Slingbox

[TykeMerc]

Since I'm going to be working away from home (yet again) and am ulikely to get rented accomodation with Sky like I have at home I'm thinking of getting a Slingbox sto watch my own one over the internet.

Has anyone got experience of using a Slingbox or anything similar? If so do they perform as advertised or is it just hype? I would appreciate peoples experiences before I blow cash on one.

I'd proably go for the Solo as I don't have a use for the functionality of the Pro.

http://www.slingmedia.com/go/slingbox-solo

[Ken Dodd]

slingbox

I am as interested in this as you - long nights in a hotel with only 5 terrestrial channels is gradually wearing me down.

Be aware that the slingbox needs to be hardwired to the sky box (or whatever source you use) and hardwired to to your broadband router so they need to close(ish) together. You can buy a wireless game controller (apparently) which can bridge the ethernet connection between the slingbox and router. These are approx £35.

Would love some genuine unbiased feedback on how easy they are to use and what the picture quality is like.

thanks

[TykeMerc]

Links to my router are easy, while my router is two floors above my Sky Plus box I have a spare pair of 200 Mbit Comtend Ethernet over power adapters.
Fortunately there's plenty of space round my Sky box to site the Slingbox.


Decided to take a punt and buy one, £106 from John Lewis with free delivery, it's worth a shot and if it's pants they're good at customer service.

[BoredBloke]

I've got the pro version and I think it's great - the places I have been staying at have had fairly rubbish net connections, but you can still get a watchable (small) picture on your laptop with a low bit rate. I've not been anywhere that gives me enough bandwidth to get a really god picture - I've not managed to get it working on my mobile either although it will when I'm in the house on my internal network so I guess 3 might well be blocking its ports on their network.

[TykeMerc]

Update specifically for the tickling stick merchant, but others might be interested:-

Ordered Friday from John Lewis Direct, payment cocked up by Credit card, resolved Sat morning, delivered Monday afternoon by Citilink despite me having chosen the free "I don't care how long it takes to get here" option. I bought the Solo version for £106 (some places were a couple of quid cheaper, but had no stock).

Setup, tested and working, obviously it's not as good quality as watching the TV next to the Sky+ box, but pretty damn acceptable.

All in all I'm happy so far.

[Fishface]

I've had a Slingbox classic for 4-5 years - its been great.

Got it working on my PDA - also very good.

Watched it from SEASIA, LATAM, North America.

They did screw up a firmware - but sent a replacement box after they broke.

*however* I would suggest to get a timer switch to turn the box on and off every day.

Sometimes it locks up and only a hard reset or power cycle will sort it out.