The Two Inch View

TV Anywhere with Slingbox and Windows Mobile

September 12th, 2006 Jason Dunn

The Slingbox is an intriguing device: it allows you to place-shift television. What’s place-shifting? Well, if you’re familiar with personal video recorders (PVRs) such as Tivo or Windows Media Center Edition 2005, you’re familiar with the concept of time-shifting: meaning you can watch a pre-recorded show whenever you want. Place-shifting is similar; it allows you to watch what you want wherever you are. The Sling Media Slingbox is a solution a problem some of us face on a regular basis: you’re traveling or away from home for some reason, and you really want to watch the season finale of your favorite TV show or that sporting event, but you can’t find the right TV station locally. In fact, that’s how the Slingbox was born: the founders of Sling Media were in Japan and were unable to find a place to watch a World Series baseball game. The Slingbox can be connected in a variety of ways, but for the purpose of this review I’m going to focus on a very straightforward connection to my cable outlet, and discuss the new Windows Mobile client that makes the Slingbox even more useful.

Getting Started with the Slingbox
The Slingbox ($199 USD MSRP) comes with everything you need to get started: the unit itself (which is fairly small an has a cool design), two composite audio/video cables, a power adaptor, S-Video cable, infrared control cable, Ethernet cable, coaxial cable, and the software. Setup was incredibly simple: the included Quick Start guide walked me through a variety of setup scenarios, but I went straight for the simplest one. Because the setup was so simple, I was surprised when it didn’t work immediately. I had a blinking networking light on the front of the Slingbox, and it took about 20 minutes of troubleshooting before I found a post in a forum that suggested rebooting the router. I did that, and then it all started working.

Once that hurdle was out of the way, the rest of the Slingbox setup was pure joy: it asked me some simple questions about how the Slingbox was connected, and informed me that there was a newer firmware version online. Much to my delight, it downloaded the new firmware, installed it, and I never had to touch the Slingbox or re-start the setup process. Every company on the planet could learn from how Sling Media implemented this firmware update process. The rest of the setup was equally fast and simple. It provided previews of the TV signal as I went through the process, and at the end I was prompted to give the Slingbox a unique name, and enter a username and password for future access.

The Slingbox Windows Mobile Combination
Getting the Windows Mobile software for my Smartphone was easy enough – I had to register the Slingbox, and was able to get the software from the Slingbox Web site. The software was initially offered as a free download for Slingbox owners, but is now being offered for $29.95 USD (which is rather pricey for a Smartphone application). I tested both the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of the program, and both worked equally well. One thing that definitely takes a minute or two is entering the 36 character long finder code – it’s a mixture of letters and numbers, so if you have a Windows Mobile device that lacks a QWERTY keyboard, it takes some patience. The finder code is how your Windows Mobile device finds your Slingbox over the Internet, and once connected it remembers the code.

(image courtesy of Mike Temporale and Smartphone Thoughts)

The Windows Mobile software client (shown above) is easy enough to use. The Slingbox Directory allows you to select which Slingbox you want to connect to – some users may have one Slingbox connected to a regular cable TV outlet in one room of their home, and a different Slingbox connected to the a digital cable box with more channels in another room. Once you start the connect, the Slingbox client will measure your connection speed and optimize the video stream as much as possible. While it’s technically possible to watch a Slingbox TV stream over a GPRS data connection, I found it to be highly frustrating – it would play for several seconds, stop and buffer for a several seconds, play for a few more, etc.

I’ve read of other users on GPRS that had much better experiences, so it may depend on how fast your GPRS connection is. Watching a Slingbox TV stream over 802.11b WiFi was much more impressive – great quality, smooth frame rates, and no stopping to buffer the stream. I imagine high-speed connections such as EVDO would offer a similar quality experience. Changing channels is easy enough, performed by using the d-pad on a Smartphone or the direction keys on a Pocket PC. With a fast enough connection, such as WiFi, the channel changing happened quickly and the TV stream started within a few seconds. The player can be configured to display the TV stream in the application window, or it can go into full-screen landscape mode, which gives you a much bigger picture but means holding the device on its side.

Overall, I found the Slingbox Mobile client to be a useful addition to the Slingbox experience – as long as you have a fast enough connection. Ultimately, how useful it is depends on how much you use the Slingbox – if place-shifting is a frequent scenario for you, using your Windows Mobile device as a way to access your Slingbox is great. If, however, time-shifting is more important to you, a solution such as Orb in conjunction with a Windows Media Center Edition 2005 computer may be a better solution. I’ll cover Orb in a future article.

Entry Filed under: Pocket PC, Smartphone, Software