6/30/09 Tech Tuesday on Slingbox

Slingbox Made Simple -

There's a good chance you've heard the word Slingbox, maybe in passing or from another co-worker. Perhaps when someone tried to tell you how it works, you got confused and never thought about it again. However, the Slingbox and its related products have been around for some years now and they compose a body of legitimately useful products.

What is it?

The Slingbox is a media extender, kind of like a long distance remote control that lets you use your laptop to watch your home theater equipment. It connects to your cable box, satellite dish or even your DVR and then lets you connect and control it over the Internet. Simply put, it lets you watch your cable TV from wherever you are.

How can I use it?

Although it's a little difficult to understand, it has many uses. For example, if you're on vacation and want to watch some of our local Hawaii programming, you can use your laptop to go online and watch your Slingbox. I've set up a few Slingboxes for people and seen their uses first hand. For example, I had one customer who liked to visit Japan often and wanted to be able to watch the local Hawaii news from their hotel. I set up another for a business with an older surveillance system so that they could monitor their office from home. I even set one up for a UH student who plays baseball so that their family on the mainland could watch him play games on our local television.

One thing that's great about Sling Media, the company that makes the Slingbox, is how they really try to be practical about their products. For example, there's Slingplayer software available for Blackberry, Windows Mobile devices and now even the iPhone so that you can watch programming on the go. They even have a product called the Slingcatcher that connects to a TV, so you can watch your Slingbox on another TV in your house or say at your vacation home on the Big Island.

Final Note

In short, the Slingbox line of products are solid and competitors haven't been able to take away Slingbox's top spot. It's a worthwhile addition to any home theater system and useful for watching your TV or recorded content when you're not home. Just don't watch it while driving or get caught watching it at work.

-Attila Seress

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Slingbox
• Tech
• Tuesday
• Attila
• Seress

[vibeuk2003]

No they havent

[geebones]

cant believe they remove slingplayer desktop how stupid are slingbox

[12danny21]

do you need high speed internet to watch it smoothly or does the basic dsl work?

[Infinity588]

Awesome but the thing is for 200$ all you get is two inputs and outputs? Mostly you would have a lot more than that.