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Review on πŸ“Ί Slingbox 350 by Sling Media (Legacy Edition) by Badpuppy Warton

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Almost useless streaming media player product

The IDEA behind the Slingbox is fantastic. The ability to watch DVR programs remotely is a feature that honestly should be STANDARD in today's world, but cable providers choose not to allow or overpower it. FiOS is now starting to offer, and it's only just started appearing on the Comcast X1 platform, but then again, you're paying way too much for the service. One of the satellite providers offers it directly. I bought it to watch DVR broadcasts recorded in another house. Granted, it works, but the video quality is terrible, and the endless delays between pressing the button and the actual activity (assuming it's actually the right button!) and buffering and pausing delays during playback sadly almost make this purchase useless . .As an example, I tried to use it last night. I connected to Slingbox via my iPad 2 and pressed the LiveTV function and then the My DVR button to watch the recorded shows. It literally took 20-30 SECONDS after EVERY button press on the remote to actually act on the slingshot. The first recorded show was a NASCAR race. I needed to get to the second page of the records. I pushed the side down, waited my 30 seconds and the race began. So after an excruciatingly slow return to the list of DVR recordings, I decided to take the PageDown button with me and just try the down arrow. Again it played a race. I guess my sling wanted to see the race but I didn't. Again we laboriously navigated back to the DVR list, press and HOLD down the page and after 20 seconds (quickly!) it went to the next page. ! Unfortunately, that win was short-lived as when I hit the down arrow again it went to the show folder at the top of the second page instead of Fargo, which I was trying to see. This went on for literally 30 minutes before I gave up, we watched everything Slingbox let us watch. But throughout playback it paused, sometimes for about a minute and more often for 10-15 seconds, and then started again. It was terrible. Also, the video quality was so bad it was painful (and I have component connections from the DVR to the Sling). I would like to note here that I have read many comments that the problem is not necessarily with the Slingbox but with the cable service. It's quite a possible factor, but I wasn't using WiFi connections (all wired Cat 5e lines to the devices) and while this particular example was on a Sunday evening, I've had a similar, if not the same, experience with almost everyone Attempt to use this device. I want to love this device and I want it to work so I highly recommend it - I love it. But with months of experience like this, I just can't.

Pros
  • quick replacement
Cons
  • sad packaging