Originally Posted by Abacha

Longhorn - we were chatting a few months back, I'm in Dubai now and finally got my Slingbox connected, today in fact. Watching the Braves play the 'stros as we speak on ESPN and it's awesome. All the other channels work perfectly as well, watched a bit of Price Is Right this morning, a movie on AMC (Gregory Peck in MacArthur), the DirectTV football package looks like it'll work fine as well and I'm so excited. I had the unit sent to my brother in Virginia by Amazon, he's a techie so set-up was easy, he put it in one of his spare bedrooms that no one really uses (except me) so I'm not bothering him at all. Bought the Slingbox Solo for about $140. On this side I went to the website, downloaded the software, logged in and I was off, very easy. It works exactly as I expected, better even. My bro has DirectTV and I can either use a virtual remote that is exactly like the DirectTV remote or I can use the guide selector provided by Slingbox (or both at the same time, one on the left the other on the right as the Slingbox one is easier to navigate as the channel guide is downloaded on this side vs. the virtual remote which sends the command over the internet to Virginia which involves a slight delay, about 1-2 seconds between when you push a button and when it shows up on that side). Audio is perfect but the video isn't the greatest because of the slow internet speeds on this side but it's really not an issue, just like watching a good quality youtube video. No delays whatsoever, just smooth streaming as it has an optimization feature, if you happened to have a fast connection you can improve the video up to the top setting which is billed HD quality, the best we seem to do is 320 x 240, there are two lower and 3 higher including that HD quality. What I'm watching now is fine, I tried the manual settings to try the higher video settings and it was very clear, like a VCD, but it wasn't smooth so I switched back to the automatic optimization. I'm watching it on my laptop and it is fine in full screen mode but I can see how it wouldn't be so great on a big TV given the slow internet speeds and video quality issues around that but there must be a way this, perhaps with the Slingcatcher as someone suggested, you can also get a more full feature Slingbox and connect to your Tivo or DVR at home but I didn't get that as I don't have that feature over there. Another nice feature is that it saves the most recent 60 minutes that you've watched so you can go back and watch replays or walk away, come in late and still watch something. All and all this is a must have for American Sports Fans, no regrets. Hope this helps.