The idea behind the Sling Media family of products is very cool, and as a television junkie who travels a fair bit I was eager to try them out. Unfortunately, while they worked great within the home I found that when it came to their primary purpose – allowing me to watch my home television from the road – the result was far from ideal.
Essentially, Sling is all about letting you stream your television over the Internet. The flagship product is the Slingbox. I tested the original offering, the Slingbox Solo, but the company also offers the high-definition TV capable Slingbox Pro-HD.
The Slingbox connects to your digital cable box and your Web router, and via an IR controller that you attach over the remote sensor on your cable box you’re able to watch, and control, your cable box from any computer with an Internet connection, using the SlingPlayer Desktop application . The interface mimics your remote control, and you can even access stored shows on your PVR or pay-per-view programming.
I also tested the SlingCatcher. While the Slingbox is designed to grab the TV signal and send it out, the SlingCatcher is designed to, well, catch it. With the SlingCatcher connected to a second TV in your home, or any TV where you can access a Web connection, you can control and watch your cable box, as long as the cable box has a Slingbox connected. It also doubles as a wireless media projector, using SlingProjector software installed on your WiFi-capable laptop wirelessly videos, presentations or any content you have from your laptop and stream it to the TV. The SlingCatcher also includes a remote control.
Finally, I also tested the SlingLink Turbo, which allows you to use your AC wall power outlets to extend your LAN network to other rooms in your home. For example, I connected the SlingCatcher to my bedroom television, a room where I had no Internet connection. By connecting one SlingLink box to the router in my living room and plugging it into the wall, and plugging the other box into the wall in my bedroom, I was able to connect a LAN cable from that box to the SlingCatcher.
The SlingLink worked perfectly and as I mentioned, within my home, the other Sling products did as well. I could use the SlingCatcher to watch my Rogers digital cable box in my bedroom where I’d been relying on rabbit ears. While there was a slight lag in changing channels, it was minor. And from my home desktop PC I also had no troubles watching my cable through the SlingPlayer application, with acceptable quality and control.
However, while at home the signals were travelling over my home network. It’s when I tried to connect from outside the home, over the Internet, that things went awry. I downloaded the desktop player to my laptop and connected from many different locations: my parent’s home, hotel rooms, coffee shops, the office. I connected both wired and wirelessly. And consistently, it just didn’t work. I could connect and control the cable box, but while the audio was fine the video was constantly freezing and buffering. Frankly, it was unwatchable.
I also brought the SlingCatcher on the road, connecting it to my parent’s television in B.C. to see if I could control my cable box back in Ontario. I could, but again, the video was choppy and unwatchable, and looked extremely pixalated on the 27” screen.
The main limiting factor would seem to be the upload speed of my home Internet connection, as I found the picture quality consistently bad no matter what download speed I connected at. However, I have a mid-level Internet package from Rogers, with service quality similar to that I’d imagine is available to most Canadians. So if it’s not working for me, I suspect it won’t work for a lot of people. Perhaps if I sprung for the high-end Internet package from Rogers, my experience would have been better.
I like the promise of this product, but when it comes to taking your television on the road it simply failed to deliver. Within the home it can work as a defacto second cable box. However, given that only one person can control the box at a time, you can’t be watching one channel in one room and another in the other. And at $199.99 for the Slingbox Solo and another $249.99 for the SlingCatcher (the SlingLink 4-Port retails for $199.99) just buying a second cable box would make more sense.
The Sling products are available now through the retail and distribution channels.
