Busy Gamer News

I broke down and bought a Slingbox this week. Now that I'm working at home, I liked the idea of being able to view my Tivo and Xbox 360 content remotely on the second monitor hooked to my Alienware work laptop (more on how that's going in a future blog).

I picked up the Slingbox Pro and the HD Connect kit, plus a networking switch for the living room - now that I have several devices screaming to share the single Ethernet cable that runs down there. Slingbox actually offers a gizmo that extends your network via your electrical system, but at $150 (vs. $25 for a good switch) it seemed excessive and not worth even evaluating.

Setting up the Slingbox for Tivo was quite easy - I just plugged the supplied composite cables into the DVR and then my existing cables to the Slingbox output and positioned the remote extender. A few setup wizards later, I had full control of the Tivo in my office with reasonably good picture quality and sound. Now I can clear that backlog of recorded TV programs while I work - cool!

Complaints are few. You can't record the video streams, so it's not useful as a DVR. It also sometimes sounds slightly slowed down, and the video stream lags a few seconds - so if I'm watching upstairs and then wander down to the living room, I need to roll things back a little. Clicking pause and other controls can cause the picture to stutter and skip (probably due to the lag).

Also, full-screen mode on my second monitor goes away the second that I click something on my main monitor, so it's not really useful unless I'm just passively watching and not working - which isn't something I'd generally do with a perfectly good HDTV in the living room. If I'm going to sit and watch something, I'll do it there. Instead, I've just expanded the window as much as I can, which gives me quicker access to the virtual remote anyway.

360 ho!
I had a much more difficult time setting up my Xbox 360. First, I made the rookie mistake of hooking up the component cables from my original Xbox (not the 360's direct cable outputs) - which threw me for a few minutes. It took me much longer to figure out the maze of settings required to actually control the 360 remotely.

First, you need to go into your 360's System blade and find the Remote Control settings to select All Channels (which permits Media Center remotes to work). Then be sure your SlingPlayer is set to control a Media Center PC in the DVR settings and NOT the Xbox 360 listed under DVD Players. (Choosing the latter gives you a generic remote and no control - I'm not even sure why it's there.)

The good news is that the Slingbox handles virtually any output resolution - I'm using 720p (optimal for my HDTV) and it looks great. There's no 360 Guide button, and launching games generally requires an active controller - not a remote. But with the Slingbox's sluggish controls and lag, it's not like you'd want to play many games with it anyway.

I have two more Slingbox inputs available: an S-Video and an old-school coaxial cable. There's no HDMI input, so I won't be using my HD-DVD player with it.

I would love to be able to bounce Slingbox content to my Xbox 360s so I can watch Tivo/satellite TV in the bedroom, but that's not supported. Hopefully, this will be added down the line, perhaps leveraging the existing Media Center PC functionality. I'd also like to watch videos from my PCs on my TV, but then that's what Orb is for.

I can access my connected content on any Internet-connected PC and even certain cell phones and PDAs. The configuration wasn't too difficult; my router required some manual adjustments, but SlingPlayer Help walked me through the steps. The Slingbox automatically downscales and optimizes the video stream to match your available bandwidth, so remote playback is passable (at least in my limited testing) but not nearly as enjoyable as what I get at home. The great news is that I won't need it very often, but it's there if I'm ever working at a client site and want to set my Tivo to record something that evening or start a 360 download so it will be waiting for me when I get home. Nice!

All in all a frivolous expense, but not one I regret at all.

-=Gamewatcher