Message Board

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Got Some Cash? Like Watching TV? I Have The Answers!

Last month I was taking the family on a road trip to Farmville Iowa. No Farmville wasn't the real name, but it was dirt roads and tiny towns and I knew boredom would ensue. And it was the week of many premieres on TV. Well, I had some loose cash and nothing to lose, so I dropped a chunk of change and picked up the Slingbox HD Pro.I then got home, and hooked it up in under 10 minutes and was off and running. Now you are probably asking, what exactly is this Slingbox and what does it do? Very simple, the Slingbox plugs into your router, and your cable box/tivo/satellite box/dvd player/whatever you want. And you download the Slingplayer on your laptop, blackberry, or in my case, the Slingplayer app for the iPhone. And wherever you may be in the world, as long as you have high speed internet, you can watch your TV at home. There is an infrared plug coming off the Slingbox that points at whatever device you want to control and what you would normally see on your TV at home, you see on whatever device you are using to watch it on. Watch your TV, your DVR, or have it hooked to a DVD player and watch a DVD. I can see the DVD feature being handy for those with the multi-dvd players.

Now the downside of things. If your wife, family, or roommates are at home and watching TV, and you are out somewhere bored and wanna watch some TV and fire up the Slingbox, whatever channel or show on the DVR you choose, will affect those at home watching. But that is pretty minor to me, I find this useful for having a basketball game on and also wanting to play some Call of Duty, now I just fire up my laptop and watch the game while playing some video games on the TV. Best of both worlds.

So if you love watching TV and want to do so on the go and do a lot of traveling, then this is worth shelling out quite a bit of cash for. The HD player will set you back about $300. And for the app on the iPhone it did cost $39.99 but that might have changed. On the iPhone you can watch over Wifi or 3G and it works pretty well. I always read about people upset that Hulu is not available for the iPhone, but if you have this set up, Hulu is kinda worthless.

Head over to the Slingbox Site for even more details.