SmallNetBuilder

Setting Up

With the number of different connectors available, you can imagine that setup might be a bit intimidating for some users. To address this complexity, Sling Media provides a long user's guide formatted as a large-format, cartoon-like, setup manual that was fairly easy to follow.

I connected the Slingbox up to my satellite receiver, which had an extra composite output available. So audio / video setup for me was just a matter of feeding that output into the Slingbox. If you don't have an extra output available, you'll need to feed your single connection into the Slingbox, and then use another cable to feed it back out again to your TV or AV system.

Network connection was also fairly easy. I have a router in my entertainment center, so it was just a matter of plugging in an Ethernet cable. If you're not Ethernet-equipped near your video source, you'll have a more difficult time, since the only network option for the Slingbox is Ethernet. With signal connections completed, I powered the Slingbox up and in short-order the network connectivity LED showed a good connection. The box had evidently acquired an IP address via the DHCP server on my Linksys WRT54G router.

Other home-network audio / video devices I've used generally display their user interface on a TV screen. But the Slingbox is different because it's not designed to be locally controlled. The Slingbox doesn't even have a power button, much less a remote control. In my setup, it also didn't have an output connection to my TV. All configuration is designed to be accomplished via a PC running an application that connects to the device across the network.

Client support is currently provided for Windows XP only, but Sling Media has recently released support for Windows 2000. They've also made statements that Macintosh OS X, Linux and other operating systems will be supported in the future. So since my iBook wasn't supported, I turned to my XP laptop for installation. The installation program included a "Wizard" that found the device on my home network and started the setup.

One of the first configuration screens displayed had an area for a video preview. Figure 2 (from the manual) shows what the screen should look like, but all I got was a video area full of static. I checked with the "help" option and followed the suggestions of checking cables without change. Finally, I noticed a suggestion to ignore the problem and continue.

Figure 2: Setup

Evidently, the device was trying to acquire video from the coaxial connection, which I wasn't using. When I got to the screen that allowed me to change the input to composite video, my picture came in. It would have been nice to have the input selection on the first screen, or at least have a notice on that screen, indicating where it was trying to acquire video from.