Slingbox

[Nev]

Ok, so its about as far removed from 1954 engines and shower pumps as you can get but I do like a bit of technology -even on the cut!

 

Slingbox is a bit of kit that connects to your home tv (sky etc) and allows you to view it over the internet. I have not a telly or on my boat but I do have a decent laptop with a 3g phone for browsing while on the boat. My question is has anyone by chance used or is using a slingbox to get tv on their boat? My query is about getting it via the 3g phone or data card, how successful and have you fallen foul of any bandwidth limits?

 

The technology seems ideal as it allows full control over your skybox so you get sat tv on your boat and better still onto a decent laptop you can take advantage of the battery charge they hold?

 

Any comments or experience? Apologies to those who genuinely get on the cut to get away from technology.

 

Nev

[Big Steve]

There was something in the paper about clocking up huge bills watching TV via a 3g phone, 'cos your charged by data download, and TV signals are huge data wise.

[Norman Bond]

This has always struck me as one of these technologies that came to market too late to be useful. TFT TVs are dropping in price by the day and making the £150 for a slingbox look less and less like a good idea. Besides this unless your laptop is very new it will probably have a poor response time (designed to show stationary text and images) and will suffer from significant ghosting of fast moving images.

 

 

Check the TV that Aldi will be selling on Sunday. 19" TFT, inbuilt freeview tuner 8ms response time and a DVD player built in all for £250. Bigger and faster screen than your laptop and a wider viewing angle, teletext thrown in for nothing and it doesn't need a broadband connection. IF you don't need the DVD player or are happy with a smaller screen you can find even cheaper options.

 

 

Norman

[Chris J W]

Whilst the theory is fine, you'ld find in practice that 3G just wouldn't be fast enough and you'ld be bankcrupt by the end of the month due to the stupidly high data-rate charges. I use 3G for my work laptop and my 1gb a month "for free" is rarely sufficient when just using Outlook and Word etc!

[Nev]

Whilst the theory is fine, you'ld find in practice that 3G just wouldn't be fast enough and you'ld be bankcrupt by the end of the month due to the stupidly high data-rate charges. I use 3G for my work laptop and my 1gb a month "for free" is rarely sufficient when just using Outlook and Word etc!

 

 

Thanks for the replies. It seems no one has actually got or used this type of technology for their boats. The benefit to me is I do not have much in the way of 'power' aboard so using a laptop with its batters and low power requirements is beneficial. This option also allows me all my very expensive sky subscription while on the boat. I have a t mobile contract with webnwalk plus that has a fair use policy - they are happy to allow upto 3gb per month. From checking the slingbox uses about 70mb per hour so there is a good scope - even if this is higher I have spoken to user who have the same set up tmobiile and web and walk plus and have used it on 3g for long periods while out on the road and not been contacted by tmobile (the acceptable use policy states they will contact the user and dvise their use it too much - so no big bill)

 

I have bitten the bullet and brought one and it is fantastic on my home lan - it works very well over 3g as well - so I'll keep you posted,

 

Nev

[chris w]

Even if the 70MB an hour is correct, this equates to less than 1.5 hours per evening before the monthly "free" limit is reached. I'm sure, if you do watch TV regularly, that you may more typically notch up 4 or 5 hours per evening. This would mean that you could only watch "free" for about 8 to 10 evenings per month.

 

If your boating is just casual use then this would probably be OK otherwise, if not, you may indeed end up with a large bill.

 

Chris

[carlt]

Wouldn't a nice little lcd telly be a better, and cheaper option?

[Nev]

Wouldn't a nice little lcd telly be a better, and cheaper option?

 

Hi,

 

The LCD tv would not get all the channels my sky subscription gives me, plus my boat is limitted in its power.

 

My boating is 'limited' so I would not expect to come to the attention of T mobile (I hope)

 

I'll give it a thorough try out over Easter as the boat yard have just phoned and told me my boat water heater has been replaced :-)

 

Nev

[Chris J W]

Hmmm. I still await to be convinced ... especially if you're in a crappy 3G area. But here's to hoping that it all works!

 

Personally I think I'd just go for a little Freeview USB dongle and catch-up with Sky when back on land.

 

If it helps; when I get my boat (only 11 weeks to go before I leave work!) I'll be having my current Humax Freeview box and a Freesat box, too. But ... if I find I'm running my batteries flat every day watching TV I'll be happier to just stop watching so much TV.

[Boaty Jo]

We gave up telly completely 8 months ago.

Saved endless hours watching mindless drivel. Had EIGHT

 

We gave up telly completely 8 months ago.

Saved endless hours watching mindless drivel. Had EIGHT

 

Sorry - pressed wrong knob!

Had eight reminders from TV licencing who couldn't believe that someone had no TV.

We have found numerous other things to do.

[tomandsophie]

Even if the 70MB an hour is correct, this equates to less than 1.5 hours per evening before the monthly "free" limit is reached. I'm sure, if you do watch TV regularly, that you may more typically notch up 4 or 5 hours per evening. This would mean that you could only watch "free" for about 8 to 10 evenings per month.

 

If your boating is just casual use then this would probably be OK otherwise, if not, you may indeed end up with a large bill.

 

Chris

 

Bloody hell - 4 or 5 hours of TV a night! That's crazy, I'm soooo glad we got rid of ours many many years ago.

 

Anyway, we use T-mobile to connect to the internet via our 3G phone. We have found that it is not fast enough to watch things on the 'net. It's fine for things like YouTube, but definitely not for something like www.tv-links.co.uk.

Still, the weather's nice and the days are longer... why would you ever want to watch telly?!

Sorry, not very helpful.

 

We gave up telly completely 8 months ago.

Saved endless hours watching mindless drivel. Had EIGHT

 

We gave up telly completely 8 months ago.

Saved endless hours watching mindless drivel. Had EIGHT

 

Sorry - pressed wrong knob!

Had eight reminders from TV licencing who couldn't believe that someone had no TV.

We have found numerous other things to do.

 

Jo, we had exactly the same thing. We haven't had a TV now for nearly 8 years, and at the beginning the TV licencing people kept on saying that they were going to prosecute us for not buying a licence!

[Richard Fairhurst]

Yes, I used to get them too. Eventually I got exasperated and sent them a response which involved the words "p-ss-up" and "brewery". Since then they've not bothered us at all...

[Boaty Jo]

Wonder how many people have also given up telly.

My wife and I communicate now. We've been married 14 years and I found out her maiden name last week.

The last TV reminder I sent back (8th) was in an A4 envelope with 'we have no television' written in red in huge letters around the outside of the envelope.

[JohnO]

I have a t mobile contract with webnwalk plus that has a fair use policy - they are happy to allow upto 3gb per month. From checking the slingbox uses about 70mb per hour so there is a good scope - even if this is higher I have spoken to user who have the same set up tmobiile and web and walk plus and have used it on 3g for long periods while out on the road and not been contacted by tmobile (the acceptable use policy states they will contact the user and dvise their use it too much - so no big bill)

Nev

 

After running up a £275 and a £325 monthly bill with T-Mobile web n walk I dispute any of the above

I dont watch television but you may see me on it

and before you start not Police 5

70 MbPH eh.. like smaller than ya average MP3, does it look any good?

[Audi Fan]

we have no television

But then what do you use to play video games on?

 

I do admire those who can give up tv, I'm totally addicted to my tv & internet.

Infact when i add up the hours i spend watching tv playing games and browsing online I don't really have much left over

[Boaty Jo]

Video Games???

 

Internet via lap-top.

The odd DVD on lap-top.

[R Dixon]

Using a laptop for any thing like TV/DVD would eat up the batteries no end due to the constant spining of the hard drive. You may find you are charging the laptop more and more so will end up having it constantly plugged in.

 

I bought a 12v SVC 17" Tv with built in DVD player. You can also link up a laptop and other devices (we have freeview via the scart) but are fortunate that we have constant power. I can't fault it at all and got it a lot cheaper than many sites from Dabs.com

 

IMO I would rather spend money on a generator or solor panal/wind thing than use my laptop for TV.

[DHutch]

Yeah, i really really cant see it working!

- I would be very supprised if you can get the nessary bandwidth or datarate though a G3 card at all. Certainly not cheaply.

 

A flatscreen TV will draw significatly less power than a laptop, and there are many avalable that will accept a 12VDC input.

 

 

 

Daniel