Watch Your Favourite Programmes On The Go

 The Slingbox

 http://uk.slingmedia.com/go/technology

The situation: You are on business trip, sitting in your hotel room in a foreign country a long way from home. You switch on the TV, flick through endless intangible channels and find yourself staring at repeats of headlines on CNN- the only programme you can actually understand.

Wouldn’t it be nice to view  your favourite shows that you’ve stored on the Sky box that’s sitting in your living room? Well, with the Slingbox Pro, if you have a laptop or Mobile device that’s supported and internet connection, you can forgo that dreaded hotel televised monotony.

The setup is simple enough to follow with the handy quick start guide-Plug in  4 A/V devices including all varieties of Sky and Virgin Media set top boxes, or use the inbuilt Freeview tuner by plugging in an aerial. You can also access videos, music and picture content by controlling devices such as the Xbox 360, Media Centre PC’s, DVD players and Apple TV- basically anything with an Infrared port and video out. Connect the supplied network cable to your home broadband router then get out the laptop.

The next step is to pop in the supplied setup disk and follow the simple onscreen wizard. Once completed, a remote pops up which looks exactly like, in my case, the Sky remote which makes navigating amazingly straightforward. If you have Sky+ then you can navigate all your recorded content just as if you were on your couch in your living room. The other bonus is that once everything is connected, the small device can be put out of sight behind you AV setup.

Even at home the Slingbox comes in handy. With the summer coming up, you can watch the sport in your garden in  the sun and fresh air. In fact, anywhere you can get a wireless or internet connection you can connect back to your Slingbox! I have caused a few people to make a purchase simply by pulling out my PDA and bringing up the midday news!

This is one of the few products that shines in its task. The software quickly optimises video performance to your current internet speed and creates a picture that is sharp and clear at a quality much greater than YouTube. Even the tough job of reproducing sports or fast panning action scenes are handled much better than expected.

I was anticipating some sort of complicated device that sends video in a small window which is pixelated to the point of being unwatchable. But due to the clever hardware compression and software that’s easy to setup, this is one amazing piece of kit.

My only criticism is that the mobile software costs extra and if, unlike me, your broadband is elsewhere in the house then you need additional equipment. But these things aside, I really only have praise for a device that lets you use your Sky subscription that would be wasted otherwise

9/10: Outstanding piece of kit

 Reviewer: Richard Baguley- IT specialist