Has nothing to do with Vegas, but you guys probably enjoy playing with techno-toys as much as I do.
I do some traveling, and my wife travels a lot to places such as Hong Kong and Tokyo. I've always heard that a "Slingbox" was a cool toy, and looking at comments on websites such as Newegg and Amazon reinforced that view. When a SlingboxPro came along a few months ago at a really good price, I jumped at the offer.
A Slingbox is an interface device that takes in a television signal and allows it to be delivered to a user over the Internet. The idea is that you load a program called SlingPlayer on your computer and then from anywhere in the world you can call up your Slingbox and your player will show whatever video is coming into the Slingbox at home. In my case I have it hooked up to my Tivo DVR. In this instance when I start the SlingPlayer application a dead-on-lookalike Tivo remote control also appears on my PC screen. By pushing those Tivo remote buttons I can control my Tivo at home, exactly as though I were using the hardware Tivo remote.
There are several hurdles to jump. First, you need to have at least ~512Kb/sec UPLOAD speed on your home broadband, or the video won't look great. I have DSL here (had cable but the DSL package was dirt cheap by comparison) and consistently get 1.5 down / .5 up, so that's not an issue. The second hurdle is a practical one--my Slingbox sits in the living room, near the TV and Tivo DVR, but my Internet portal is 40 feet away and on another floor. They make a "SlingLink" device that puts the Ethernet on your house power wiring, but it's expensive. I found a few months ago that the local Fry's was selling the same thing by by a company called "Airlink" for just $40 for a pair of adapters. The idea is that you plug one box into an outlet near your router, and a second box into an outlet near the TV. You then run an Ethernet cable from the router to the first box, and an Ethernet cable from the second box to the SlingBox. I wasn't expecting much (the early prototypes a decade ago were not very good) but to my amazement the setup is bulletproof. The two adapter boxes see each other within a few seconds of power-up and from then on everything that goes into one comes out the other as though there were an Ethernet cable the whole distance.
Anyway, I'm a bit nervous that with so many possible failure points (cable, Tivo, SlingBox, powerline adapters, router, DSL line) that this might turn out to be a frustrating exercise, but so far it's great. Of course there's also the angle that it's a bit much to be in some exciting place like Hong Kong and choose to watch Law&Order on the home Tivo, but that's another topic.
I do some traveling, and my wife travels a lot to places such as Hong Kong and Tokyo. I've always heard that a "Slingbox" was a cool toy, and looking at comments on websites such as Newegg and Amazon reinforced that view. When a SlingboxPro came along a few months ago at a really good price, I jumped at the offer.
A Slingbox is an interface device that takes in a television signal and allows it to be delivered to a user over the Internet. The idea is that you load a program called SlingPlayer on your computer and then from anywhere in the world you can call up your Slingbox and your player will show whatever video is coming into the Slingbox at home. In my case I have it hooked up to my Tivo DVR. In this instance when I start the SlingPlayer application a dead-on-lookalike Tivo remote control also appears on my PC screen. By pushing those Tivo remote buttons I can control my Tivo at home, exactly as though I were using the hardware Tivo remote.
There are several hurdles to jump. First, you need to have at least ~512Kb/sec UPLOAD speed on your home broadband, or the video won't look great. I have DSL here (had cable but the DSL package was dirt cheap by comparison) and consistently get 1.5 down / .5 up, so that's not an issue. The second hurdle is a practical one--my Slingbox sits in the living room, near the TV and Tivo DVR, but my Internet portal is 40 feet away and on another floor. They make a "SlingLink" device that puts the Ethernet on your house power wiring, but it's expensive. I found a few months ago that the local Fry's was selling the same thing by by a company called "Airlink" for just $40 for a pair of adapters. The idea is that you plug one box into an outlet near your router, and a second box into an outlet near the TV. You then run an Ethernet cable from the router to the first box, and an Ethernet cable from the second box to the SlingBox. I wasn't expecting much (the early prototypes a decade ago were not very good) but to my amazement the setup is bulletproof. The two adapter boxes see each other within a few seconds of power-up and from then on everything that goes into one comes out the other as though there were an Ethernet cable the whole distance.
Anyway, I'm a bit nervous that with so many possible failure points (cable, Tivo, SlingBox, powerline adapters, router, DSL line) that this might turn out to be a frustrating exercise, but so far it's great. Of course there's also the angle that it's a bit much to be in some exciting place like Hong Kong and choose to watch Law&Order on the home Tivo, but that's another topic.