Customer Reviews

Sling Media Slingbox Classic

5 star:		(123)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Well, I've only been using it for about 2 days now and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised and 99% satisfied! (1% is lost on the fact that only one computer can use it at a time.)

The quality is top-notch! I thought it might be pixelated, jerky, or buggy - but it isn't. It flows and runs like a regular TV. It just feels like you're watching TV.

Let me also mention all of the features that it has:

* You can watch TV with a full screen and either have the remote on the screen, or not.

* You can hit a button and it will automatically dock to one side of the screen and re-adjust the size of your other windows. And then, you can even fine tune and adjust the size of that window.

* If you just want it to be on your screen and not be docked, you can do that and adjust that screen size as well.

* You can also create a list of favorite channel icons, so all you do is click onto your favorite channel's icon. If the icon doesn't exist - you can create your own!

* It also works with channels like HBO On Demand and with TiVo as well (however, I don't have TiVo).

* If your workplace has a firewall, you can access your home computer using your home computer's IP Address.

This product is HIGHLY recommended!

Ground-breaking technology. This device allows me to watch my Chicago cable TV service while in Paris. It converts the TV signal into an internet transmission. The image is only about 4 x 3 inches in size on my higher density 1680 by 1050 notebook screen but looks very clean and highly viewable. Sound quality is excellent. Transfer rates ranges from 400 to 700 kbps.

Another feature of this product is that it can be used as an internet based remote control. I have one in my mother's senior home apartment. It enables me to view her apartment, view her electronics, and send remote control signals to her electronics whenever she gets stumped. I'm sure there are many other ways to apply this unique technology.

SlingMedia is an exceptional company. The initial release of this product brought rave reviews -- uncommon for release 1.0. They did not rest. Since then, they have released new versions which further enhanced the SlingBox.

I'm impressed with the concept, the technology, the product, the execution, the installation, the enhancements, the updatability, the reliability, the quality of the support, the people from top to bottom. The staff members are very active on avsforum.com. Great attitudes.

While Tivo enabled me to watch TV when I wanted, this product allows me to watch TV where it was otherwise impossible.

This may be the best consumer electronic product of 2005.

Update 15 Nov 2005: Wow, it happened! Time Magazine named it one of the "Best Inventions 2005" in November 21st 2005 issue.

Update 9 Jan 2006: Won PCMag 2005 Technical Excellence Award\

I'm in no way affilated with SlingMedia. I'm just a SlingBox fan boy.

I was amazed. On my home network, streamed very high quality (though small picture, since the TV signal is actually less than 640x480), and when I went wireless, the quality dropped (as expected), but it kept up with audio, didn't break up. Really amazingly well designed wizard to configure.

I want to follow up on my first post about the SlingBox. After my review I was contacted by Blake the CEO of Slingmedia asking me if he could have his support Manager give me a call to discuss my problems. After explaning my story to Larry Lane he asked me if I would give the box another chance. He told me that if I ran into more problems that the box can be sent back no questions asked. I decided that since the CEO of the company can reach out to me as a customer that Slingmedia was concerned how they treated their customers! (How many CEO's reach out to the average customer??).
Larry worked with me personally in setting up my new unit to make sure things went right. After the initial set up I still had a few viewing issues. Larry and his team worked with me on the issues only to find out these issues were due to my router. To make a long story short I replaced my linksys router with a Netgear 624A. My entire network seems to be working much better and the slingbox is GREAT!!!!
I cant say enough how wonderful Blake/Larry and their team was! Without the email from Blake I can honestly say that I would not have a slingbox today or in the future. The people running the company are terrific and have completely changed the way I look at their product! I strongly recommend the product to anyone! The technology is amazing! I cant wait to the summer to sit outside on my deck, get some sun and watch the NY Mets play some baseball!!
Thank you Blake and Larry!! You and your team are great!

I am an early adopter and often buy new products with low expectations that they will actually work. In this case I was very positively surprised and I do recommend to purchase this product even is you are not a techie: it works really well and it is surprisingly easy to set up. I connected the Sling to my Tivo and to my home network via a wireless bridge (Linksys WET54GS5); and everything worked really fine. I could watch TV/Tivo right away from a wireless laptop or a wired desktop in my apartment. The set up for external access through the internet required to use a simple wizard and to open and forward a port in my home gateway. With some home gateway, I guess it can be done automatically; in my case, I had to do it manually but it is very easy provided you know what you do. Once it is done, everything else is automated, you just connect your computer to the internet and launch the player to start watching TV (I guess the Sling box automatically sends your external IP address to the Sling server, where the player can get it from). I have had the sling now for a month and a half and I have been able to test it from airport lounges and hotel rooms around the world; I haven't had any problem as long as the bandwidth was above 150-200Kb. The quality of the picture varies with the available bandwidth. With 200KB/s the picture is acceptable, I got 500KB/s through the internet and the picture was very good. From within my home network, I achieved 1MB/s and more and the picture was good even in full-screen mode on a 17" monitor. In general the quality of the picture is higher than what news and TV website stream.

My friend explained Slingbox to me, and at first I just didn't get it. Then one day it hit me: I could be in a hotel room, get on my laptop, control my Tivo or cable box via remote repeaters, and watch the streaming video sent from my house. That was when I realized that the way I watched TV was about to change again (since I got my Tivo) and I couldn't wait.

I got a Slingbox as quickly as I could and have absolutely loved it. With the help of the great Dell Inspiron 700m laptop, I've watched and controlled my home TV in the airport, hotels, coffee shops, in my bed, at work, and even had a friend's wife catch up on her O.C. in Singapore! I've docked the SlingPlayer viewer while working on my desktop at home. After watching from work a couple of times, my boss bought one and streams the news all day - he's hooked.

The Slingbox looks great, is exceptionally easy to set up, and the software works very well. I'm really impressed with the picture and the dynamic streaming based on bandwidth. Make sure you've planned how you're going to add it to your network- I used the netgear Power over Ethernet bridge to connect to my network from the living room, and I'd recommend it if your TV is far from your network (easy setup, high bandwidth, and no extra radio waves going through your body).

As a Slingbox owner, I highly recommend this product, especially if you've been thinking about getting a TV tuner or Video card with tuner support- this is a more flexible alternative, and SlingPlayer viewer software can be installed on multiple systems.

P.S. Desperate Housewives was only used for the purpose of alliteration. It is not an admission that I watch it. I did actually watch T.V., although not South Park, from Switzerland, and it worked flawlessly!

I bought a Slingbox along with the SlingLink powerline bridge directly from Sling Media last year. It set up fairly easily and worked as advertised. If I was just rating the product out of the box I'd give it maybe 4 stars. But I want to warn potential customers of the company's apathy towards customer tech assistance requests.

For instance, last fall I downloaded an upgrade to the Slingbox software. The client software hung my XP box during installation, leaving the Slingbox unusable. After many fruitless attempts to get help from Sling, I reset the Slingbox and reinstalled the old software.

This summer there was yet another upgrade. Same deal. After endless waits on the phone I again gave up and took their advice to file a help ticket on their website which promised that a tech assist person would contact me. A week later, as before, the only help I got was a boilerplate email containing irrelevant information which already existed on their web site. There was no information about what to do if their installation software hangs. Responding to that email simply generated another robot email that a tech assist person would contact me. Ad nauseum.

TiVo brought "timeshifting" into the mainstream. This box makes it a snap to enjoy "placeshifting". Now, anywhere you have an Internet connection and a computer, you can watch your TV!

It worked with every device to which I've tried to hook it: ReplayTVs, TiVos, cable boxes, satellite boxes and DVD players. If you have a network router that supports UPnP, it will auto-configure the router for you. If you don't, the manual configuration for your router is easy and Slingmedia's website offers of plenty of assistance.

I use mine when I visit each of my parents. Neither of them have a big selection of cable channels but it's no problem. I connected to my Slingbox and was watching my channels on my TV!

I use mine on business trips to watch the local news in my city and the national news in hotels that only offer CNN.

I also use it around the house as a portable TV. I can set it up next to the grill when I cook out. The quality is good over the Internet...the quality is amazing on a LAN!

I've even used mine when connected over the Internet with one of those Verizon EVDO cards. It worked like a champ!

One thing to be aware of when judging the quality: a standard definition TV signal is 480 lines of resolution. A laptop typically has 800-1000 lines of resolution. Because of this, if you sit right in front of the computer with the Slingbox picture stretched to fit the full screen, it will appear blotchy. This isn't a Slingbox quality issue. This is a scaling issue that you get whenever you watch standard-def TV on a computer. The pixels in the picture have to be stretched to create a full screen image. The the blotchy picture bugs you, sit back from the computer in full screen mode or size the video window so it's about 640x480.

Sling media has been aggressive with firmware and software upgrades so far and I believe they will be adding support for other devices in the near future.

Also like the TiVo, once you have it, you'll never figure out what you did without it. For new technology, it's not an expensive device and there's NO subscription. You own it, it's yours. Enjoy!

I was skeptical, of course, but I rolled the dice and bought one, and I am very glad I did. There aren't many bad reviews of this product herer, but I will tell you this, from start to finish, the install and ongoing use of this product is just great. First, when I hooked up the product as per the quick install guide, I put the install CD in and right away it told me that I needed to upgrade both the firmware and the client software as well. I held my breath and clicked OK...No problem. Second, I read a review where someone said "Who in the world has an ethernet port in the wall behind their TV?" Well, we have a newer house and I made sure that I had CAT5 throughout the house, so hooking up the Slingbox was very convenient and optimnized, because at this point, ethernet, for me, provides the best throughput as I still have just a 802.11B access point which works fine for the things I use it for. Third, it DOES help if you have hooked up a network device before and have some knowledge of home networking. I have installed many internet devices (In addition to computers) in my home so I might have been at an advantage. I had no need to call support so I cannot comment on anything in that regard. Fourth, I have only used it from within the house and the picture is EXCELLENT. I get the same 1400kbps streaming speed although it varies from around 700 to 1400 kbps sometimes. The new softare upgrade (which you will have to download) will make the best of any speed stream. I have not tested it from outside the house yet. I have DirecTV with TIVO and setting up that box took less than a minute. I can now remotely control my TIVO unit, which is a big deal to DirecTV Tivo users. Yes the video is a little choppy after you change the channel, but it quickly gets back to speed. I have gotten full DirecTV programming in two additional rooms now with this unit for $249. As anyone knows with DirecTV, you cannot just split the signal and hook up a feed to a TV set. You have to pay a monthly fee plus buy an extra set top box for each TV you want to enable...I figure this unit will have paid for itself in a few months. I would recommend this unit to anyone!

Seldom does a gadget exceed my expectations, but the Slingbox did just that. I've been looking for a way to get television into my office. The building offers satellite, but it is very expensive and there is too much interference for rabbit ears. I bought the Slingbox, fully expecting that it would offer at best a grainy, jittery picture. I was amazed at the image I received on my office computer. Like any streaming video, the image degenerates as you enlarge it so I keep it small, but that is all I need for an on the road or in the office television picture. It's not as though my family will be gathering around my computer monitor. Obviously the quality of your picture will depend on the available bandwidth at both ends of the connection, and since your upload speed is usually slower than your download speed, that may prove to be the weak link. I have a cable connection at home with a good upload speed. If you have a DSL connection with a limited upload speed, your results may not be as good as mine.

I was also very impressed by the ease of setting up the Slingbox. The process is a little involved since you must create an access port through your home router (so that you can reach the signal remotely), but Slingbox makes it amazingly simple. The installation program lists every popular make and model of router, then provides screen shots that show you how to configure that specific router. Any other product would have simply said, "contact your router's manufacturer for information," but Slingbox has done all the homework for you. When you set up the box, you can hook it up to and control just about any video source. I hooked it up to my cable directly because I don't need access to any premium channels at work, but you can tie it into your cable or satellite box or even your Tivo box. The advantage to using just the cable connection is that the Slingbox then uses it's own tuner, and I do not have to worry about changing the cable box channel remotely, unaware that I am interrupting my wife's viewing of the crucial moment of Survivor.

Another use I had not planned on was the ability to have a mobile television at home. Sony offers a remote television that sends out a signal from your video source, enabling you to watch TV in the backyard, bathroom, etc. That unit sells for around $1,000. I now have the same capability on my laptop, and when you use the Slingbox on your own local network, the transfer speeds are so fast that you can watch the program full screen with no degradation of the picture. If I am in the middle of an interesting show but have a sudden craving to smoke a cigar on the veranda, I can just take my laptop and continue watching the show.