What if you want to watch TV on your television or from your DVR, but don't happen to be in your own home? If you have a fast Net connection, say the Duo, check out a product called the Slingbox. It's not cheap, and it's not pretty, but it hooks up to your TV signal or cable box on one end and the Internet on the other. Like other items Steve and Angela saw this week, it comes with an IR blaster, which aims at the infrared receiver on the box and mimics a remote control. You control that over the Net using your Windows PC, which runs the necessary software.
If all goes well with this slightly Rube Goldberg-esque setup, you can watch your home TV from anywhere. The software even gives you a virtual remote control that can perform most of the functions of whatever you've got at home. Of course, if somebody at home wants to watch something different--dueling remotes! If you're in the hotel and your spouse is on the sofa, it's up to you to fight it out. Last one wins.
You need a high-speed Net connection and a router, and there are some other issues. The Slingbox doesn't have Wi-Fi built in, so if your network router's in one room and the TV connection's in another, you'll need to run a cable from the router to the Slingbox or shell out another $75 for a wireless bridge that fits into the ethernet port on the Slingbox and turns the wired connection wireless.
Steve found some connection problems, too. If everything goes right, he says, you should be able to make the connection pretty painlessly. But as he learned in his tests, there are plenty of things that can go wrong (what, with computers involved? We're shocked! Shocked!) and you can end up having to delve into router setup procedures and other unsavory tasks. The box is somewhat underpowered, so at best the picture is kind of soft, and though it changes channels quickly, that makes the picture even softer until the machine catches up.
Needless to say, this whole thing is less than dial-up-friendly--and you probably won't like your results over a busy Wi-Fi connection, either. Back home you need 256 kilobits per second of upstream bandwidth--the data rate from your box to the Internet, which is always a lot slower than what you pull down. Subscribers to certain cut-rate DSL services, and even to some full-fledged cable services, won't have that kind of speed to spare.
A Slingbox would, however, make a dandy extra TV around the house--a notebook on your local network would have speed to spare. Of course, if that's what you're after, the Duo have another idea for you: Sony's LocationFree TV, which also runs wirelessly. The base station gets the signal from your digital TV or cable box, and controls it with yet another IR blaster. The base has Wi-Fi, and the TV has a battery in it, so you can pick it up and take it anywhere within range. Sharp makes a similar model. Steve and Angela's main beef with the Sony setup isn't function--the company even supplies software that's similar to the Slingbox, so in theory one could watch what's on this TV from anywhere--but the vapors-inducing price tag: a whopping $1500!
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