Review: Sling Media Slingbox PRO-HD

Now that football season has started for the year, I wanted an easy way for me to watch the games while still managing to get some work done on my computer.  There was no cable connection in my office and I really didn't feel like installing one so I needed a solution that could use WIFI to stream video from my cable box downstairs to my office.

There are many ways to go about accomplishing this task but I was really looking at something that could do it

1. Cheap (Didn't want to spend more the $250-300
2. Easy (I don't have time to build a custom solution, nor the interest right now)
3. Integrate with my current HD-PVR so that I could stream saved videos from there
4. Be able to stream my video over the internet as well as in my home network.

When I found that the Slingbox PRO-HD was on sale at my local London Drugs for $249.99 I jumped on the opportunity.  For those of you who don't know, London Drugs is a drug store located in western Canada and it is my GO TO electronics store.  It's a fraction the size of a conventional electronics store but they carry everything!  I highly recommend it to anyone.  Where else do I get to play on the Nexus 7 table while I wait for my prescriptions to be filled?

Anyways, there were two choices available at London Drugs.

Slingbox SOLO

-Must work with a digital/hd cable box
-Can't stream HD content

Slingbox PRO-HD (The one I got)

-Can accept input from coax (it's got a cable tuner) or cable box
-Can stream HD content

I went for the PRO-HD as I needed to accept coax on its own (when the wife is using the box) and I also wanted the ability to stream HD.

Setup the Connection

One of my biggest worries when it comes to buying electronics is the cost I'm going to have to spend on cables to set it up.  I was really worried with the SlingBox that I was going to have to get a new component/hdmi cable and add another 10-20% on top of the price just in cables, was I ever wrong.  This product came with ALL the cables.  I don't think I've ever seen a product come with so many cables.  It came with anything you might have needed, component, svideo, coax, sound, video, IR Blaster, etc etc.  That was a VERY pleasant surprise.

The cable setup was a breeze, I just required two inputs to the box, one was a straight coax (when I couldn't use my box) and then the HD components feeding through the sling box to my TV.  Took me about 5 minutes to set up, was easy and intuitive and in no way affected my current setup, which was great.

Set up the software

One of the nice features of the SlingBox that I didn't realize at the time I bought it was that all the software is handled through your web browser.  There is not a single program you need to download and install on your computer.  All I had to do was point myself to www.slingbox.com and the web browser took care of all the set up, from downloading the software updates to streaming the video to my computer.

Within a matter of another 10 minutes, I was done and had the video streaming to my computer.

Using the built in TV Guide (As shown on the left) and the remote control feature (uses an Infrared Blaster to control your box) you are free to do whatever you need to.  The TV Guide really was a nice feature for me, just find the tv show you want, click and the IR blaster will immediately change the box to the channel.  If you have a PVR you can control play/record/pause/rewind/anything you could do from a remote control.

You can see from the picture above, the quality is really nice and can be made to fit any size you need.  Yes I know its the show breaking amish, my wife was watching it downstairs and I couldn't change the channel (We only have one box, I don't want to buy another).  Luckily with the PRO-HD I can switch the input to the standard coax and use that as my input when my wife is using the HD box.  Once again, I'm too cheap to buy another hd box.

Internet Streaming

The SlingBox has built in software to stream your cable box over the internet.  This was actually one of the reasons the company was founded in the first place, so that people could watch their sports games over the internet.  You can either stream to another computer or a smartphone/tablet.  There is software for both iOS and Android.

To watch the steam on a different computer, just follow the same procedure.  Go to www.slingbox.com log on and you are ready to go.  It could not have been easier.  If you want to have good quality video, you will need to make sure your home internet connection has a good upstream bandwidth.

If you want to stream to your smartphone/tablet, you will need to buy software from google play/the app store.  The cost is a bit pricy ($29.99) but does work very well.  To date I have not had a single problem streaming with either desktop software of the android software.  There is however a limitation of a single stream at a time.  So don't count on you and wife both using it simultaneously 

The Good and The Bad

As of the writing of this blog, I've had the product for 2 weeks and feel I know have a good overall impression of the product.

Pros

• Easy setup
• Good Price (I think $250 is reasonable)
• Can be streamed over the internet
• Picture quality is amazing
• Easy to control the TV
• Nice looking unit
• Accepts many different inputs
• Very easy to use

Cons

• Software is dependant on their website (I don't know what would happen if they ever went out of business or their website went down?)
• The video stream is encrypted and can not be saved (Though can be saved on your pvr and streamed from that)

Overall I highly recommend the product

4.5/5

Please feel free to post if you have any questions or comments or experiences with the SlingBox yourself.

Automating Video Conversions with Handbrake for AppleTV

The Background Story

I've got a second generation AppleTV.  Not the 1080p, but the one that does 720p.  I have to say that out of all the electronics I own, it probably gets the most use at the most reasonable price.  This thing gets turned on daily and if it weren't for NFL it would probably allow me to cancel my cable account.

In case you are living under a rock and are unfamiliar with the thing here is a link to the apple store that provides a little bit more information. Essentially, you get a nice little box, capable of 1080p for $109.  You keep all the video files on your computer and stream them whenever necessary.  

Apple TV

The one downfall with the AppleTV, as I learned quickly is that its very limiting in the video formats that it is capable of playing.  Other than .mp4, there's really not much you can play.  Luckily, the majority of TV shows that are ripped these days do meet that criteria, however there is still a lot of video out there that does not meet this criteria.  

Fortunately, there's a really nice program out there called Handbrake that is capable of converting almost any file into an .mp4 we can use on the appleTV.  If you have not heard of this program yet, go out and get it NOW.  It's free and does an amazing job of converting all my files over.  

HandBrake

While I was satisfied with running Handbrake at first, I got REALLY tired of always having to load it up, select my files and settings and go ahead with the conversion.  I'm a really lazy person and am always looking for the simplest way to do the job.  That is when I got the great idea of automating the process. If you are running a mac, your computer comes with a great piece of software called Automator.  It's one of those things I never gave a second look to until I realized the power of the program, now I'm using it for almost anything.  

Automator gives you the ability to automate almost any task, and in this case, I got it to automate all conversions from any video format to .mp4.  Once its does the conversion it then moves it automatically into my iTunes and makes it available for me to stream to the appleTV.  I've gone from having to do several steps on my own, to sitting back and letting the computer do the work for me.  Let me explain how I set up the whole process.

Automating my Video Conversions 

The first step to automating video conversion was to download the command-line version of Handbrake.  By downloading the command-line version, we can run a script that will select all the options for us.  Here is the link to the page for downloading the command-line version.

Handbrake - Downloads

Download the file and place it wherever you want, I put it into the applications directory under my home.  Now lets work on automating the conversion.

Open up automator from your applications and select folder action.  This will create a script that can be run whenever a file is saved to a folder (in this case it will be our video file that triggers the script)

You will see a huge number of options regarding all the tasks that you can automate.  After this blog, you will probably come up with a pile of ideas on your own and thats great, but for now lets stick to the task at hand.  Set up the following tasks as shown in the diagram below.  You might need to make minor adjustments such as changing the directory.  If you are unable to see the text in the pictures below, go to the originals and it should be clear.  You will notice, I use a temp directory that is off the home be sure to create it or the converted file will have no where to go!!!  I use that temp directory to store the converted file before I import it into iTunes. 

Feel free to add the following after if you would like to delete the file from the temp directory after the import.

Once you have the automator script finished all you need to do is set it up so that the script is activated in the right directory.  Save the automator file you just created and go to finder.

In your finder window, right click on the directory that houses all of your video downloads.  Select Folder Actions Setup as shown below.  Once in there you should be able to select the script and make sure it is attached to the automator script you created. 

That's it!  You're now complete and all video download with a file extension of .mkv or .avi should automatically be converted to .mp4 and imported into iTunes.

Hope it works out for you, please leave comments if you have any questions or improvements and let me know how its working out for you.