To sling or not to sling, that is the question.

Actually, no it’s not. Without a doubt the Slingbox is one of the greatest gadgets to hit the market in the last decade. Who wouldn’t want to be able to access THEIR OWN TV programming from anywhere in the world where there is broadband internet available. You pay for 24-7 access to hundreds of TV channels, but you only have access to them for the 2-3 hours a day most Americans spend watching TV. With the Slingbox you can watch and control your TV any time of the day or night from anywhere in the world using your laptop or internet enabled phone.

Continue reading for our full Slingbox review.

Not all Slingboxes are created equal, and neither are all TV services. Your experience with the Slingbox will differ depending on what provider you choose to feed your media addictions. For these purposes I will be comparing the two largest TV providers in the San Antonio, Texas area: Timer Warner and AT&T U-verse.

I first used the Slingbox on Time Warner cable. Without saying anything about all of Time Warner’s shortcomings, I LOVED the Slingbox the first time I hooked it up. Streaming over the internet provided a watchable (not crystal clear) picture with a virtual version of my remote acting as a familiar friend sharing this new experiment with me. Watching the Slingbox over your home network is even better. Without the bottleneck of limited outgoing connection speed you can have a crystal clear picture on your computer in any room of the house. It’s the perfect “extra TV”. I could even watch Sport’s Center while completing an all-day grilling session on my front porch.

So does a better TV experience mean a better Slingbox experience? Without a doubt! The Slingbox experience on U-verse is significantly better than what it was on Time Warner. To start off, the default upload speed on U-verse is 3 times faster than TW’s. Upload speed translates directly into a better picture. If you couple that with the more intuitive menus of U-verse and being able access to all of the great programming, there is no doubt that the Slingbox and U-verse are a match made in multimedia heaven.

The difference in upload speeds was immediately apparent when we connected the Slingbox to our U-verse service. The bit rate we were able to achieve on Time Warner fluctuated between 200 and 350 Kbps. The faster U-verse internet connection had no problem maintaining speeds upwards of 800 Kbps. Take a look at the comparison screenshots below and see for yourself. I don’t have to tell you that the extra bandwidth made a huge difference in picture quality.

One unexpected advantage that we found for U-verse was that there was also improved performance when streaming from the Slingbox over the local network. On the TimeWarner supplied RoadRunner network we were only able to reach speeds in the 800 - 850 Kbps range, similar to what we achieved over the internet with U-verse. When streaming locally via the U-verse 2-wire Residential Gateway, however, we were surprised to see the speeds falling between 1300 and 1500 Kbps.

Although the Slingbox + U-verse combo beat the Slingbox + TimeWarner package hands down, we did come across a few small problems. When we first hooked up our Slingbox to the U-verse DVR and installed the remote codes we were not able to select the newly added U-verse remote. A quick call to Sling Media’s free tech support line got things cleared up. It turns out that we had one of the first 500 original Slingbox Classics ever made, and the IR-blaster that came on that first run is not able to support the U-verse remote codes. Unless you have one of these original 500 boxes you shouldn’t have a problem with this. If you do have a problem, you can get your Slingbox Classic replaced free of charge by calling 1-877-Go-Sling (1-877-467-5464). Sling quickly sent us a brand new Sling AV, and as soon as we connected it we were able to select the U-verse remote.

The second issue we had may prove more of a problem to those of you who love your HD like I do. While the lower-end Sling AV does not support HD inputs like its HD-loving, 4-device controlling big brother, the Slingbox PRO, we didn’t think it would matter since the U-verse set top box would downscale everything for the SD inputs on the Slingbox AV. While true in theory, this wasn’t always reality. It turns out that due to a bug in the U-verse software, when you set the STB to an HD resolution it does not downscale the output on any of the SD outputs. This caused an annoying “No video signal can be detected.” message on our slingbox. This was also the case when running in SD resolutions but using the HDMI output from the U-verse box to our TV. It appears that the U-verse box detects when it is being viewed through HDMI and immediately disables the other video outputs. Whether this will be fixed with future updates to the U-verse software remains to be seen. However, connecting the Slingbox to a TV that does not require an HD signal should alleviate the issue. If you just have to have your Slingbox connected to your DVR, and your DVR just has to run in HD, then purchasing the Slingbox Pro along with the HD Connect accessory should give you all of the HD goodness you need.

U-verse support was recently added to the Slingbox via a SlingPlayer upgrade on the Mac and a Virtual Remote Update for Windows. If you own a slingbox and are not able to control your U-verse set top box, use one of these updaters to get the additional functionality.

For more information about the Slingbox, check out the Slingbox Wikipedia entry. You can also visit slingmedia.com to see side by side comparisons of the different Slingbox models.

Thanks to UverseUsers member Jeremy Karney for contributing to this review.

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