7 posts tagged “slingbox”
I never thought I'd see this day. I seriously didn't! In my possession now is a replacement AC adapter for my niece's Eee PC. It's taken six weeks to get this far. Please god let the this thing work, she's been pulling her hair out not being able to use her precious 701 for 2 months (yeah, bad uncle.. I spent a fortnight looking for Toys R Us receipt and failed miserably!)
Why oh why ASUS couldn't have just sent the replacement out at the start, I don't know! In contrast, Sling Media agreed to send my replacement Slingbox to me straight away without returning faulty one first. The only condition was that I gave them my payment details so that they could charge me if I failed to return it.
...I can't get remote viewing working!
Today my replacement Slingbox arrived. Yay! I set it up and it works on my home network. Yay! Now the built-in digital TV tuner actually works. Yay! Just a shame I can only use it at home... Not so yay!
Damn you Sky Broadband router and your un-plug'n'playedness!
And there was me thinking that once I was using a half-decent router, one provided by (and produced en masse for) the UK's biggest TV provider, that things would be plain sailing. Silly me! Maybe if Sky had supplied me with a Netgear instead of a Sagem I'd not have these difficulties...
I've spent a couple of hours today and got nowhere, I'm thinking it's time to give up (again!)
Yesterday at 3 UK's press bash I was left with the impression that Sling Media's place-shifting service is now but a distant memory. There are no plans for 3-ified Slingplayer Mobile software on the upcoming devices that were on display. And, I'm sure I heard a, "do we even sell those anymore?" regarding the Slingboxes.
For those that don't know what Sling is, here's the lowdown nutshell-wise: There's a Slingbox - a device you place near your TV and connect to your broadband as well as your cable (satellite or whatever.) You then use the software - Slingplayer on your Windows PC or Slingplayer Mobile on your phone to tune in and control your TV service no matter where you are as long as you have internet service.
When Slingplayer works (I had no end of trouble with a bunch of routers), it works well. Picture quality on my old Nokia N73 was astoundingly good. Sound quality wasn't bad. It was reliable and responsive and well worth the extra fiver a month 3 UK charged on top of the £5 unlimited internet. That included more hours than any sane person would need for telly on a mobile (80-freaking hours, for what it's worth.)
If it was so good, why did I stop using it? I got a new wireless router and couldn't figure out how to get it to play nicely. Not long after I replaced that and tried to get another one working... no good. Went back to my old wired one - the one that had originally worked, still no good. In the end I gave up. Maybe that's the problem - all those support calls! Or perhaps the potential network overload if the service had really taken off (offering 80 hours of really good quality video over 3G takes up shedloads of bandwidth).
I think the writing was on the wall when Sling Media brought out a newer version of the software that offered a couple of better features, the main one being fullscreen video. It was a must have to anyone that had 3's version but only 3's version could be used if one wanted the 80 hour allowance. Those using the new version would instead have their allowance coming out of their data plan. 1 gig doesn't go that far when Slinging, not far at all - maybe a couple of hours.
It's a crying shame as Slingplayer would be great on the Blackberry Bold, one of those touchscreen Samsungs (I don't think there's a client for whatever they run on, but one can dream), the Nokia N96 or E71. Bundled with HP's Mini-note which is to be bundled with 3's Mobile Broadband it would be, to paraphrase my 9-year-old nephew... awesome! Travelodges and Holiday Inn Expresses would never be the same again.
Interestingly, El Reg has the Slingbox rated as their number 10 gadget choice for techie travellers this summer. They actually sum it up far better than I could, although I'm surprised that they're showing what is an out of date price. Shop around and you can pick up this version (known simply as Slingbox or Slingbox Classic) for around the £60 mark. If you're a customer of 3, you may still be able to pick one of these up for zero, nothing, zilch. Okay, there's a catch - you have to take X-Series Gold for 12 months. That's £120, hardly free. But as X-Series Silver (or unlimited internet - which are more or less the same thing) is £5 a month. Who on earth is on 3, reads this blog and doesn't already pay £5 for the 'net on their handset? So over the course of a year that works out as just £60 extra plus you get 960 hours of streaming included. That's 40 days worth!
Good luck finding a 3Store that knows about the offer... that was always the fly in the ointment!
When I could get Sling Player working on my phone it was great. Unfortunately it wouldn't work with my replacement wireless router. Oh well, I thought, I'll just have to plug the wired one back in again. Still couldn't get it to work. Tried really hard, did everything I could think of and wasted a lot of time. In the end I figured it just wasn't worth it and my Slingbox is just sitting there months later with blinking lights and no way to communicate with the outside world.
I could've just checked which WiFi router Sling Media recommends and gone out and got one but I just don't have the money to waste on another dud and there's no way of knowing if that wouldn't cause some other problems somewhere else.
I can no longer use Sling over 3G on my phone anyway as I've since dropped my X-Series service (from 3 mobile) down from Gold to Silver. Saves me £5 p/m and really, was a non-working Sling Player really worth £5?!!
Anyway, it now appears that Sling have made what amounts to be a fool-proof Slingbox - the Slingbox is the modem, it plugs straight into a cable connection. It really should be plug and play. Initially US cable TV only.
Found via Electricpig
The price on those Vuzix iWear video glasses from UK mobile operator 3 has come down to £199.95 - that's a £25 saving! Well, to be honest I think that's the price they were meant to be sold at and that 3's accessory site had it wrong for some reason.
Even at £199.95, is there anyone out there that's actually going to buy a pair? Regardless of cost, I imagine that like the Slingbox before it, these Vuzix will go largely unnoticed due in part to lack of promotion. There's not even that much info on them in the mobile blogosphere, many of the usual suspects have made no mention of them.
Even 3mobilebuzz made no mention of them until they saw my previous blog post! Did the guys there even know about them I wonder?
Oh, and try finding the glasses on the 3's accessory site without using search (ie like if you were just browsing the site and had no idea these existed). Good luck finding them! To be fair the site appears to be run by a 3rd party on behalf of 3 and it's a new product line, maybe that will change sometime soon.
What price would be the right price for you? If these really are as good as the (few) reviews I've seen say they are I'd be tempted to drop £100 ($200) on the table, maybe a bit more. It's not like they're not worth more money, it's a question of just how useful will they be and what I feel I can justify spending. Having said that the glasses I recently lost cost a little under £180 and don't do anything fancy other than unblurring my vision!
Maybe 3 should consider bundling a pair with some contracts or offering a discount on them in relation to what price plan you're on. These coupled with Slingplayer on 3 would be amazing, a sign that we really are in the 21st Century even if we have a serious lack of flying cars.
I'm going to sift through some of the articles about the AV920 (that's the catchy model number) and post links to them in a bit. Although, to be honest, most of them aren't hands-on reviews.
Hmm, going into Bill & Ted mode. Excellent!
Below is a short video clip I took with my N73. It shows the TV show 'Californication' as it was broadcast last night on Five (aka Channel 5). What's so great about that? Glad you asked! The laptop is connected via the 'net to a set-top-box about a mile away and it's connected to the 'net thanks to my Skypephone.
I can only imagine what the quality would be like with HSDPA (aka 3.5G) and the possibilites! Anyone fancy cable or satellite TV in the back of their car on a 17" screen? MTV, pimp my ride!
The last post demonstrated what can be done with an all-you-can-eat plan and it didn't really even scratch the surface. Not bad for £5 a month (that's about $10 or €7.50)!
However, I pay £10 a month and get a little bit more. What more could I want? Well that extra fiver a month gets me 80 hours (every month) of streamed media from my home to my mobile wherever I can get a signal from 3 (even in places like Hong Kong or Australia!)
On my phone I can watch or listen to videos, music and photos that are on my PC using a thing called ORB. It's okay but not great. On it's own it's not really worth any extra money (the sound and picture quality are pretty awful and having to leave your computer on is a pain) but Slingplayer more than makes up for it. The icing on the cake is that customers on the £10 plan get the Slingbox for free on a 12 month subscription. The box retails at a penny under £100 in the UK so it's quite clearly a bargain!
So, what is this box and what can it do? Well you connect up the box to whatever your TV is hooked up to - so that could be satellite TV, a cable box, Freeview even CCTV. The Slingbox then connects up to your broadband and sends the audio and video through the internet to your phone or PC wherever in the world you can get 3 (phone) or broadband (PC)
Once set up you can also control your set-top-box on your phone. You can change channels, look at the programme guide, change settings and control playback on PVRs like Sky+ and TiVo. Most major makes and models are supported but unfortunately not all. If your Freeview box or satellite receiver isn't supported, you can still watch it but can't control it. So, not much good if you want to watch a couple of different channels when away from home! Well, not unless you have someone at home that you can call up. Which leads me to another downside - if someone is at home watching what's on that box, when you tune in and turn over they'll be watching what you want to watch. So, okay for singletons and those that can spring for a couple of cable/satellite subs - not okay for families on a budget.
I'll look at the pros and cons of the Slingbox and the Slingplayer software in more depth in a future post. In the meantime check out these pictures of my Slingbox/player in action!
I should point out that these are all screengrabs direct from my phone. The pictures are pretty much how you'd see them on the phone. As you can see, I like watching the news from Russia, the weather, The Simpsons and Anderson Cooper stuck in a burning forest (Bill O'Reilly would be better though)
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