slingbox

[cookehouse]

Anyone using a slingbox in the UK to watch TV (and maybe more) over here.

Technical: do you know what the minimum internet requirement is?

Legal: Do you need a TV licence in France? 

I'm a summer resident with no TV here but a Virgin cable connection in the UK

SJ

[Pickles]

I was very interested in the Slingbox when it first came out. I purchased one, set it up in my house and then went next door to see how well it worked when picked up there, on the principle that if it wasn't any good over broadband within the same district, then it wasn't going to be useful between the UK and France. It worked well within the house in the UK: but then I would expect it to! Going outside the house though is a different matter

The main problem is the fact that although at home you may have a 8MB broadband download speed (in reality generally somewhat less, but that's not important here), your upload speed is generally going to be somewhere between 256Kbps and 512Kbps (this is dependent on your provider and the service that you are paying for, but these would be figures for the mass-market ADSL offerings). If you expect to get full-frame images away from home, then in my test the system could not do that at all - there was just not enough bandwidth consistently available. If you are content with a rather lower quality picture, then it may be OK for you. I ended up taking mine back to the place that supplied it for a refund.  I STRONGLY suggest that you try before you buy. The other thing to be aware of is that if you have a limit on your usage (eg 5GB/month), then these items will eat considerably into it. If you only have a 512 Kb ADSL service in France, then you may find that the incoming Slingbox stream is interrupted and degraded.

Regards

Pickles

[cookehouse]

Thanks Pickles

Looks like a good idea but not quite there yet. I live in a rural area where the internet is not either reliable or fast so even though the upload maybe OK the download probably aint

SJ