Review by M. Donnelly for Sling Media Slingbox Solo Rating:
I’ve owned a Slingbox SOLO for a little under a year now. I’m really happy with it thus far. It’s very small, easy enough to wire, and overall a very good product.
The streaming quality is pretty high, especially when viewing on a local network. (I use my laptop on occasion within the house via WIFI, to stream HDTV from our only HD box in the house, when I’m in another room) The quality is great, and watchable full-screen (~15″ laptop screen)
As far as internet streaming goes, you may need to tweak a few settings. It’s hard for me to say how easy or hard this will be for the average user, because I’m a techie, but I had absolutely no problems whatsoever. I set up my router manually, but don’t anticipate that it would be difficult for someone who’s not too familiar either, since Slingbox does offer a few simple tutorials.
Internet streaming is still decent quality, but is very much limited by your internet provider. I’ve tested my Slingbox on two different networks, since I was in college part of the time I owned it, and am back home now. What you need to be aware of is that the speed you need to take note of is your UPLOAD speed. Most ISPs will claim high DOWNLOAD speeds, and make no mention of upload speed. I’m using Time Warner’s Road Runner cable, and its upload speed isn’t all that great for me, at 512kbps. It’s enough to be watchable, but it’s definitely not the highest quality feed I’ve seen. (Compare this to Verizon’s FiOS service, which claims fast speeds “both ways”, which includes upload speed–I had better video quality with FiOS as my provider, at college)
The Slingbox gets connected between your source and your output, which means your cable box gets plugged into the input of your Slingbox, and then the TV gets plugged into the output of the Slingbox. This hasn’t degraded video quality that I’ve noticed, on my HDTV. It accepts composite (R/W/Y) or component (R/W/R/B/G) plugs, and accepts resolutions up to 1080i, if I’m not mistaken.
When using the Slingbox software, SlingPlayer allows you to control your cable box. (it better, or it’s pretty useless, right?) You plug an wire into the Slingbox, and put the opposite ends around your cable box–these wires are tipped with the same IR that your remote control has. These allow full control of your cable box, and often enough allow you to visually see your own TV remote on your computer, so you can click the same buttons you use at home. This requires you to set up your Slingbox to provide which TV service you use. Many many cable boxes are supported.
There’s not a whole lot more to say about the Slingbox SOLO. It does what it says, and relatively well. But if you’re looking to watch from outside your home network, be sure to find out your ISP’s UPLOAD SPEED. This is the speed that limits how well you can utilize your Slingbox. All in all, the only real complaint I have about the Slingbox itself is that Wifi would be nice–wiring ethernet to your Slingbox may be inconvenient for some. They offer products to solve this, but they’re quite expensive. Still, a very solid product.
P.S.-One thing I also like to do is turn my SlingPlayer software on when the TV is occupied, as well. When my TV is being used with the PlayStation 3, I can still watch video from my cable box via my computer–a nice little perk, in my opinion.
(out of 1 reviews)
June 3rd, 2010 - 23:52
Review by M. Donnelly for Sling Media Slingbox Solo
Rating:
I’ve owned a Slingbox SOLO for a little under a year now. I’m really happy with it thus far. It’s very small, easy enough to wire, and overall a very good product.
The streaming quality is pretty high, especially when viewing on a local network. (I use my laptop on occasion within the house via WIFI, to stream HDTV from our only HD box in the house, when I’m in another room) The quality is great, and watchable full-screen (~15″ laptop screen)
As far as internet streaming goes, you may need to tweak a few settings. It’s hard for me to say how easy or hard this will be for the average user, because I’m a techie, but I had absolutely no problems whatsoever. I set up my router manually, but don’t anticipate that it would be difficult for someone who’s not too familiar either, since Slingbox does offer a few simple tutorials.
Internet streaming is still decent quality, but is very much limited by your internet provider. I’ve tested my Slingbox on two different networks, since I was in college part of the time I owned it, and am back home now. What you need to be aware of is that the speed you need to take note of is your UPLOAD speed. Most ISPs will claim high DOWNLOAD speeds, and make no mention of upload speed. I’m using Time Warner’s Road Runner cable, and its upload speed isn’t all that great for me, at 512kbps. It’s enough to be watchable, but it’s definitely not the highest quality feed I’ve seen. (Compare this to Verizon’s FiOS service, which claims fast speeds “both ways”, which includes upload speed–I had better video quality with FiOS as my provider, at college)
The Slingbox gets connected between your source and your output, which means your cable box gets plugged into the input of your Slingbox, and then the TV gets plugged into the output of the Slingbox. This hasn’t degraded video quality that I’ve noticed, on my HDTV. It accepts composite (R/W/Y) or component (R/W/R/B/G) plugs, and accepts resolutions up to 1080i, if I’m not mistaken.
When using the Slingbox software, SlingPlayer allows you to control your cable box. (it better, or it’s pretty useless, right?) You plug an wire into the Slingbox, and put the opposite ends around your cable box–these wires are tipped with the same IR that your remote control has. These allow full control of your cable box, and often enough allow you to visually see your own TV remote on your computer, so you can click the same buttons you use at home. This requires you to set up your Slingbox to provide which TV service you use. Many many cable boxes are supported.
There’s not a whole lot more to say about the Slingbox SOLO. It does what it says, and relatively well. But if you’re looking to watch from outside your home network, be sure to find out your ISP’s UPLOAD SPEED. This is the speed that limits how well you can utilize your Slingbox. All in all, the only real complaint I have about the Slingbox itself is that Wifi would be nice–wiring ethernet to your Slingbox may be inconvenient for some. They offer products to solve this, but they’re quite expensive. Still, a very solid product.
P.S.-One thing I also like to do is turn my SlingPlayer software on when the TV is occupied, as well. When my TV is being used with the PlayStation 3, I can still watch video from my cable box via my computer–a nice little perk, in my opinion.