Allan Bogild Pedersen's blog

For sometime now i have been reading about Slingbox from Slingmedia, and today the Slingbox solo i ordered yesterday arrived at my desk. With a Slingbox you can take you satellite or cable TV with you around in the house or even out on the internet as long as you got at least 256 Kbit upload on your broadband.

The Slingbox comes in different version, the Sole version i got is the smallest, you can only connect one signal at a time and you cant send the stream out in HD even though you can connect a HD signal to the box it will render it in a lower resolution. There is a Slingbox Pro and a Slingbox HD that takes input from more sources and the HD version can send the signal out in HD if you got the internet connection to support it.

The Slingbox solo is connected between your TV and fx. Your satellite reviver with either a special cable supplied with the Slingbox solo or by using the different plugs on the back of the Slingbox solo. There are no loos of picture quality on your ordinary TV and in this postion the Slingbox gets the same picture and audio and can broadcast it out on the network. In the box the Slingbox solo came in there were also a infrared transmitter that easily connect to the Slingbox and is put on the satellite receiver so the Slingbox can change the channel when ever needed.

The Slingbox configuration went very easy, it was by far the easies product I have ever configured. I started out by connecting supplied special SCART cable that makes the Slingbox solo able to tap in to the signal from my satellite receiver. The SCART cable has a composite and 2 audio cable that I put in to the Slingbox solo. Besides power and Ethernet i also had to plug in the small IR transmitter and put it on the satellite receiver. Connecting everything took less than 3 minutes.

There is no CD in the box but you need the Sling player to configure the Slingbox and being able to playback from it. At first it seems a bit strange they did not include a CD with software, but on the other hand it is a way to ensure that everyone gets the latest update.

The Sling player installed easily and after it is started it automatically find my Slingbox and configures it, I was all must a bit disappointed that the setup went that easy, me being a nerd i like to do everything manually, but i knew tat at least I would have to open the ports for the Slingbox in the router my self.

Running the Sling player for the first time really impressed me, et was a great picture quality, my worst fear was how good it was to change channels by using the IR transmitter, but it works perfect. In the player you get a picture of the remote control and can use either mouse or keyboard to activate the keys.

The Sling player comes in both a Windows and a Mac version but there is also a version for Symbion, Windows mobile and recently also iPhone so you can use your mobile phone to watch TV. I tried the Windows mobile version on my HTC Shift it worked great and even over a 3g connection the picture quality was ok. The mobile player will cost you 29.95$ but you can download a 30 days trial version first to make sure it works for your phone.

Summer is here and sometimes it is too hot to sit home in front of the computer, but why not bring the computer out in the summer and enjoy the great weather, it has never been so easy.

Every computer should by law be sold with a built in 3G modem and a sim card, it is a fantastic feeling of freedom to be able to connect to cyberspace from anywhere with a good bandwidth. I still feel fascinated everytime I connect even though it is now about a year since I first connected at that time it was with the built in modem in my HTC Shift. I often bring my 3G modem with me and enjoy the freedom of working from anywhere, by using it I can work, watch TV using my Slingbox, get a hold on all my scanned papers on my Synology NAS, the possibilities are endless specially while using the my Acer Spire D150 one with built in 3g modem, it is so small you can bring it everywhere. I took the above picture one day where I took my Aspire one with me to the beach, it was a very warm day and it was a absolute joy to spend the afternoon at the beach with a little wind blowing.