Slingbox SOLO and PRO
We were very impressed with the Slingbox when we first set our eyes on it earlier this year, and now the people behind it all, Sling Media, have dropped two new additions to the family, the Slingbox PRO and Slingbox SOLO.
The all powerful
PRO packs in a whacking four AV inputs, including a pleasing HD component connection. This means you can shove in your HD-DVD player, your V+ or Sky+ box, your music collection and your TV, and access content from any one of them remotely. It also has an integrated Freeview tuner which means you don't need to connect it to a set-top box to enjoy the benefits of slinging. Just hook it up to an RF aerial (roof-mounted is best) and then to your network, and you can watch Freeview stations on any Internet-enabled laptop or a compatible mobile phone.
The black
SOLO packs one connection, keeping things simple and letting you spy all that TV action either on your PC, mobile, or PDA, and is the better choice if you don’t need all those imputs, and it looks far better, however the Freeview tuner is omitted.
Both the PRO and SOLO can process video quicker than the original Slingbox, 8Mbps instead of 2Mbps, and are supported on Windows, Mac and some smartphones. The result is a vastly improved quality of image especially when viewed over a wired network. Sport, in particular, goes from simply being watchable to being close to broadcast quality. Movies look great too, particularly those with subtitles as text is now sharper.
As with the previous version, the Classic, the SlingPlayer is the software you watch on. By default it has SlingStream technology enabled which optimises the bit-rate of the picture for the bandwidth that's available. When you're watching through a LAN connection and there's plenty of bandwidth available you get excellent results.
Out of the local LAN, over the Internet, the quality of the stream does inevitably degrade. You need a broadband connection with at least 256Kbps upstream and downstream, and unless you live somewhere with super-fast fibre-optic broadband, the video quality is the same as the old Classic model.
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