the video from so if your family wants to use the same device for something else you are out of luck

Quality is focused on FRAME RATE so you get quite a bit of blockiness

There is the network delay in control actions so for instance if you are trying to fast forward or rewind it takes some getting used to

sort of fun, it was not up to the quality we were looking for
we were looking at it to monitor and control a feed we had from our own broadcast network cable network

It is fun with the mobile devices, we have high speed wireless pcc 6600 support here, so it was fun to watch our broadcasts on that

At under 200 bucks in the US it is a fun gadget

SHARYN

I wrote a news story a few days back about the UK launch - and the UK product is rather different to the N American.

That piece is here:
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5800

I was a bit late coming to the story and that also meant I'm some way down the queue for review product.

It does look very interesting but the only obvious thing to comment upon is that it can't itself record the programmes you are watching though if, say, you're watching stuff that's coming off of a Sky or Telewest PVR, the SlingPlayer software can instruct the PVR to do a recording.

Bob

How is it rather different than the US version?
It obviously supports PAL UK power and the tuner has freeview support and the IR support for the main settop boxes but the basic structure and functionality seems to be the same.
They have a free trial on the Mobile player.

Couple of things John remembered that I missed

If you are using component output to your TV on some devices this disables the s video or composit outputs, so this can be a problem, While we do not have much HD broadcast here in AK, the system also does not work with a HD signal

All in all it was interesting, useful but did not work for what we were trying to do

We found that you really needed a lot of up stream bandwidth, and here in AK the cable companies really have only about 256k max on the upload side as we also found out when were were looking at streaming stuff.
The down connection is fine, but of course it is inhibited by the upload.

We have this bizarre situation here where we have dsl to the boat, and satellite, but no cable, the cable company never installed the cable runs to the marina, so John wanted to use it to monitor the tv cable channel we broadcast on, and also control the Playing device for our channel cable feed. That is where we started to see some of the problems. We also wanted to control our Panasonic DMR DVD recorder that we use for a program feed to the channel, and that is where at that time we ran into the lack of ir support for this device and also no easy learning ability. They do have a way to enter codes, but if you look at the various support forums most of the questions are on adding devices to control . I would guess that this is an area that they will address

They do have an IP finder system now that gets around the earlier problems of dynamic ip addresses.

John was also saying that it is possible to record, you need to have windows media encoder, set it for screencapture the slingplayer as the input device here is a link

http://www.slingcommunity.com/forum/thread/11865/?page=1

But since they sell here for about 100 sterling they are not a bad deal, plus in the US their support people are really really helpful
Here is C net's review
http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/accessories/0,39100115,49273779,00.htm?r=1

for a good comparision review, suggest you look at Sony Location Free
http://products.sel.sony.com/locationfreetv/flash.html

and ORB software
http://www.orb.com/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/14/BUGCIBO5OA1.DTL&feed=rss.business

Sharyn

Using Windows Media Encoder to record is a seriously clunky way of doing this and not, in my view, genuinely practical.

Never said it was practical, just that it was possible. Since there is no storage on the Slingbox at the transmitting end, you either use a pvr, or if you desparately want to be able to replay what you have seen remotely you basically are stuck with screen captures.

Sharyn

Sony have a nice version too .............. 'locationfree'

http://www.sony.co.uk/locationfree

( did anyone else see the site disappear for about 5 minutes there )