Sling Media Slingbox SOLO SB260-100 on Sale

I originally bought the slingbox pro last year and have just tried the Hava Platinum HD, so here are my impressions. Setup for the Slingbox Pro-HD is easy. You download the software from their website, install it and it guides you through the process of finding the pro-hd on your network and setting up your devices. BTW - hookup was very easy and straight forward. I connected the slingbox hd to my cable, my router and the power cord. Went to my laptop and took it from there.

In my scenario there are a couple of things to note. I live in NYC and have digital cable with HD. Now, I have to use my cable box to be able to see HD channels. By bypassing the cable box and directly connecting my cable line into the slingbox HD, I can either see all of my regular cable stations (up to channel 99) OR I can see whatever HD channels are free (or over-the-air) in NYC. You can't do both at the same time (at this time, according to their website - that will require a firmware update that is 'high' on their list - I have some history with waiting for them to 'develop' something . . I'll come back to that later).

I set up the slingbox pro HD to look for qualcom HD channels one my cable line and let it do it's thing. It found about 20 HD stations, the best being NBC, CBS, ABC, WB, UPN, PBS, PBSkids. The others are either home-shopping type sites or sports-versions of the big networks. The picture is really great - super clear and with no artifacts - great HD experience at a smaller size. This is VASTLY improved from the regular slingbox pro that I had last year - the picture on that was terrible - fuzzy, grainy - granted it was SD video, but I absolutely hated it.

I then set up the slingbox to look for the regular cable channels. I had to delete the HD setup and have it look up the SD channels. It picked up the channels up to 99. These looked OK and were still better than my memory of the regular slingbox pro. I had one issue in where the picture cut out and had 'low' signal strength. I searched through the forums at slingmedia and apparently this is common to other users and there's no quick fix that anyone has posted.

So, I switched it back to HD.

There is a program guide that looks like every other program guide out there. Nice feature, but only works for the cable channels, at least for me. The HD channels have show up as channel 1.1, 1.3 and so forth - and there is no program guide for those. A bit annoying because I had to figure out what each channel is. This would be OK, but there is considerable lag to changing the channel. You can select a 'quick mode' that basically lowers the quality of your picture while you change channels. It does make it faster, but still not as responsive as changing the channel on your TV. It's probably inherent in the technology.

Pros - easy setup, easy connection, picture looks great. Channel guide if you use regular cable channels

Cons - you can't have both SD and HD channels with a direct cable hookup - you have to go through your cable box, which means you have to set up the IR remote (I didn't do this, but I assume it works as I haven't seen anyone complain out it).

I didn't hook anything else up because it's doubtful that I'd want to stream DVD's or my camcorder's video to a laptop or PC - I would do that directly and have much more control.

Now, one of the reasons I bought the original slingbox pro was because they had advertised that they were working with Microsoft to connect it to Vista so that you could record TV to your computer, thus making it a DVR. That never happened and eventually both MS and Sling media removed those references from their websites. I found that really frustrating because I waited a long time for that. It tought me a lesson to buy technology for what it will do TODAY and not some promised future. All that to say, who knows if they will ever update the firmware to show both SD and HD channels at the same time?

Another thing - when I had the original slingbox pro, I didn't much enjoy watching my home TV remotely when I was traveling or on my phone. It was too jerky and I was worried about maxing out my home/phone bandwidth and data plans, so it was not fun for me. Plus, it killed my battery on my phone too quickly. You may have different needs, likes and dislikes, so take that into account when reading this review. It's unlikely I'll 'sling' my TV, so I'm not reviewing that, but keep in mind that it's the biggest selling point of the slingbox HD and you may really want that.

Overall, the slingbox pro HD does what it is advertised to do - nothing more, nothing less, and what it does it does with good quality.