Review on 📺 Sling Media Slingbox SOLO (SB260-100): Superior Quality Older Model by Daniel Ton

The Slingbox Solo is a great device, but there are some issues with the durability of the electronics: Particularly since mid-2010, owners have reported their Solo experiencing sporadic streams of problems or just stopped working out of the blue. A google search on this topic shows that burnt electrolytic capacitors appear to be the main culprit. Please note that disassembling the Solo will void the warranty. It is therefore not recommended that you attempt to repair it yourself unless you opt out of receiving a solution from Sling Media. Some electronics savvy owners have reported replacing what appeared to be faulty capacitors and this has restored functionality to their Solo. The good news is that in some cases, Sling Media will offer to replace defective Solo boxes even after the normal warranty period. If your defective Solo is out of warranty, you can call 1-877-GOSLING. You have to pay a $29.99 fee for troubleshooting and suffer proof that your device is dead. If the device does not work, the $29.99 fee will be refunded and you will receive a replacement. They'll freeze your credit card for $99 until Sling Media gets the dead solo. I went through this process and it took about 25 minutes over the phone. I am currently awaiting the arrival of my replacement Solo. The Slingbox Solo feature is great when it works. Sling Media has evolved and improved the Windows CE based Solo firmware and player software over time. The only disappointment is that Hollywood pressured Sling Media to force Sling to encrypt streaming to make it harder for third-party add-ons like stream splitters or remote DVR software to work. I use my Solo with my dish receiver. and the integration is very good - no wonder since Dish now owns Sling Media. Image quality when streaming to a computer or Sling Catcher on the same LAN is very good. I have tested Sling Catcher, Winows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.5 and they all deliver good picture and sound with minimal virtual remote control latency. Remote viewing is still tolerable with modest bandwidth. My DSL upstream is only 300 kbps but remote viewing is about VHS resolution but with less chrominance noise than VHS. There is a slight lag with the remote, but the latest firmware and software has greatly reduced the lag. The Solo IR emitter output does a very good job of driving my Dish satellite receiver. Setup is as easy as can be for a product as technically complex as the Solo. The ports on the box are well labeled and easy to use. Just connect your A/V source, IR emitter, network and power supply and you're ready to set up your Solo. The Windows software makes setup very easy and even helps the user to configure the NAT settings on some routers to enable remote viewing. You need a public email address as this is used to communicate your Sling player software with Solo through the Sling Media website. It may sound a bit complicated, but in practice, setting it up is very simple. The following A/V input options are available: Composite, S-Video and Component. No HDMI input. I would have given the Solo more stars in the rating, barring the durability issue due to obviously bad capacitors. UPDATE September 12, 2011: I received a replacement Solo and received a refund for the issue. - Shooting fee. It turned out that the PSU was also dead so I had to call tech support again to have the PSU replaced. Everything was fine until the replacement PSU died a few days ago. After another PSU replacement, this time with a $20 warranty, the Slingbox Solo works.