In Brief

If you want to watch your home TV system on the road, the new Slingbox Pro is the state of the art in place-shifting video. With up to four simultaneous inputs (including an optional high-definition dongle), the Pro solves the dilemma of whether to connect the cable box, TiVo or DVD player. Now you don't have to choose. You can even connect a home security cam, to keep an eye on the house or the kids wherever you are.

The Slingbox Pro and its siblings, the Slingbox Tuner (single coax input) and Slingbox AV (single AV input) all work with the companion SlingPlayer software, available for Windows 2000SP4/XP/Vista, Mac OS 10.4, and Windows Mobile 5.0. After making your video connections (all needed cables are in the box), you simply run the setup software, and start streaming your video over the Internet. That's really all there is to it. And the video quality is surprisingly good, although necessarily limited by both your upstream Internet connection at home, and the speed of your client connection at the other end. With a 650Kbps upstream DSL connection at home, we regularly got a video streaming rate of 400Kbps or better via a remote Wi-Fi connection. The video window is small (640x480), but quite watchable, and surprisingly smooth. Quality can't compare to a real TV, but a great way to watch shows when you're on the go. You can also use it to stream shows around your local home network, at much higher data rates and quality, but for us at least, the real value of the Slingbox is in remote viewing. And it does the job amazingly well.

In Depth

The Slingbox Pro comes with a slim quick setup guide designed to cover physical AV and network connections, then it refers you to the software setup wizard, which is very easy to use, but incomplete with regard to all but the most simple network configurations. We encountered several issues that seem pretty common, none of which were answered by the quick setup guide, and there is no full manual. So we had to resort to the online support pages and Sling Community discussion forum for answers.

Our first problem was that while we purchased the box based on the advertised four simultaneous inputs, we found that we could only really use two of them, the S-Video and composite inputs. If you have more than two S-Video or composite inputs, you'll need to buy another Slingbox. The other two inputs are dedicated to coax for your cable/satellite box, and an optional high-definition dongle. We'd like to see more flexibility in the cabling of the four independent sources. But we chose our two favorite devices (two DirecTiVo boxes), and pressed on.

The next issue was that while we plugged the Slingbox directly into our Belkin router via Ethernet, the setup software could not find it on our local network. So we were stymied at square one until we found a discussion thread that told us that the slow blinking red network light on the box meant it was not connected to the Internet and advised resetting the Slingbox. We had to search again to find out HOW to reset the Slingbox, but finally got a steady red light after that. Then we were finally able to start the software setup process, which leads you through configuring the various video inputs, and designating remote control codes for them.

The setup process assumes have only one router on your network, if you have more, you'll need to reconfigure your equipment or do some fancy software footwork. Fortunately, although we have two routers, we use the second only as an access point, with all IP addressing done by the main router. At the end, there's one final step that required advanced router setup. In order to view your Slingbox remotely (from outside your home network), you need to have a port open for it to communicate with Sling's directory server, which acts as a traffic cop for Slingboxes and their client players. Each box gets its own private ID. But this means either disabling firewalls, or opening ports on routers. We manually opened a port on our router, and then we were in business. All told, from start to finish, getting things connected and working our way through the setup issues took about three hours. We had one more issue related to our two DirecTiVo boxes, which use the same remote with different ID codes. The Slingbox seemed to keep forgetting that one box uses remote code 4, with the result that we could only control one TiVo with the two-headed IR blaster until we reran the setup software a couple times.

One final note about setup is that the Slingbox does not support closed captioning. So if you want to view captions remotely, you'll need to place a decoder between the video source and the Slingbox, which we did for one of our TiVos.

Happily, setup only needs to be done once, and the end result is well worth the hassle. We first watched a show over our local network, with superb video quality, even via Wi-Fi on our laptop. The key to top video quality is using a fast wired connection to the Slingbox. You can also attach a Wi-Fi adapter to the Slingbox's Ethernet port, but for the best picture, we don't recommend this. Sling offers an optional powerline Ethernet adapter if your wired network does not extend to your TV room.

Next, we tried the connection remotely, and were again surprised by the quality. Even with a 3 of 4 bar wireless connection in a friend's home, we got consistent smooth motion, and the remote control operation was only slightly delayed. The new SlingPlayer has automatic stream optimization that adjusts the bit rate on the fly to your connection, wherever you are, so you don't have to worry about it. We played around a little with the manual settings, but the automatic settings were always preferable. Player clients are available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Windows Mobile and Mac OS 10.4. We used the Vista and Mac clients, and both worked well, although the Mac client is still in beta and has some rough edges.

The acid test, however, was if the connection would still work a week later, on a trip to Atlanta. It did, and with just as good quality as at our friend's house in Berkeley, Calif. If you have family at home using the same video inputs, you'll need to work out sharing arrangements, since if they are watching a show on the TiVo, you'll have to watch the same program, or vice versa. Having someone at home can also be handy if your router or Slingbox happens to need a reset while you're on the road.

If you're looking to watch your home TV on the road, and have more that one video source, the Slingbox Pro is the best answer going. If you have only one source, the Slingbox Tuner or Slingbox AV offer similar functionality.