Sling Box

[Norry1]

I work away a fair bit, staying in hotels and I really like the sound of Sling Box - which apparently allows you to watch all your TV channels on your PC remotely.

Has anyone tried or got Sling Box? If so, is it as good as it sounds? Anything I should be aware of?

Cheers

Martin

 

[BSRU]

A colleague at work uses one to watch the cricket on Sky while at work. As long as you have a fairly quick links it works well, most of the time.

 

[RecordAceFromNew]

Yep it does work. Don't expect great definition though - dunno what it is but it seems worse than standard terrestrial TV, and the initial set up can involve manual software settings on your router at home so don't plan on getting it working in 5 minutes first time round. If you have Sky the on-screen sky remote is fully functional and pretty neat.

If you don't have a TV in the bedroom (e.g. as a matter of swmbo's principle) it has the added utility of letting you watch TV in bed!

 

[Archie_tect]

Yep it does work. Don't expect great definition though - dunno what it is but it seems worse than standard terrestrial TV, and the initial set up can involve manual software settings on your router at home so don't plan on getting it working in 5 minutes first time round. If you have Sky the on-screen sky remote is fully functional and pretty neat.

If you don't have a TV in the bedroom (e.g. as a matter of swmbo's principle) it has the added utility of letting you watch TV in bed!

What's the position with the licence fee using a 3rd party for the TV programmes [which presumably's like YouTube .... recorded TV 'outside the box' so not requiring a licence?

 

[DrSquirrel]

Get a linux based sat box like a dreambox etc. Does "watching live TV remotely", but without any "pass through" hassles or whatnot (not sure on the features of the newer slingboxes).

One of the initial selling points of them was to watch tv remotely away from your network, but with our bandwidths this is far from realistic and you'd be better off using iplayer (sometimes live too) or watching prerecorded shows.

Are you talking about watching within your house or else where on the interwebs?

If you get a good signal, specifically DVB-T (digital) why not consider one of these USB tuners?

 

[RecordAceFromNew]

What's the position with the licence fee using a 3rd party for the TV programmes [which presumably's like YouTube .... recorded TV 'outside the box' so not requiring a licence?

The subject never crossed my mind, I still pay license fee and am just piping the picture received in UK to a single LCD screen possibly the other side of the globe. If I want anything recorded it would still be recorded on my sky hd box in UK as usual, the slingbox on-screen remote control would control the sky box to retrieve any programme recorded.

 

[DrSquirrel]

Sky do have clauses to stop this stuff, they are every anal about what they do and don't allow. Not that it matters relalistically as they won't know.

 

[PaulSB]

<br />I work away a fair bit, staying in hotels and I really like the sound of Sling Box - which apparently allows you to watch all your TV channels on your PC remotely.

Has anyone tried or got Sling Box? If so, is it as good as it sounds? Anything I should be aware of?

I have no experience but a friend has been using it for 15-18 months and raves about how fantastic it is. He watches on his mobile and laptop when travelling for work etc.

 

[2Loose]

What's the position with the licence fee using a 3rd party for the TV programmes [which presumably's like YouTube .... recorded TV 'outside the box' so not requiring a licence?

TV Licencing only applies to transmitted programs, not recorded ones. So Youtube, on-demand iPlayer etc. do not require a licence, but 'playing now' iPlayer does.

 

[Cardiac]

Picture quality will largely be a function of the upload bandwidth available form the box to the internet. That's often a lot less than your download bandwidth. Many people will only have 256k or 512k up-link speed, even if they have mega-bits download. Generally OK for video but will be generally less than the broadcast quality.

TV Licensing (Sky etc aside), should be OK (at least within the spirit of the license) so long as you have a license for the location where the box is, and provided that only you are accessing it from elsewhere and not a load of other folks. (Of course, IANAL, YMMV, etc).