Slingbox advice from users please!

[itsjustmeee]

So I now have my beautiful new mini with plex, 5.1, a 46 inch sony and a harmony 1. I'm thinking the next move is a Slingbox. I travel a lot and would love to access my tv on my macbook and iphone (when the 3G streaming app comes out). I don't really understand that well how it actually works though. So a couple of questions ....

First off, when the Slingbox is accessed via an external source like a macbook, does it basically control my comcast dvr and change channels on it so that if someone else is watching at home, the station will just change on them or is it independent of whatever station the dvr cable box is on?

Secondly, which one should I be looking at, the Solo or Pro? I do have lots of HD stations available with my cable company, but I'm guessing that HD will only really work at home via wifi or if I have a good internet connection in a hotel .... which is sketchy at best. And HD won't apply when used with the iphone, correct??

 

[the-oz-man]

So I now have my beautiful new mini with plex, 5.1, a 46 inch sony and a harmony 1. I'm thinking the next move is a Slingbox. I travel a lot and would love to access my tv on my macbook and iphone (when the 3G streaming app comes out). I don't really understand that well how it actually works though. So a couple of questions ....

First off, when the Slingbox is accessed via an external source like a macbook, does it basically control my comcast dvr and change channels on it so that if someone else is watching at home, the station will just change on them or is it independent of whatever station the dvr cable box is on?

Secondly, which one should I be looking at, the Solo or Pro? I do have lots of HD stations available with my cable company, but I'm guessing that HD will only really work at home via wifi or if I have a good internet connection in a hotel .... which is sketchy at best. And HD won't apply when used with the iphone, correct??

1) Yes, it controls your dvr just as if you were sitting on your couch and the person that actually is while you were away would be watching the same thing.

2)Since you will probably not have the upload speed at home for HD, nor likely the download speed of where you travel, I find that the HD is not really necessary. Just have a decent upload internet speed of near 1 MB and picture should be more than fine for the iPhone and decent for your MacBook.

 

[itsjustmeee]

So I guess the big ticket would be to have a second cable box somewhere in the house and hook the slingbox up to that. I don't think my wife would be too crazy about sitting at home in the middle of a movie and have the stations just start changing on her!

One other thing. Does the slimbox have wifi or does it require an ethernet connection?

 

[the-oz-man]

Yah, my wife has the same "issue" and we had to move the slingbox to a less used tv in the house. Since i have a couple of the 1st generation slingboxes i know that they require a ethernet connection. i wouldn't be surprised if they are wifi now especially given the speeds of n routers.

 

[rayward]

Yah, my wife has the same "issue" and we had to move the slingbox to a less used tv in the house. Since i have a couple of the 1st generation slingboxes i know that they require a ethernet connection. i wouldn't be surprised if they are wifi now especially given the speeds of n routers.

If they require ethernet, an Airport Express might do the trick.

 

[godslabrat]

All slingboxes currently on the market require an ethernet port. There are powerline adapters (some made by slingmedia itself) to get around this issue. After using the slingbox for a while, I'd have to say give strong consideration to wiring the unit somehow. The slingbox's performance is affected by your connection speed, and every little byte counts.

For the same reason, I wouldn't get too worried about HD for this. When I'm on the road, I'd rather have good-quality SD than HD that's blocky and has a poor framerate. This is a situation where reliability overrules quality.

 

[fpnc]

It's already been mentioned (sort of), but check your internet upload speed to see what your current ISP is giving. For example, I have Road Runner cable and I get between 8Mbps and 20Mbps on downloads but only 360Kbps on upload. Note that it is the upload speed that will determine what quality you will get on a SlingBox once you exit your home. I suspect that anything much below 300Kbps will be almost unusable as my current connection (360Kbps) is just fair (watchable, but certainly not great).

You can check your upload speed at a site like speedtest.net.

 

[gazzamac]

I find that the picture quality on the iphone over 3g (full signal) is watchable but not great when compared to wifi so I only use 3g sparingly to watch previously recorded content on my home dvr

 

[rfasoldt]

HD issue with Solo

All slingboxes currently on the market require an ethernet port. There are powerline adapters (some made by slingmedia itself) to get around this issue. After using the slingbox for a while, I'd have to say give strong consideration to wiring the unit somehow. The slingbox's performance is affected by your connection speed, and every little byte counts.

For the same reason, I wouldn't get too worried about HD for this. When I'm on the road, I'd rather have good-quality SD than HD that's blocky and has a poor framerate. This is a situation where reliability overrules quality.

I bought a Solo for the HD quality (watching on iMac), because I got spoiled by MLB.TV's outstanding HD broadcasts. So I upgraded from my Slingbox AV. I connected from the FiOS box to the Slingbox using component cables. The full-screen picture on my 24" sucks! Much worse than that of the AV. No problem on the iPhone app, whether on the phone or the iPad, but annoying on the 24" iMac. I called Sling, but they want $30 for the incident. I thought I'd see if anyone else solved this problem first. I'm not sure Sling will be able to solve it. Anyone?