Slingbox

cooperguy

Hi, I am looking at maybe getting a Slingbox and was hoping somebody could help me out. My idea is that I would be able to hook it up in my house and my brother can tune into Irish TV (he recently emmigrated).

Im just wondering how well this system would work. I have a Sky box as well as an aerial picking up the terrestrial channels. I assume that the Slingbox would only be able to broadcast whatever channel was on the Sky box at the time? But what about the Terrestrial aerial, would you be able to switch between the channels the Aerial can pick up? Would the Slingbox be able to switch between the Sky feed and the feed from the Aerial?

ED E

It doesnt take terrestrial no. You'd need another box with a TV tuner(a saorview box now, €90 IIRC) to feed it a signal. Then yeah, you could feed it two sources.

But. He could only watch what you watch unless you paid for multiroom and dedicated one sky box to him and one for you, not cheap.

Also, if this would be his primary tv source its not really gonna work. Slingbox is fine where you watch 1-2 shows per week. It'll destroy your data limits(and his) with prolonged usage. Even with UPC you have a 500GB combined limit, and eircom is usually 30GB combined.

Tell him to get netflix and be done with.

cooperguy

It wouldnt be his primary tv. It would be for watching matches and the like so it would only be a few shows a week.

Do you know approx how much data a slingbox would use in an hour? Also I did a bit more googling and it looks like you can take full control of the sky box through the Slingbox. How does this work? Is there some form of IR output on the Slingbox or something?

ED E

At lowest, 500 kbps or 63KBps. Thats 3.7, more like 5 with other data, per minute. Not a huge amount. But thats SD to a mobile client. If you have skyHD multiply that by more than 2X. Still not major if you're UPC and its on a few matches/month.

The IR is done via a little emitter you stick on the front of your sky box and wire up to the slingbox, allowing it to send signals just like the real remote.

santechnic

Hi all. Im also not living at home in ireland and would like to be able to get the matches to watch. My problem is im not there to watch the matches live as i work when the games are on so my question is if i had a slingbox would i be able to say record a match or programme and when i finish work come home and watch them.....

Freddy Smelly

dont bother with it if you have an adsl connection the upload speeds offered by adsl is too low.

UPC or Magnet Fibre are the only ISP's with sufficent upload speeds for it to work without stuttering every few minutes

ED E

santechnic wrote: »

Hi all. Im also not living at home in ireland and would like to be able to get the matches to watch. My problem is im not there to watch the matches live as i work when the games are on so my question is if i had a slingbox would i be able to say record a match or programme and when i finish work come home and watch them.....

Just get a HDD recorder box and away you go.

Greenpiece

@cooperguy
I had a slingbox pro and have recently replaced it with a slingbox pro hd. You may be interested to know that it has a DTT tuner which means I can watch the rte channels by just plugging in an aerial feed into it.

I also have a sky+ box ( not hd) connected using s-video and an azbox hd connected to the composite input.

I cannot stream in hd as my upload is poor but can watch from abroad.

vienne86

I've had a slingbox for a couple of years now - in fact, I am on my second box - they do sometimes give up the ghost after a couple of years, but I like it so much that I replaced immediately when this happened. I just have the cheapest Eircom package - 10Gb per month, which i sometimes blow if I am in the holiday home in France for long spells, but I do watch golf, which often goes on for hours on end. I find the speed grand - it very seldom stutters or gives trouble. I have Sky, but not HD. Friends of mine had a slingbox connected to a Virgin box in London, and had all sorts of problems - they have since changed to Sky - I don't know anyone who has a connection to any other sort of box, but it does seems to work partiularly with Sky.

galait

vienne86 wrote: »

I've had a slingbox for a couple of years now - in fact, I am on my second box - they do sometimes give up the ghost after a couple of years, but I like it so much that I replaced immediately when this happened. I just have the cheapest Eircom package - 10Gb per month, which i sometimes blow if I am in the holiday home in France for long spells, but I do watch golf, which often goes on for hours on end. I find the speed grand - it very seldom stutters or gives trouble. I have Sky, but not HD. Friends of mine had a slingbox connected to a Virgin box in London, and had all sorts of problems - they have since changed to Sky - I don't know anyone who has a connection to any other sort of box, but it does seems to work partiularly with Sky.

In most of France a 60cm dish is fine for SKY , Why bother with the Slingbox just dring the SKY Box assuming that is what you have,