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Neost
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slingbox

Post by Neost »

Got my hands on one of these and got it setup last night. Confirmed access via the internet by letting a friend of mine access my tv.

http://www.slingmedia.com

Streams pretty nice apparently, not much distortion of video. Good audio quality. Has IR attachment to allow changing of channels, etc. etc. Their website has good information for a number of "home" type routers for setting up port forwarding, etc. etc.

I'm pretty sure our "test" will last at least through the NCAA tournament.
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Post by pyrella »

How much? And does it support HD?
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Post by Neost »

MSRP is 250 I believe. This one cost like 213 street price.

Doesn't suport HD. Only has S-Video and Composite inputs. Video quality depends on the stream of course. Doesn't look bad at all off my 3mbdown/512mb up DSL unless you full screen it, then it gets a bit fuzzy but not too bad. Using a small window it's very nice quality. Only lag I get is when using the IR blaster to change channels.

I'm sitting at work right now watching "Another 48 Hours" on HBO. Got it connected to my dishnetwork receiver's 2nd output via composite video. Probably going to try switching it to S-Video to see if there is any quality difference.

Yet another edit: I thought I might also mention that the slingbox is setup out of the box to stream via TCP port 5001. There is mention of a fallback to port 443 but I haven't messed with that. The port used is completely configurable so if your IT guys don't automatically kill ports >1024 then you can probably use it without much problem. Also, their support page has information on setting up port forwarding for most models of home router. The slingbox generates a "finder ID" that you copy. When it is online, it registers with a finder ID service and the player uses that finder ID to check the service for the current IP address and directs the slingplayer to that IP.
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Post by Ransure »

Whats to prevent people from hacking your cablehurtz?!?!
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Post by Neost »

Whats to prevent people from hacking your cablehurtz?!?!
dunno. haven't got that far yet. I've not heard of any instance of someone being able to grab someone else's stream.

The slingplayer has password protection for viewing and for administrator access.

We hooked a pc up at work to a 42" plasma display (panasonic) and the video quality in full screen was amazing. We were watching Shrek2 and I couldn't tell the difference from sitting in front of my projector watching it.

I don't know if they plan on coming up with an HD compatible version or not but I am going to ask.
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Post by Ransure »

Id be willing to be the only thing stopping it is obscurity.... just like Mac OSX is unhackable.

An HD version? thats a sticky subject... maybe in a few years when/if they get thier act together with personal use laws... but not before.

Content providers have epileptic fits when you can get great quality in any other medium other than the one they are providing to you.
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Post by Zaelath »

I can see the cable companies in general having a shit-fit if this kind of tech became wide-spread.

They're already pissy about Vonage/Skype/etc, and the bandwidth use of that stuff is piddling compared to people choking their upload bandwidth so they can watch their TV from work....

Businesses are also likely to be less than impressed at staff streaming 512kb/s video to their desktop all day (usage costs not being as visible in the US as they are here, but it's still a factor...)
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Post by Neost »

I read somewhere that 400kb was the minimum bandwidth. After letting this run for a day on my desktop, I saw the stream do a range between 250kb up to 410kb at various times.

I have 3mb up/512k down DSL at home so I imagine my home network would've been really slow, but I wasn't here so who cares;)

But the max I saw was really probably about 408-410kb.

As for security, yeah that will probably be an issue as these become more popular but for now obscurity + password works.

I'm just really impressed with the quality of video that I'm getting. We'll be watching the NCAA tournaments on a 42" plasma display we have in our lab for testing marketing content before we push it out over our content delivery system to our retail stores. So nice of the boss to buy us that plasma.
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Post by valryte »

I have 3mb up/512k down DSL at home
Um, you mean 3mb DOWN/512 UP... Or are you one of those freaks that thinks receiving a file to your computer is actually an upload...
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Post by Neost »

Quote:
I have 3mb up/512k down DSL at home


Um, you mean 3mb DOWN/512 UP... Or are you one of those freaks that thinks receiving a file to your computer is actually an upload...
Yeah, i screwed it up. probably typing a quick response while doing 10 other things.

FUK U HITLER
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