Recently, I purchased a Slingbox Solo. I ordered it from Amazon and set it up a couple of weeks ago.

For those of you who don’t know what a Slingbox is, please allow me to explain. A Slingbox is a device which you connect to your audio/video sources and to your home network and it allows you to place-shift your viewing on a computer, in your home, or anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection and it also allows you to control the source device.

I’ll elaborate: I have a SKY+ satellite receiver and DVR (Digital Video Recorder) in my living room, connected to my flatscreen TV. I’ve connected the Slingbox to the SKY+ and my network and the Slingbox takes the raw TV signal and compresses it, then streams it onto my home network, to be received by, say by my laptop, wirelessly in any other room in the house.

Are you getting the idea? In theory, I should be able to view my Slingbox outside of my house, but I am having some port forwarding issues which I’ve yet to resolve, because it goes through two different routers before reaching the internet.

The Slingbox Solo is a very simple looking device, with connectors on one side and some blinky lights on the other side. There are no buttons or controls, the idea is to connect it, configure it and forget about it, everything else is done via the software you download, called SlingPlayer.

I connected my Slingbox Solo to my SKY+ via an S-video cable, as its the highest quality output signal available. My SKY+ is an original V1 Pace unit, feeding my TV via SCART, but the S-Video output mirrors it. This means the Slingbox Solo only sees whatever the SKY+ sees. If someone is watching the TV at the same time, you both have to watch the same programme.

I used a normal RCA stereo phono cable to connect up the audio from the SKY+ to the Slinbox Solo and connected the power supply. I also put the IR blasters above and below the SKY+ IR receiver as these provide the remote control functionality.

Finally, I had to connect the SlingBox to my network. The SlingBox only outputs ethernet, there is no built in wi-fi, which is fine if your router is next to your television. Mine isn’t, which meant using some sort of bridge.

My first try was an Airport Express from Apple. They are normally very robust and dependable units and this was a cost effective way to do it, but it didn’t work very well. I don’t know why.

I connected the AE to my network in WDS mode, connected the Slingbox Solo to it and within a minute, the Slingbox was connected to my network. I was able to configure the Slingbox quickly and was watching my SKY+ on all my Macs in fairly good quality.

It didn’t last, the bandwith dropped dramatically, and at least once a day, the Slingbox would lose its network connection, though it appeared the Airport Express was still connected to my network. I had other network problems as well, losing connections to my different computers and other Airport Express units, used for music streaming, were having dropouts too. Resetting the Slingbox and associated AE unit restored my connection and got the network working again, but the same problem happened every day.

When I disconnected the Slingbox and AE, my network performed fine, so I decided to connect the Slingbox another way.

I bought a set of NetGear HomePlugs, which do ethernet over powerlines and they are a total revelation. You plug them both into the electrical mains and they find each other automatically and create a durable and robust ethernet bridge between the two locations. Once plug is connected to my Airport Extreme, the other is connected to the Slingbox. Within seconds, they were connected and so was the Slingbox and its held the connection continuously since I connected them. These things are very cool!

I’m still having slight problems with my network; it grinds to a halt and loses the internet about once a day, but then comes back. I think I need to set it all up again, as my base unit is still looking for an AE in WDS mode and its not there anymore. When I have the time, I’ll reboot all the units and reset them up from scratch. That’s how it was before the Slingbox, so it should go back to being perfect again.

I’m also determined to sort out the port forwarding, as it would be cool to watch SKY+ from outside my home, either live TV or recorded programmes. The SlingPlayer software includes a virtual remote for the SKY+, which means you can duplicate any remote command with a simple click of your mouse. Very clever!

There are other models of SlingBox available, some offering more connections for more devices, others offering digital and analogue TV tuners. For my needs, with one main TV source, the Solo was perfect. I’ve got shitty freeview reception here, so a tuner was pointless and there’s no need to connect it to a DVD player, because most computers are already DVD players!

If I wanted to watch SKY in another room, I could have a second box installed, which I would have to pay for and I would be charged a tenner a month for the privilege. It wouldn’t be connected to my main SKY+, which means it would only receive live tv. Also, it would be in one fixed location, like my bedroom. What if I wanted to keep an eye on the news, while cooking dinner?

The Slingbox is a cheaper, more flexible solution, it offers great picture quality, at full screen resolutions, anywhere inside my home. When I can view it over the internet, which I am certain I will do one day soon, it will complete the package. It’s a welcome addition to my A/V arsenal!

Thank you for dropping by tech-geek corner!

I know, I know. I haven’t been here in a fair few days.

No excuses, except for my catch all; “I’m rubbish”. Further explanations will not be offered.

I’ve squandered a fair bit of time this week, being a bit of a tech-geek, sorting out some things around the house. One of those things was my Slingbox, which is now reliably working on my home network, but I still haven’t sorted viewing outside of the house. More on this later.

I’ve also had a bit of a play around with Logic Studio, or rather the bits of it that I have installed. I still haven’t received my replacement installation DVD, so much of the included extra content is out of my reach. Today’s post hasn’t come yet, so there’s still a chance it might arrive before the day is out.

Add to that the normal bullshit I have to do every day and you’ll see that I’m pretty busy most days.

I did get to screen an excellent film yesterday, “American Gangster” and I can highly recommend it. It’s the story of Frank Lucas, a Harlem based businessman, who’s business was heroin importation, marketing and distribution. Lucas basically re-invented the heroin trade in the late 60s/early 70s in a very innovative and creative way. He was also quite brutal, but only out of necessity.

If Lucas had used his considerable intelligence and business skill in any other industry, he would probably be starring as the boss on the TV show, The Apprentice, as he was truly an entrepreneur, but he didn’t. He chose heroin and the film does not shy away from showing the harm that smack does to its users, but it also makes the point that the anti-drug stance is almost as big an industry as the drugs trade and if black market trade in illegal drugs went away, so would the associated law enforcement and other ancilliary businesses.

The film tells a complex story in many shades of grey and certainly you will admire a lot about Lucas, though his brutal outbursts never let you forget the path he chose. It opens here in the UK tomorrow, if you get the chance, it’s worth seeing.

It comes back to something I’ve said on here more than once, that the world wide black market in drugs is capitalism at its most basic; simple supply and demand. There is a huge, never-ending demand for substances which alter your consciousness, always has been, always will be. Cigarettes and alcohol, the legal drugs, just don’t cut it for some people and where legitimate sources don’t deliver, illegal supply lines will emerge. As long as people want something, someone will be there, ready to provide it. This is about as basic a truism as you can find about capitalism.

Our economy and political system is build upon the foundations of capitalism, yet when it comes to the issue of illegal drugs, we are in deep, orchestrated denial. Prohibition doesn’t work and if I can site the usual example of when America banned liquor, the result was an organised crime structure that still exists today. People wanted booze; people got booze. They’ll realised then, you couldn’t stop free trade, so they opened the doors to a regulated, taxed and legal system.

If heroin were legal, Frank Lucas would have been on the cover of business magazines as a hero and legend, in almost the same way that Starbucks reinvented coffee. He also probably wouldn’t have shot all those people in the head. It’s something to think about. Well, for me anyway.