Sling!

We have a modest house in S Jersey that's a nice change of scene from the concrete of Manhattan. So, we carry the standard utilities that you'd expect; phone, cable TV, electricity, etc. Because both K and I are so attached to the internet we also pay for cable modem service there.

I've eyed the cost of cable TV going up and up and have been on the lookout for an alternative. At the beginning of the year I read the fine print for DirecTV and was excited about the prospect of saving $20/mo. over the cost of cable but when the tech came out he told us we'd have to cut down a few trees to give the dish the unobstructed view it needs. That wasn't in the cards so I went back to stewing about the $70 cable TV bill.

I've been reading about The Slingbox on the gadget blogs for a while and started to think that watching the cable service from Jersey City at the house might be a good idea. The theory behind this technology is that an A/V source can be connected to the internet and watched somewhere else. Sources can be a cable TV box, VCR, Tivo, etc. There's no subscription fee with Slingbox so it's just a one time payment to buy the hardware.

I was skeptical about the video quality but independent reviews said it was pretty good. We've had a Windows XP Media Center PC connected to the TV at the house so it was easy to run the receiving program and pipe it to the TV. For those that don't have such a configuration Slingmedia does sell a Sling Catcher that can be used instead of a PC.

Saturday night was our first time watching TV over the internet and I admit that the picture is lower quality than the signal we got from the local cable box but it is imminently watchable! We all agree that this is a more than satisfactory replacement for the cable box.

The Fine Points

Watching the Slingbox on the local network in Jersey City produces a high quality picture on the computer. Since the main difference between watching locally and at the house is speed we could probably get a better picture by subscribing to Comcast Blast which would increase the uplink speed from the Slingbox. At this point it's not worth it.

Comcast would not allow me to keep only the cable modem and continue to pay the $43/mo. we were paying. If we kept only the cable modem service they would have charged $58/mo. The obvious compromise was to keep basic cable for $11.50 and continue the cable modem service at $43.

When you watch TV the SlingPlayer program allows you to control the source by dispalying an image of the remote control that you'd normally use to switch channels were you at the source. That is if you're controlling a cable box then you get a picture of your cable box remote control and to change channels or bring up the guide you use the mouse to click the buttons that you'd normally press if you were watching TV at the source. Kevie, Chris, and I found this really cumbersome! Fortunately all of the buttons have keyboard shortcuts and this turned out to be a much better way to control the cable box.