IN the olden days, Americans gathered in front of the TV sets in their living rooms to watch designated shows at designated times. If you missed the broadcast, you’d feel like an idiot at the water cooler the next day. Quaint, huh? Then came the VCR, which spared you the requirement of being there on time. Then cable TV, which blew open your channel choices. Then TiVo, which eliminated the necessity of even knowing when or where a show was to be broadcast. What’s next—eliminating TV altogether?Well, sure. Last year, a strange-looking gadget called the Slingbox began offering that possibility. It’s designed to let you, a traveller on the road, watch what’s on TV back at home, or what’s been recorded by a video recorder like a TiVo. The requirements are high-speed Internet connections at both ends, a home network and a Windows computer to watch on. (A Mac version is due by midyear.)Today is another milestone in society’s great march toward anytime, anywhere TV. Slingbox owners can install new player software on Windows Mobile palmtops and cellphones, thereby eliminating even the laptop requirement. On cellphones with high-speed Internet connections, the requirement of a wireless Internet hot spot goes away, too. Now you can watch your home TV anywhere you can make phone calls — a statement that’s never appeared in print before today (at least not accurately). THE Slingbox itself is truly eccentric-looking. Picture three squares of chocolate broken off a Nestlé bar, cast in silver and blown up to 10.6 by 1.6 by 4 inches. (“It’s supposed to be an ingot,” a spokesman corrected me.) For most people, setting it up is a 15-minute prospect, according to the company. An Ethernet cable connects the Slingbox to the router on your home network. Another cable connects a spare video recorder or TV output to the Slingbox itself. It has inputs for RCA and S-video cables; you can switch between sources from the road. A third cable is designed to control the channel-changing and other functions of your recorder or cable box; it terminates with two so-called infrared blasters, which are meant to be taped in front of the infrared ‘‘eyes’’ of your TV equipment.The sound is excellent—and at home, viewed across your home network, so is the standard-definition video. Viewed away from home, the video is only OK. There are blotchy patches here and there, not to mention periodic temporary freeze-ups; all of it depends on the Internet connection speeds at both ends. The video resembles a VCR recording, which is still perfectly fine for talk shows, reality shows, game shows and movies where sweeping visuals and special effects aren’t the main attractions. Once that’s all running, you can embark on the next adventure: tuning into your Slingbox from a palmtop or cellphone. This task involves downloading and running another installer. At that point, you can use tiny tappable on-screen controls to tune in to your home TV and video recorder, and control all their functions, just as you can with a laptop. The Slingbox can direct its video to only one gizmo at a time, however; you can’t watch on your cellphone while someone else is using a laptop. (The New York Times)
