Sling Media - Slingbox Review

If you've ever found yourself in a strange hotel room wishing for all the world that you could watch what you TiVo'ed last night, Sling Media's Slingbox might be just the product for you. My husband purchased me a Slingbox for my birthday, knowing well that we could find numerous creative ways to use the product.

About the Slingbox
Explaining the full functionality of a Slingbox is a little complicated, but essentially it's this: If a DVR allows you to timeshift your television watching, enabling you to watch the programs you want at whatever time you want, the Slingbox allows you to placeshift your viewing experience. That is, now you can watch television wherever you want. With a Slingbox and a laptop or mobile PC you can watch your television from any location with Internet connectivity. The Slingbox device retails for about $250, without any additional subscription fees.

How the Slingbox Works
Underneath the complex-sounded technology, Slingbox works by a very simple process. There are two major components to this process: Your connected Slingbox and the Slingbox media player, a software program that you install on your mobile computer. Additionally, in order to use the Slingbox from a remote location, you'll need "always on" style Internet connectivity in your home, such as a cable or DSL modem.

You hook up the Slingbox to your home television or DVR, which enables it to "see" whatever you see when you're in front of the television watching it. Over your Slingbox's Ethernet connection, you then configure your Slingbox, setting it up to work with your television or TiVo remote, setting a password, and giving it a unique name.

Once you've finished the initial configuration, the Slingbox registers with Sling Media's registry online. Essentially it goes out to the registry and tells Sling Media where it can always be found, so that when you're on the road and you fire up your software on your laptop, it seamlessly connects you to your Slingbox device in your home. Think of it like an Internet domain name registry: When you type in www.viewpoints.com you aren't typing in the long IP address of the site. You're typing in a simple name that is then "translated" by an Internet registry service, completely invisible to you, that directs your computer to its destination.

Using the Slingbox
To use the Slingbox, you simply download the viewing software on your computer or mobile PC device (such as a Mobile PC Smartphone) and set up the software to connect to your home Slingbox. When you're away from home with an Internet connection, you can simply fire up your Slingbox viewer and connect to your home Slingbox to watch and control your home television.

Because the Slingbox works across a wide array of platforms, its uses are nearly limitless. If you're stranded in an airport, on a work trip, or far from home in a foreign country, you can watch your own TV. This is most helpful when your Slingbox is connected to a DVR, as you can watch prerecorded programs rather than surf the limited channels available to you in a hotel. I have personally pushed the limits of "mobility" by using my Sprint Pocket PC phone to dial up to Sprint's Vision network, all so I could watch my home TiVo from my mobile phone while we were stuck in a terrible traffic jam.

How Well It Works
For first-generation technology, the Slingbox works surprisingly well. The Slingbox player adjusts its transmission and buffer rates automatically based on available bandwidth so that if you're watching your Slingbox from over a reasonably fast Internet connection, the experience is nearly painless. Newer versions of the Slingbox player work better than the first versions at efficient bandwidth utilization.

The Slingbox experience is not without its flaws, however. Watching television over a slow connection quickly becomes unbearable, and the video quality is easily disturbed by even the smallest amount of network congestion. Being chained to your laptop to watch and control your television while in a hotel room with a full-sized TV isn't always appealing either. Further, when using the product I find that the remote control functions lag, even in optimized mode, so that I end up overshooting a fast-forward on my home TiVo during a commercial break and spending almost as much time trying to rewind to just the right point as I would have spent watching the commercials anyway.

It's also important to note that if you plan on using the Slingbox while other people are in your home, you'll want a television that can be dedicated to its use, otherwise whoever is in front of your home television must watch whatever it is that you're watching from far away. Connecting to the television via the Slingbox is transparent from the perspective of someone watching the TV itself, which can be very disconcerting to whoever might be watching your television when you logon to view it with your Slingbox player. (Alternatively: It's a great way to mess with someone's head!)

Finally, bear in mind that traffic to your Slingbox may be blocked by some firewalls within companies, or if you're on a remote computer using your employer's VPN. Because of this, you can't necessarily be 100% certain you'll be able to connect to your Slingbox in certain situations. Although most commercial Internet providers seem to allow Slingbox traffic without any problem, a corporate environment may not.

Cat's Bottom Line
A Slingbox is a great thing to have access to if you travel a lot and want to watch your own television programs while far from home. In theory, this is a magic bullet for the busy traveler's entertainment woes, but in practice it's got several kinks to work out before it's ready for prime time. If you're a gadget geek and you just can't live without your television programs no matter where you are, a Slingbox might be a good purchase. If you're an infrequent traveler, or someone who has no patience for technology and the invariable glitches that arise from broadband video, you'll probably want to hold off for a few years.

Sling Media: http://www.slingmedia.com