Slingbox Pro

A small red box that sends the TV you watch to the laptop you carry away with you...

Why, you'd never miss Cash in the Attic again! It's an appealing concept and thanks to the magic of online video streaming and a significant upgrade from the original Slingbox Classic, it works too.

Sling's imaginative design and excellent packaging inspire confidence, but having lived with Sony's LocationFree alternative for some time, we know how irksome these 'place shifters' can be to configure. Thankfully, the friendly SlingPlayer software has a step-by-step setup wizard to hold your hand while Slingbox tunes itself and joins your network. Being analogue, the internal TV tuner is unwatchable, but nonetheless, we were online and watching my DVD player in the garden within 20 minutes.

The PRO model throws a high def dongle into the mix, allowing you to sling an HD source, although in reality, you can't actually watch HD. On the whole, picture quality is pretty damn good. It's not up to DVD standard of course, but with a component video connection and decent upload/download speeds at both locations, it's way better than previous versions.

With IR blasters attached to a HomeChoice box and DVD player, we can now watch and control our home system from any internet café in the world -- much to the chagrin of our housemates.

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