Now you can enjoy your Satellite System from anywhere in the world as long at you have a PC running Windows Xp or Windows 2000 and with an exciting new hardware device called the Slingbox from Sling Media.
The folks from Sling contacted me a few months ago after I met with them at CES asking me if I would like to review their upcoming Sling Box, I said yes and had some good contact with them and Sling Media Co Founder Jason Krikorian who is believe it or not an active SatelliteGuys user.
I was very interested in the product as because over the past few months I have been using ORB.COM which is a free service to watch satellite tv from my office. Whole Orb has been good it is not reliable, and it’s a 50 - 50 if it works or not when I want it to work. With the Slingbox I no longer need to dedicate my PC as an encoder for Orb. The Slingbox is its own encoder and server. After it is setup you do not even need a PC hooked up locally to work.
Unfortunately the product was released and I did not receive a unit to test from Sling Media, but all that changed tonight when I walked into Best Buy and there they were loading them on to the shelf two new Sling Boxes!
Since my wife is away for a few days and because I REALLY wanted to test this item out I took out my credit card and paid the $249 for the unit.
I got it home and ripped open the cleverly packaged unit. The first thing I took out was the fold out instruction sheet (the only real printed instructions that come with the unit)
I quickly glanced over the instructions then looked at the accessory box that came with the unit. In it was packed the Slingbox, two audio video cables, a wall wart (Power adapter), an S Video Cable, an IR control cable, Ethernet cable, coax cable and Installation CD ROM.
To test the unit our quickly I hooked it up to my cable tv connection via the COAX input on the Slingbox.
The next thing I did was reach for the CD ROM which was closed with a sticker reading "HEY LOOK, AN UPDATE! - Skip this CD and download the latest software from www.slingmedia.com/support" so I went to the website and there was no place on the screen telling you where you can download the installation software. After looking around for 10 minutes I find a link on the top marked downloads, I click it and find the Sling Player, which is not what I am looking for I am looking for the Installation software. So I give up at the website and pop the CD in.
My screen turns black as the Installation CD loads.
And it stays black.
I needed to reboot my computer. When it is done rebooting I decide to go explore the CD. When I get into the DISK1 directory I run the setup program the setup now begins. And soon it is done there is a new icon on my desktop marked Start Sling Player.
I click on the Sling Player ICON and select the icon marked that this way my first time using the Slingbox. When I do this it asks me if I want to check for an update, I select yet and it opens a website, at the website it gives me a zip file to download. After it is done downloading I must unzip it then go to the directory and run the update.
The check for update screen from the Sling Player is still up in the background and I am scolded by the update program for not closing it (it never told me to close it) so I closed it and then the update began.
After the update I was looking again at my desktop, no further instructions on what to do, so again I went into the Sling Player and once again clicked this was my first time setting up the Slingbox. When I clicked this I was asked if I wanted to check for an update, this time I clicked on the next button.
The setup ran and within a few seconds it found the Slingbox on my network and I had video and sound playing in the setup window. (COOL!) There was no setup necessary at all to get to this point, now I went from being confused to being
impressed. It then asked me if I was hooked up to an antenna or cable tv. I told it I had cable tv and the Slingbox scanned for cable channels. This was the fastest channel scan I have ever seen just taking a few seconds!
I needed to set a few options including passwords for watching my Slingbox, password for administrating my Slingbox and gave the Slingbox permission to open the necessary ports on my router (which it did!)
After it was done I was now watching TV from the Slingbox! I had a remote control on the screen and was able to flip through the channels. The video looked great!
While watching Cable TV is cool I want my Slingbox to do more, and at this point I am not sure it is possible. I would love to not only be able to watch cable TV but I would also like to be able to watch my satellite system. I have contacted Slingbox and hopefully this is something they can do in the future via a software upgrade.
Today I went to my office and downloaded the Sling Player software from the Sling Media Website, installed it and input my Slingbox Finder ID. Within second I was watching cable TV from my house at my office.
The picture was good although the audio was low so I had to crank up my speakers. The first images I saw however were that of another bomb attack in England.
Changing channels was easy by using the on screen remote, or I could type in the channel number I wanted to go to. Within about 2 seconds the channel changed on my screen.
My next step was to try watching my Dish Network 942 from remote. To do this I needed to reconfigure my settings, this meant switching from Cable TV to the RCA inputs.
The instructions on how to set things up were clearly spelled out on the screen, that was until we got to setting up the remote codes.
You selected what kind of Satellite Receiver you had by brand, then there was a listing of all the codes available for that brand of receiver. In my case there were only four selections.
I tried them all and none of them worked.
I then went to the Sling support site and took a look at their compatable equipment list, there it was spelled out better which code was meant for which remote and also which remote address that code used.
I tried again still not working.
Then I remembered a neat trick which I hope you guys remember as well. I wanted to see if the IR blasters were actually sending IR. To test this out I grabbed my cell phone and turned on its camera because IR is actually beams of light you can see the blasts of lights with almost any video camera. I then pressed the test button in the software while I watched the camera, and nope nothing. I took the Slingbox and unplugged the IR blaster then pluged it back in again, once again pressed the test button while watching the screan on my camera phone, and now I saw it light up.
I placed the two IR blasters on my 942 and went to the next step which was to change channels, that worked flawlessly.
When it was all done I now had a new remote control on my screen which gave me all the controls found on my 942.
I was able to fully control the 942, although one thing I need to get use to is scrolling through the menus as there are a few issues I ran into. When you press something on the remote it can take 5 seconds before you see it happen on the screen, so sometimes I overshot the button I wanted to click on. Another thing I found that I got to learn not to do, is I was using my mouse to click on the buttons on the screen, For example I had the 942 guide up and instead of selecting the show using the remote I tried clicking on the show name on the TV screen. In this day of point and click you forget that what you see ou can't really click on it.
With my 942 I am now able to enjoy HD channels such as VOOM HD news in SD over the Internet. Because I run a site like SatelliteGuys the Slingbox will come very handy, no when someone writes that there is an issue with a channel I can now quickly check it on my Slingbox and report back if the problem is a system wide problem or a local receiver problem.
I spent last night watching a few shows on my laptop as my wife watched CSI. I am loving my slingbox more and more every day.
I must admit I like the Slingbox, however there are a few drawbacks which may keep this amazing product out of most peoples hands.
1) It only runs on Windows XP and Windows 2000. Those on UNIX and Macintosh computers can not use it
2) You need to load the player on all the computers you want to watch TV on. You should not need to load any software, a lot of folks like me travel and go to Internet Cafes and friend’s house, it would be much better to login to a website download a java applet and watch TV. (Much like GotoMyPC)
3) You can't switch inputs from cable TV to your satellite system (or DVD player or whatever you hook to the AV inputs)
4) Non standard hookup on the AV Jacks, I would rather see them have real RCA jacks for the AV Inputs and outputs on the unit, this version requires special cables to hook it up to your equipment.
5) No ability to save the stream your watching to your hard drive. There are some things I see on TV that I would love to save, it would be great to click RECORD and have it save the file to the hard drive of the computer I am using.
6) No timers, you can't tell it your favorite shows and have them tuned automatically
I would also love to see the Sling Media folks release additional players, I would LOVE to see a PDA version that runs on my Palm Trio 650, and in fact I would pay extra for that software.
Another limit I don't like is it only lets you have 1 person connect at a time, if someone else tries connecting they get an error message. While I understand that they are trying to avoid lawsuits and to avoid pissing off the television industry, it would be nice if my wife could watch the same thing I am watching down stairs on my laptop. They should increase the limit to 2 connections.
With those things aside this is one cool toy and I have a feeling it’s going to get better as time goes on. The Slingbox folks are very active at AVS and are listing to comments being made about their product. I feel this is one piece of consumer electronics that will be shaped around the comments of the consumers.
If you ever wanted to watch TV at your office, or on the road, now you can with the SlingBox from Sling Media.
