Sling Media Slingbox -Debut Review

I love TiVo, and depend on it like most depend on running water, electricity, and high speed internet. I come home from a long day of work, and watch my favorite programs with the trigger finger on fast forward. With all the shows that I record, managing my time in order to watch everything that I’ve recorded is a task in itself.. I’ve almost made a new martial art out of fast forwarding and playing shows in order to view the most vital of content.

Today is a different day. Times change and so does technology. People may or may not change, if I knew about those issues I’d be writing a column entitled “Dear ____”. This here is the tech world baby, and we break for nobody.

Today I picked up the much anticipated Slingbox, from Sling Media.

Thanks to a missed Giants game back in 2002, a man by the name of Krikorian decided to write video streaming code that would allow him to watch his TV wherever he was at. His famous quote goes something like: “I’m already paying for my cable at home, why can’t I watch it somewhere else?” This is where the term “place shifting” was born. VCR’s allowed for “time shifting” –record now, watch later. Sling Media invented “place shifting”.

Before we go any further, let me answer the $64 Million dollar question: What is the Slingbox? Sling Media has created a device that sends a stream from your house to your computer over the internet. This isn’t your normal stream. Most streams are a one way open loop system that dumps content to you with very minimal control as a user. The Slingbox is a controlled stream. You have the ability to change your television channel or program your DVR remotely. Sling Media’s new toy is just getting started so buckle up and enjoy the ride.

I rushed over to CompUSA and picked myself up a new shiny Slinbox. The box has a different design to it, to say the least. Gizmodo called it a 1.5 pound Hershey styled box, and I agree. It’s has “MY CABLE TV MY DVD MY RADIO ANYWHERE, MY DVR MY SATELLITE MY MUSIC ANYWHERE, MY VIDEOS MY SHOWS MY MOVIES ANYWHERE” written on the top. There are a few lights on the side, connectors on the back, and that’s about it. A neat little do-hickey called the IR emitter was placed over the infrared port of my TiVo and then connected to the new Slingbox. This is what gives me remote control over the TiVo via internet.

The desktop computer I’m using has 1GB of RAM, holds an AMD 2500+ chip, nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4800 SE (128MB) graphics card, and runs Windows XP Pro with SP2. Resolution is set to 1280×1024.

Insert the CD and the setup wizard prompted me to download an updated version of the software. 60some MegaBytes later and I’m ready to rock. I started the install program when to my surprise it worked!! I didn’t even have the software installed, I was still in the setup wizard and Sling was showing a TV feed in the setup wizard window. This let me know that my wires were set up correctly, and time was the only thing between me and “place shifting” my previously TiVo’d episode of the MTV Video awards.

A bit of “next-clicking”, and the SlingPlayer was launched. With a heart rate of 145bpm I pushed the watch button and started surfing live Direct TV channels. The first thing I noticed was the quality. I’ve had a TV tuner card or two in my day, and know that TV doesn’t look super hot on computer monitors. This is not something that will break that trend, but it’s getting there. When the screen is small and tucked in the corner, the picture is great. With ¼ of the screen covered, the SlingPlayer streams TV beautifully. Bigger than that and I started to experience some issues with pixilated images and choppy action shots.

The “guide” button was my next venture. Hitting this button brought up the DTVguide as you would see while on the couch looking at my normal Television. Using the remote and my mouse I scrolled through channels. There is a definite lag when doing this. With regular DTV my remote control has a small tolerable lag. If this wasn’t happening on my computer, over my home network, I don’t think I’d be as tolerant. Regardless, I’m not going to return the Slingbox simply because the guide moves a bit slower than normal.

At first I was using my mouse to control the SlingPlayer. Sometimes I would click the actual screen in hopes that I could click on Vh1 and change the channel. The guide needs to be navigated either by the remote which is in turned controlled by the mouse, or by keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts took minutes to learn and freed up some much needed real estate on my desktop. By hiding the remote control window of the SlingPlayer I was split screen entertainment and productivity.

Next I opted to push the TiVo button on the remote (I couldn’t find a keyboard shortcut to that button for some reason) and I’m viewing the TiVo menu. These past few weeks have been busy so my MTV Video Music Awards recording hasn’t been viewed, and is taking up valuable space on my TiVo. So I started it up. This is when I remembered that I can pause, fast forward, and rewind! I watched Jimmy Fallon get into the Batmobile with jokes about the batmobile tank and the fact he has Batman underpants on. As soon as Napoleon Dynamite showed up, I hit rewind just to laugh at the same joke twice. “What are you some sort of Batman expert? I have butt loads of super powers!” he said. Well Napoleon may have ‘sweet arm blades’ but I have my TiVo anywhere in the world that has internet, that’s a definite super power.

On with the show. The next thing I noticed about my newest toy was the audio. Normally I watch TV with a 5.1 Speaker system. My PC speakers are no match, but they still depict whether audio is quality or not. At first I couldn’t put my finger on the audio flaw. Something was not right, and then it hit me. The audio sounded just as if I converted a 128kbps mp3 file to 32kbps. There is a noticeable distortion level but it’s definitely tolerable.

After about 30 mins of tinkering around at home on my desktop PC I decided to hit the road and really test this baby out. I installed the software on my Dell 600m laptop which uses a 1.5Ghz Pentium M processor and 512MB of RAM. I quickly fired up the app just to ensure that it was functional and out the door I went!

The local café is four blocks from my apartment, and has free WiFi for customers. My goal: watch the rest of the MTV Video awards, at a coffee shop! Finally my TiVo, Direct TV, Router, and Computer were working together in harmony. A grin fell over myself as I sat at the Café sipping a small decaf. I enjoyed my recorded television program with the same performance my desktop PC saw back in the apartment.

This is where I discovered a state which I personally named “getting situated”. The moment I landed on a new channel, the audio was choppy, and the video was unclear and pixilated looking. Within seconds the choppy audio is smoothed out, and the video clears up. The SlingPlayer assesses the situation, [bandwith] and creates a proper stream. This is the worst thing I can say about the Slingbox. Quick channel surfers beware, this just may wear down your patience.

After 20 minutes of MTV Video Awards I decided to watch some live TV. Pausing and rewinding live TV was just as easy. The quality of the picture, and the audio felt identical to that of my PC desktop experience less than an hour before. The desktop was on my same network, this time I was going over the internet.

Click here to see a 1MB .wmv of me watching TV at the Coffee shop.

I’ve heard talk of this technology moving to PDA’s and mobile phones in the near future. Sling Media is waiting on the wireless carriers to up their network bandwidth. TiVo via phone compliments of my Slingbox doesn’t sound too shabby at all, and should come to us in the near future.

The question arises about copyright law and fair use. This does not infringe on these laws because there is only one feed coming from your output, and only one stream can be viewed at a time. With my PC running the SlingPlayer, I tried to launch and watch with my laptop, denied. The TV can play what I watch on my PC, but I cannot watch two different channels with the one TiVo, or any output device for that matter. This is basically a remote viewer and controller that runs on your PC.

I used to always sit on the couch, TV remote in one hand, laptop on my lap, and feet up on the coffee table. There’s nothing better than ‘internetting’ {my personal word for surfing the net) and watching TV at the same time. This way I can do my internetting anywhere in the house world that I choose to!

Summary:
Coolness factor: 16 (on a scale of 1-10)
Ease of use: Childsplay
Is it for Mac: No. But I suspect there will be a Mac version released rather soon, I hope.
Aesthetics: errr interesting?!
Capabilities: Endless
How I feel when I use my Slingbox: Kid in a candy store
How many phone numbers I’ve gotten because of Sling Media: None, but this should come with a bat in order to beat the women off!
Finally, who should get one?: Anyone who has a TV, Cable, TiVo, DVR, PVR, Dish Network, Direct TV, Broadband, and a computer.

Slingbox now available from Amazon

Editor’s note: this review was written independently from any involvement with Sling Media, and the only editing performed was strictly for grammar