Sling Media Slingbox PRO-HD SB300-100
by Sling Media
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List Price: Our Price: $249.99 You Save: $50.00 (17%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sling Media Slingbox PRO-HD SB300-100
Customer Review: Up and running ... Finally!
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all, does your cable company use Comcast/Cisco's RNG200 cable box/DVR? If so, forget about properly controlling it with your Slingbox. That's right, just spare yourself and move on. Oh you'll run through the setup and eventually see a remote that looks just like yours, but rest assured, all but a few of its buttons won't do a thing when pressed. It's useless. There are some other minimalist remotes whose codes will work, but only for a precious few of your DVR's features. For example, you can change channels up and down, but can't access your recorded programs. So if all you want to do is access live TV from your RNG200, there are some workarounds. For me at least, this defeats the purpose of a DVR.
Not sure who's more at fault here. Cisco, for pumping out a cable box that won't play nice with aftermarket equipment that very clearly works well with hundreds of other cable boxes. Or Sling, for not buckling down and developing workable code to work with the RNG200. Whatever the case, a web search reveals that many others have tried and given up over the years and, IMHO, for as long as it's been an issue, no one should have to discover any of this only after purchasing and hooking up hundreds of dollars worth of gear. At the very least, Sling should make this sort of incompatibility info readily available to prospective buyers. I've been reading about their lackluster customer support, and muddling around all over their website, so I guess this just further confirms problems endemic to the organization. But for crying out loud , looking at some of these reviews, it'd be a shame if they can't some day turn it all around, because when it's working, this is some seriously cool technology!
So let's get to the good stuff!
My solution was to move everything downstairs and use the Slingbox on my TiVo HD XL. (If you're wondering why this wasn't the plan from the start, well, I travel extensively on business and wanted to dedicate the upstairs Comcast DVR to content that I'm more likely to want to stream from the road.) A web search revealed that people weren't having many issues controlling TiVo's equipment with Sling's, and sure enough, everything went together without a hitch. SlingPlayer's TiVo remote looks just like the real deal. More importantly, all the buttons work!
BTW, I did a separate review on the Slinglink, but figure they're worth mentioning here as a good number of Slingbox users will need them. In short, I bought the Slinglink Turbo 1PORT Enet Connection Bridge (SL 150-100) and they're just flat brilliant. Plug them in as shown and you're off to the races. Literally takes seconds.
So anyway, I'm still getting to know this thing, but so far so good. I'll know more after my first hotel stay and will update this post if any problems crop up.
Cheers!
Customer Review: beware of crippling customer support issues!
Summary: 1 Stars
Sling media has the most arrogant technical support one can imagine, and one of the most cryptic online systems to boot. Beware if you ever want to run 2 Slingboxes remotely.
I have had my first Slingbox for about 6 months. Having one Slingbox is great, but beware when you try to run two...
I purchased the second Slingbox about 5 months after the first. I was able to set up the second Slingbox just fine to work inside my house. However, for reasons I did not understand, on my iPad's Sling Player software (for which I have paid an additional $30) only one of the Sling Players showed up in the "device directory".
I tried to contact Sling technical support several times, but with no success. First, they only give you free support for the first 90 days - after that you have to PAY for it. Now my second Slingbox was under a month old and *they should have known that* because you need to register the Slingbox online before you can first use it. But they refused to even speak to me without jumping through lots of hoops. I did not manage to get the customer support I am entitled to - I gave up after wasting about half a day.
Their web site did not have a solution to my problem either. It was only by accident that I found a solution to the problem on my own, days later.
The problem is that Sling appears to think they are a media company rather than a hardware company. They are trying to make you watch video in the browser rather than using player software on your computer, and they have delusions of grandeur in how they approach placeshifting. To do anything using a Slingbox, you need to create an account on [...] and log into that.
Strangely, they have a second web site called [...], which is where they also do the Dish network tie-in. You will need to go to this second site as well and register your Slingbox there a second time, or the iPad/iPhone App will not recognize your second Slingbox.
I am not sure if this should happen automatically, but for my account, the second SlingBox did show just fine on [...] but was unknown at [...] - and hence the iPad App did not see it.
None of this is intuitive. The least they should do is help people out with this for free. Nothing on any of Sling Media's web sites tells you that you need to go to [...] in addition to [...] - I found this info on an external web site after searching on Google for a long time.
When I had only one SlingBox, I told everyone how great it was. Now, having experienced how arrogant and incompetent customer service is, my opinion has changed 180 degrees. With this attitude to customer service, buyers should beware.
Customer Review: Works exactly as advertised
Summary: 5 Stars
I gave this box 5 stars because it does exactly what it says it does. I was able to research through the Slingbox website and Amazon which model I should go with to fit my situation and so there was not a second of disappointment when it actually arrived.
That's not to say its perfect. There are drawbacks, but overall, the Slingbox Pro does exactly what it says it does - transmit cable/broadcast signals to a remote computer anywhere else in the world.
Basically we bought this for the purpose of watching some American TV (namely American Football) overseas where we're stationed. We would have preferred a cheaper model, but this is the only one that took the signal straight from the wall - which allowed my brother-in-law (BIL) to plug this directly in his spare bedroom.
My very benevolent BIL offered to set the entire thing up on his end, and he said the process was a piece of cake. I will admit that he's a pretty good computer techy guy, so I can't really comment on the ease of set-up.
From my end - things couldn't be easier. There is some signal degradation when I play it on the 42" flat panel, but when playing back on the laptop the signal is actually quite sharp.
My BIL's internet connection was a factor. We actually had to upgrade the upload speed on his connection in order for my signal to improve. Before when they would so much as check the mail while the sligbox was on, the signal on my end was terrible. After they kicked up their upload speed, this made things much better. Now their upload speed shows to be 790kbs where before it was roughly 350kbs. 350KBS was not nearly enough to show a smooth picture on my end - regardless of what the slingplayer documentation says.
I like the sling player software and I think it functions well. The slingbar-right option is nice as the rest of my windows re-size on the laptop.
Other thoughts:
-I have no problem with using Slingplayer wirelessly, even though it's not suggested.
-The pause TV button is great.
-I am regularly using the slingplayer 7 time zones away from the Slingbox. This might explain the extra upload speed needed on the other end.
-The program guide is great - we love it.
-When my BIL replaced his router, the Slingbox did not like that. It has to be completely reprogrammed. This is to be expected I guess, but it did cause me a couple of days outage.
Overall, this does exactly what we want it to do. Paying the $260+ for this box seemed a bit pricey, but we have not been disappointed because we've been able to accomplish exactly what I wanted to do.
Customer Review: Pretty good, but not fully baked
Summary: 4 Stars
I've wanted a Slingbox for a while, and finally bit the bullet once the HD model had been out long enough, the Mobile app for iPhone was available, lots of fairly positive reviews, etc.
Initial setup is fairly straightforward, except for the reconfiguration of your router. In my case (using Verizon DSL's Westell firewall/router/modem) the UPnP features didn't work, so I had to modify the firewall rules myself to enable the necessary port forwarding. This is required if you want to watch your Slingbox when you're away from your home network. I encountered a separate bug on the Westell GUI which made making the config changes more difficult than it needed to be, but that's not Slingbox's fault.
I encountered two primary complaints when I set up the SlingPlayer software on my Snow Leopard Macs. First, a big warning appears during the installation process that the Mac version of the software currently doesn't support HD streaming, and second, when I installed the necessary plugin for Safari to watch via the website, I was directed to a support note indicating I have to configure Safari to run in 32-bit mode (instead of 64-bit) before the plugin will work.
Both these discoveries were somewhat vexing. Maybe the information is available somewhere in the Slingbox support resources, but I hadn't encountered it anywhere in my pre-sales searching. I did realize the other limitations of the device (no HDMI connections, only 1080i input support, etc) so no grounds for complaint there.
Ideally I'd like to be able to watch both my satellite HD receiver and my AppleTV, but since the Slingbox only has one set of HD-compatible component video inputs, that's not a practical option. It would be nice if I could use one of the IR transmitters to control an external input switcher/converter, or if there was some kind of USB widget which magically expanded the number of inputs and provided a switching capability.
I also bought and installed the SlingPlayer mobile app on my iPhone and first-gen iPod Touch. It seems to work pretty well, including streaming over 3G networks on the phone, though I did have to upgrade the Touch to OS 3.0+ in order for the app to run.
It seems inevitable that a fancier HD slingbox will probably appear which adds more HD inputs, HDMI support, and the various other missing things. Right now I'm hoping that the mobile app will be enhanced to make full use of an iPad screen, because that will be a lovely platform for watching TV when away from the big screen.
Customer Review: Failed after 100 days; More $ to get support
Summary: 2 Stars
I wanted to review this product's feature set and its ease of setup or its compatibility or some other attributes. However, I could not: mine failed after only 100 days of ownership. And I couldn't initially get it fixed by Sling because they told me they only support it for 90 days. I guess I'm old-fashioned in that I expect products to last more than three months before they fail. I also expect companies of those failed products to stand behind them.
UPDATE ONE MONTH LATER: Sling was now willing to honor the warranty on my Slingbox....but only if I paid them $50 more for an extended warranty. Yes, even though my product was well within the one year warranty. Only if I paid them more money would they answer my calls or e-mails asking them to replace my unit.
Anyone considering this product should add $50 to the purchase price when evaluating its worth to you. The product essentially comes with a mere 90 day warranty--you must pay extra after that. Sling should be upfront, adding that $50 to the list price and providing good support. But I guess that's not how they do business.
UPDATE ONE YEAR LATER: After stewing over the extra $50 for months, I opted to pay it so I could move forward and actually have a working SlingBox. I will give Sling credit: Once you pay them their extra $50, they do support you. They stayed on the phone with me at length, connected in remotely, and didn't hesitate to send a replacement unit for my failed one.
I did require support after receiving the new unit because no installation instructions were included and their software is not all that smart. It should have recognized there was a new SlingBox on my LAN and proffered "Do you want to configure the unconfigured SlingBox?" instead of making me hunt through the menus to force it to do so. There are still bugs in the latest configuration utility too, leaving me stuck in the procedure at one point with no "Continue" button and necessitating another chat with Sling support.
OVERALL: I cannot recommend a SlingBox for a non-technical user. With work, an average Joe can connect the cables to one but the software setup is for those who understand video hardware and computer software rather well. This is in no way whatsoever a "plug & play" product. Better software engineering (and hardware quality) could vastly widen the potential user audience. Maybe we will see this in future revisions, but until then it remains a hobbyist extravagance. Make sure you know what you're getting into before buying.