Media box slings video everywhere

THE SLINGBOX is dubbed a 'place-shifting' technology, analogous to the time-shifting functionality we expect from our PVR's.

Hooking up a Slingbox to your home TV network will allow you to view a stream anywhere you have internet access and the downloadable SlingPlayer software.

The Slingbox Slingbox Personal Broadcaster connects directly via standard ethernet to your router and will configure itself automatically via UPnP, which works exceedingly well. As soon as the software was installed the setup process found the box and was streaming TV instantly. Note to hardware manufacturers: this is how things should work.

The Slingbox has less of the aluminum-brushed-polish feel and a more plastic-mold emphasis, but it still looks fairly good with its slim-line unusual features and plethora of LEDs.

A 2mbps stream over our 54mbps WLAN was sufficient to view a high quality audio and visual feed. Over an ADSL connection we achieved an average stream of around 300kbps, sufficient for a decent internet video and audio stream, but not an ideal permanent replacement for a standard broadcast TV.

The box usefully comes with both analogue and digital (DVB-T for Freeview) internal tuners. An IR control cable attachment allows for remote usage of remote-control commands and the Slingbox software comes with a massive amount of support for a variety of different UK based set-top-boxes. The localisation of the product is well received, but it shouldn't have taken so long to add a few more remote codes - it was released in the US nearly a year ago to the day it officially arrived in the UK.

Coaxial, S-Video and composite connections are all available for input/output and all respective cables are included.

The SlingPlayer software is very easy to use and the video display comes coupled with a break-out remote control that attempts to mimic the layout of the currently configured device's actual remote. For a proprietary player it has a good interface, is fully featured and easy to use. A set of configurable buttons appear at the bottom of the player and come with a selection of icons for many UK-based channels.

We had presumed that the Slingbox software would also incorporate additional time-shifting functionality, but were surprised it didn't.

The Slingbox is a highly polished product allowing inexperienced computer users to be up-and-running with the minimum of fuss, providing a quality subscription-free stream, and another way to pass time at work.

We wouldn't expect the Slingbox to be incredibly cheap - but at £179.99 it isn't. For now it can only be recommended if you harbour a 'must-have' requirement for such a device. ?