1:51 PM on Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Slingbox setup

What model of the slingbox should I buy?
Though Slingmedia does not advertise this, the Slingbox Pro supports both NTSC and PAL signals. So this means that you can buy a Slingbox Pro in the US and use it unmodified in India.

Wireless router
Another thing you will need is a wired or a wireless router. Since it is quite difficult to buy a wired router these days, I would recommend you buy a wireless router. Any router with multiple ethernet ports will do. This router will help you share your internet connection to multiple hosts.

Cable or satellite?
I assume that you plan to place shift a cable TV and not a satellite signal. The advantage of cable TV (cable over coax) over satellite (e.g. Tata Sky) is that the slingbox's internal tuner can tune into the desired channel. This means that you could be watching a particular channel remotely while a completely different channel could be playing on your TV in India.

Connectors
In India the default connector used in TV's seems to be the Belling-Lee connector. The slingbox however accepts input via an F-connector. You can easily find converters that go from PAL to F. However this is something you need to keep in mind.

Network setup
The slingbox itself is pretty easy to setup and the instructions provided by Slingmedia are excellent. Their tool does a great job of detecting network settings on routers (it supports almost all major routers) and modifying the firewall settings via UPnP to enable remote viewing. However in my case my ISP had installed a DSL modem which also had a firewall. This modem did not come with a user manual and it took me a couple of hours to configure its firewall.

More help
There seems to be a pretty big community setting up Slingbox's in India. Go here for more information.

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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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