Slingers!

A lot of you may already know this but most of you probably don't. But what would you say if I told you that you can watch your television at home from anywhere you can get a halfway desent Internet connection? Well you may not exactly understand what I am saying, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter, because you can. It's called the "Slingbox" from Sling Media and after several months of kicking around the idea, I finally jumped in and bought one. And you know what? It kicks fucking ass!

And it's also really easy to setup. I bought the unit online for like $185 shipped. I got the "AV" model which is one of three available ones. You can buy the "Tuner" model for the same price but the biggest difference is that you can actually control your cable or satellite box with the "AV" model. Yes, that means you can even access shows you have recorded on your DVR if your provider's box has that functionality. The "Tuner" model is for people that have only antennae programming or basic cable. In this unit the Slingbox itself has a tuner in it and it scans for channels and you can just change channels on the Slingbox itself as if it were a TV itself.

I have a Dish Network DVR box so I definitley wanted to be able to watch my pre-recorded programs, so I picked up the "AV". Anyway, the unit has S-Video and RCA jacks that you can choose to input the Dish Network signal from. I just kept it simple and used the RCA's. Then there are these two infrared remote transmitters that you need to stick to the bottom of the Dish Network box and they reach out in front of the IR sensor of the Dish box. These serve to work just like your Dish Network remote control does. So when you initiate a command from the on-screen remote on your computer, the IR transmitter will signal that to the Dish box. Obviously the Slingbox has a power cord and then finally there is an ethernet cable that needs to run from your Slingbox over to your router so that the unit gets Internet access. This was the most challenging thing but my house has a 4-ft crawl space so I just drilled a small whole in the floor and ran the ethernet cable down that and then over to a air vent openning by where my router resides and then puched it up through that vent to reach the router. Not to difficult. Sling also sells a little box that plugs into any electrical outlet in your house and then has a twin box that can be plugged into any other outlet that might be near your router. You can then run the ethernet into that and then out of the second box and into the router. The boxes actually send the ethernet signal over your homes internal electical wires to each other. This solution runs about $99.

Anyway, back to the fun. So once that is all hooked in, you just have to go to your PC and install the SlingPlayer software. The installation is pretty sweet because the install file will actually automatically configure your router to allow the Slingbox access to incoming connections as long and you have a router that supports uPnP. Most do so you don't really need to worry.

As you walk through the setup the software will ask you what kind of service you have and what model of cable or satellite box you are using. You select the one you have from a list and then it does the rest. You have to then enter in a code that they call the "Slingfinder ID". This code is individual to each Slingbox and what it does is pretty convenient. Basically it goes out and tells a server at SlingMedia what IP address your Internet connection is using so that when you try to access your Slingbox remotely, the Slingplayer software will know where to find your Slingbox on the Internet. If they didn't have this service then you would have to constantly be checking your router to see what IP address your ISP has issued to you at that given time. If you have a fixed IP address then you don't have to worry about this, but very few home grade Internet services provide fixed IP's.

So then the software connects and you start seeing whatever is on your TV at home on your computer screen. It's pretty cool because the software actually shows you a near lifesize image of the same remote control you use at home. Since you already know how to use that you won't have to learn anything new.

There is about a 3-4 second delay in the video feed from what is actually happenning on your TV at home, but that's not too big a deal. Also, when you click buttons on the remote it has a slight lag of about a second before you see the command you initiated actually happen on your computer screen. But that is to be expected since everything has to traverse the web and back.
Also, one issue you may be thinking of but where unsure about is what this means for the TV viewer that is still at your house? Well, you are still watching that same TV feed. So if you login and start changing channels then whoever is already watching the TV will see the channels get changed on them. So it's pretty much as if you were in the room with them and just stole the remote control away. I figure this isn't that big of a deal because most houses have more than one TV. So if I am away from home and want to log in to view some TV then my wife can always go into another room and watch what she wants.

My excuse for getting this was because my brother-in-law, who lives in Brazil, loves the program LOST. They don't play the new episodes until about a 8 months later down in Brazil and for him to download the episodes takes forever. So now he just has to login to our TV att he same time we are watching it or he can log in during the day while we are at work and view a DVR recorded episode. He's already done it once and he said it worked great.

One more thing. Sling Media makes a viewer program for Windows Mobile powered phones of which I own one. I've already installed the player and now when I'm sitting in waiting rooms or need to watch a sports game while waiting for my airplane to board I can. It drains my battery on my phone about as much as an actual phone call. They are charging an extra $30 for the mobile player software but you can demo it for free for 30 days to see if you like it.

So after it's all said and done I highly reccommend this product. It's a breeze to setup and it really delivers a very watchable broadcast with only the need of a minimam 200Kbps connection. Oh yeah, thy als make a "Pro" version which has multiple source inputs for up to 4 devices. If you have a DVD changer then you could actually hook that up to this unit be able to view your whole DVD collection on the go.

Click here to go to Sling Media's website