Sling Media Slingbox Solo Review

Slingbox Solo

Review
SlingMedia.com

Sling Media has come out with a box called the Slingbox Solo. The idea behind the Slingbox, for those who do not know, is that it allows you to control your home TV, DVD player, etc. from anywhere in the world on your computer via an internet connection. We have always been intrigued by the idea of the Slingbox, and were lucky enough to have Sling Media allow us to test out the Slingbox Solo.

If you have ever dreamed of watching your home television and accessing your DVR from wherever you are, you better start to pay attention to a company called Sling Media.

The company has come out with their mid-level box, the Slingbox Solo. The box is priced at a very affordable level at around $179 in many retail stores, and can hook up to one AV device in your home.

For our testing purposes, we hooked our Slingbox Solo up to our HD cable set-top-box with built-in DVR. Setting up the Slingbox Solo was pretty easy right from the start. It works basically by hooking cables from your cable source through the Slingbox Solo and into your TV.

For setting up, you need to hook up an Ethernet cable to the Slinbox Solo so that it can allow for remote access from anywhere.

If it is too difficult to run an Ethernet cable to your TV, Sling Media has a product called the SlingLink, Turbo which basically lets you hook up the Slingbox Solo from your router to the box through two wireless access points.

The only other thing necessary is to place the IR receiver in front of your box so that you can have control over it from your computer.

Once hooked up, you then have to install the software on your computer. The Slinbox Solo supports both Mac OS X, as well as Windows. Through their Slingbox Mobile software, you can actually hook it up to several mobile devices as well.

Once the software is installed, it is as simple as clicking a few buttons before you are good to go. If you want to be able to access your Slingbox on a few different computers, you can do so simply by hooking up the software on that machine. Only one computer can access it at a time though.

When you have it all set up and you choose the proper device, or set-top-box you will see a virtual remote appear that looks exactly as your home remote does. From here you have the ability to click away on the remote and control your TV like you were sitting in front of it. We were accessing our DVR from Florida, while our TV and set-top-box was located in Boston, MA. It came in handy to follow the Celtics and Red Sox as well so sports fans who travel a lot may find this quite handy as well.

In terms of picture quality, it really depended on the quality of the internet connection and the speed of it. When we hooked up to a local hotspot we saw a great deal of compression, thus the picture quality was not so great.

At an office though where there is a strong connection, the frame rate is solid and there are very few lags, even when watching an HD signal.

The software allows you to tweak the resolution and such right from the settings to allow you to make it appear near-perfect.

There are a few complaints which we do have with the Slingbox Solo. The first is that there is a lack of integrated HDMI, meaning that you will not be able to take advantage of HDMI if your set supports it.

There is also a lack of built-in Wi-Fi, meaning you have to purchase the SlingLink Turbo if you want your Slingbox Solo to be fully wireless.

Beyond these few hiccups, the Slingbox Solo is an absolutely fantastic product from top to bottom. It has a sleek black design which makes it look great in any home theater set-up, and is priced at a point where it is a must-buy for anyone who wants to control their own TV from outside of their home. With absolutely no subscription fee, all you have to do is buy the box and you are good to go for life.

If you are the type of person who spends a lot of time in the office, travels a lot, or just wants to be able to control your TV from outside on your laptop, the Slingbox Solo is an absolutely tremendous buy.

Final Score: 9.2 dbTechno Highly Recommended!

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Interested in picking up this release? Head over to Amazon at the link here Sling Media Slingbox SOLO (SB260-100)