Slingbox

I remember hearing about a product called the Slingbox a while ago; they were advertising on WEEI Sports radio when the product first came onto the market a year or two ago. It's quite a work of modern technology, though when I first heard the ads I barely gave the product a moments thought. What is the Slingbox? In short, it's a box that you hook up to the cable modem in your home which, through a bunch of fancy stuff that I don't understand at all, allows you to then watch cable television via your computer. See, the description doesn't excite very much.

After lamenting to my father on the phone one night about not being able to actually watch Red Sox games here in Japan, I mentioned that I wanted to buy a Slingbox while I was home this summer. The Slingbox was purchased, but we couldn't get it working while I was home, so I returned to Japan and my father went to work getting some Best Buy techies to help us out.

Long story short, my uncle somehow got it working a few days ago on my parent's end, and as of tonight I am watching ESPN on my laptop in Japan, streamed through the cable box in my parents house in Massachusetts. Crazy, no?



I have access to all of the channels my parents get, along with an exact digital copy of the remoted control they use. I can even access the 'guide' channels that tell you what's on TV, when. If my parents utilize the DVR function to record something, I can also watch those recorded programs. It's pretty wild.

As you can see the screen size is not that big, and the picture quality isn't great, but the important thing is that the stream is steady so the picture does freeze up. There is a full screen option, but the picture quality suffers too much to make using it worthwhile.

So I am pretty excited about getting the Slingbox to finally work. Hello baseball games, hello football, hello all the sweet Discovery Channel programs that I enjoy watching. This thing is cool.

Changing gears, I bid my friend Sean farewell this afternoon after 3 days of beer consumption, guitars, and Tiger Woods golf on Playstation 2. Chieko is in Tokyo until Tuesday, so I've got a few days to myself here. The countdown has begun towards our return to work on August 27th. I've been going nonstop since I left for the states on July 1st, so I'm looking foward to a rather subdued two weeks before it's back to the grind.

Enjoy the weekend.