More on the Slingbox
In short, Slingbox lets you watch and watch & control your TV from anywhere with an Internet connection (or compatible cell phone)
Watch the 40 second explanation video here or see it on their website...
http://us.slingmedia.com/page/home The link is on the lower right.
A couple of years ago when it first came out I was intrigued by the concept but at the $250 asking price, I wasn't intrigued enough.
Let me explain what I do at lunch at work. For the past couple of years I've been watching DVDs on this small TV in the kitchen/break room in our office. Work bought the TV but I had to buy my own cheap DVD player to have something "good" to watch. I've spent many a lunch hour watching not just seasons of TV but entire series of TV. That's pretty much come to an end. I've watched all of my 24, X-Files, DS9, Sopranos, The Shield, Nip/Tuck, West Wing and even some movies split across a couple of days. That has come to an end since I've pretty much watched everything DVD-wise.
But, Craig, don't you have DirecTV in the office? We used to... now it's cable ready Comcast (We lost about 40 channels in the switch too) and I did try to watch a few things but I just can't stand commercials (blame 7 years of TiVo) and there's no point in watching something if I miss the 1st 10 minutes or have to get back to work with 15 minutes to go before the show ends, so I looked for other options to keep myself occupied during lunch...
I turned to NetFlix's "Watch Now" On Demand movies & TV. Let me tell ya, that kicks ass! At 4500+ Movies & TV Shows there's plenty to watch (I've been watching the original Battlestar Galactica) but now I have to eat at my desk to watch it. Which actually looks better since I got my new 19" Widescreen LG on my desk. That got me thinking... I seem to remember this thing called Slingbox... I wonder if they're still in business.
They are. Not only that but now they have 3 slinging options at a substantially reduced cost from its debut.
I had to stop at Circuit City to pick up Nick his Guitar Hero 80s PS2 game for his B-day and while I was there...
The combination of a falling price (since it's intro in 2005), a Circuit City sale ($20 off) and a $50 Circuit City Visa Rewards gift card (thank you National City!) that was burning a hole in my pocket led me to finally buy a Slingbox. If I didn't end up liking it, it would be an easy return.
Once home, it was super easy to hook up the unit (especially since I already have 2 data ports behind my entertainment center) and since I'm network savvy, it was easy to configure my router.
I spent about an hour screwing with it on my local machine before the big test the next day (yesterday) at work.
Since I found a way to run my Slingbox from anywhere via a USB thumb drive (nothing to install now), I inserted it into my work pc and checked it out. It was pretty cool to control my TiVo from 18 miles away.
My speed was dancing around 350kbps and while the picture quality was certainly watchable, I knew that Comcast had a better plan for $10 a month which would double my upstream. Last night I upgraded my plan and today at work tested it again.
There is a definite quality difference and I'm glad I did it. I watched an episode of Mythbusters during lunch and actually kept running in the corner of my screen for the rest of the day at work... some People's Court, Judge Judy, etc. It was more background noise than anything else but it's very cool to have that ability... from pretty much anywhere.
Will I keep it?
Yes.
The ability to remotely schedule what I need to record on my Series 1 DirecTiVo is worth the investment by itself. But add that to being able to watch pretty much whatever I want while at work makes it a no-brainer.
By the way... if the iPhone ever gets upgraded with a SlingPlayer client... the UMF may be too strong to resist! I mean come one... DirecTV's full line up + my TiVo in my pocket? That'd be HARD to resist!!
