Slingbox AV

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A Hardware Review
by Moe Comeau
Review Date: July 2007

Product: SlingBox AV

[Photo: Black Slingbox perched on silver TiVo unit]

Company: Sling Media
URL: http://us.slingmedia.com/page/slingboxav.html

Price: $179.99 List; $126.94 at Amazon

System Requirements: Any Windows or Mac based PC, > 700MHz, Hi-speed Internet; a Router

Test System: 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4, with Bluetooth, running OS X 10.4.9

Reviewer's Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Apples

For someone who watches precious little TV, it was a bit of a stretch for me to consider investing money in bringing it to my "spare" LCD monitor. Yet when it comes to watching "my programs" I did not want the burden of having to actually sit in front of the toob. Enter Slingbbox. I chose Slingbox AV because I wanted the flexibility of TIME-shifting my viewing via TiVo, plus PLACE-shifting via Slingbox. The AV variation gave me both. (Or, so I thought. Read on.)

Getting there was a bit of an ordeal. First, I was dealing with beta software and installation gave me "false negatives," saying things had failed, when in fact they were fine. Foolishly, I was trying to follow along using the manual, which said: "The green Power light on the front indicates that Slingbox is on." Oops. The power-on light is RED! Plus the manual's diagram of the Slingbox did not match mine. Different model?

Next, I followed the directions to download the Beta software, which involved "registering" my Slingbox online. No choice: no register — no software. Once I submitted my eddress, I got... a 404 error! (File not found). Once I found and ran it, it wanted me to update Slingbox's firmware. After I ran the update it came back with "Slingbox configuration has failed. Unable to connect to the Slingbox. Please verify your Slingbox network and connection settings and try again." But this was followed by "Device(s) Found on your network: 'My Slingbox'." So the warning was bogus. Finally, there was no Help facility. At all.

I'm happy to say all that confusion went away with the release of an official version, v1.0. Not only that, their website for the software SlingPlayer has a plethora of FAQs, with a wealth of related information, even one that non-technically explains what DHCP is all about. But back to my installation foibles.

When SlingPlayer fired up, I had video, but no audio. Instead of connecting via the usual A/V cable (Red=Right, White=Left, and Yellow=Video), I had connected only the S-Video cable. I had to go back and connect right and left audio cables to get audio.

Worse, the picture started breaking up after a few seconds, then froze, and there was neither audio nor video. A yellow popup then informed me "Having Video Problems? Turn OFF high quality mode. Your network connection isn't fast enough for high quality mode." But HOW? It was clear the bottleneck lay in Airport Extreme. "If you notice problems, consider disabling this option in the Preferences -> Video tab. So I go to Preferences -> Video and all the video options are grayed out! But one of the tabs "encoding" was not. Sure enough it had some settings to decrease the video bitrate, albeit less than intuitive. By trial and error, I settled on a bitrate of 172 kbps, and 10 video frames/sec.

I did have the direct support of a very helpful Sling Media representative who was just an email away. I contacted him twice, and he quickly resolved the glitches I had encountered. While that may not be available to all end users, from the looks of the FAQs, they've nicely covered the glitches encountered by many beta testers like me.

Strengths:
So how is it, being able to place-shift your TV viewing, able to tune into YOUR TV from anywhere in the world? Awesome. The day after I installed it, I was on travel. From my hotel room in Chantilly, VA, connected via Ethernet, I got to watch Channel 6 Action News, with all those wonderful Philly newscasters. Awesome.

Weaknesses:
Slingbox AV suffers from the same shortcoming as the TiVo signal it carries: You can only watch one channel at a time. If someone is watching the TV/TiVo, you cannot watch something else on Slingbox AV. That is NOT Slingbox's fault though. It is MINE. I should have ordered Slingbox Pro, which has a spare tuner. Oh, well.

Moe Comeau
Reviewer: Moe Comeau

Moe Comeau used to plod along on ancient Mac hardware, and still does when necessary such as when USB is just no substitute for ADB. Having graduated to a second-hand PowerBook G4, which has plenty of oomph to handle broadcast video, coupled with an insatiable desire to watch 2 or 3 TV shows a week, Slingbox seemed the perfect answer to fill that void.

Moe is the prolific author of a monthly column of rants and rambles entitled In Moe's Humble Opinion (IMHO), found in MLMUG's newsletter, the MLMUG Journal, both online: a print version in PDF, at www.mlmug.org/past and individual columns at www.mlmug.org/letter.

This site has many more reviews, all written by MLMUG members.
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