10:41 AM on Monday, December 03, 2007

Slinging Indian TV

Watching foreign TV channels in the US can get quite expensive. For example, if you sign up for six Indian channels with DirectTV, your cost could be as high as $30 a month. This is over and above what you already pay for programming.

However you can workaround this limitation. It is not easy and requires a bit of investment of your time and money. Enter the Slingbox.

The Slingbox is a hardware device that allows you to placeshift your TV. So in theory given a Slingbox, all you will need to setup to enjoy Indian channels at home would be

  1. An always on high-speed internet connection in India
  2. A Slingbox
  3. A router
  4. A computer capable of playing these streams and displaying them on your TV

In theory this sounds quite nice and rosy, however there are several caveats.

  1. Slingmedia advertises the Slingbox to be NTSC only. They do sell a PAL version, but this is not available in the U.S
  2. The video connectors used in India tend to be quite different.
  3. Setting up the router to forward the port alone might not be sufficient. For instance, at my place the internet connection was supplied through a DSL modem with a firewall built in. There was little or no documentation about setting this up.

Anyway it is possible to overcome all of these problems. I will go into further detail in subsequent posts. If you cannot wait to hear how to set it up for yourself, feel free to contact me, and I will be glad to help

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