Finally got one yesterday from PC World, although it took teh Sales assistant about 20 mins to find one from the back
Very easy to set up and works a treat on a home LAN, VERY watchable pic (using S-video).
BUT, two 'problems'
1. Apart from the built in tuner, you can only control one other device (both video & audio). I was aware of this before I bought and have managed to 'half solve' this problem.
One of the things I want to do is control both my Sky+ and Pan HDD/DVD recorder as I often copy stuff from Sky+ to the recorder.
(I have set the IR emitters to control each device and use the s-video and audio out from the Pan recorder to the Sling box inputs. That way I can watch either the Sky passthru signal (via RGB scart) or the Pan recorder's output.
This way I kill two birds. I can watch and control Sky+ and do some copying and clean ups on my Pan recorder...well that's the idea in theory, but in practice it's not so straight forward...
The sling player only allows you to control one device on the s-video inputs (obviously) so to 'toggle' between the two you have to keep running the set up wizard to control sky+ or the recorder, which is a real pain!
At the moment I'm looking ways of running the sling player from two different drives or from two different PCs in my office. They would have to be independant as you can only login from one remote source.
Not very practical, but can't think of any other way.
But, there's a further problem (1b) which I'm also currently looking into. There are currently
nNOremote configs for any Panasonic DVD recorder
'record functions', all you can do is control it as a
player which is no good at all, you can't access any of your recordings let alone record, which is what I want to do.
Again there may be a work around using this 'JP1' method mentioned on the Sling Forums.
2. If like me you're on NTL 1mb BB, then FORGET IT, the upload speed i'm getting is useless (about 80k!) and the PQ is totally unwatchable and stuttery, it makes the current news clips on BBC and Sky's news web pages look like High def!
If it weren't for the fact that i'm registered for Sky's 8mb BB (400K upload) 'soon' (i've been told it's available in my area) then I would consider taking the Sling box back to PCW.
I haven't used it quite in anger yet, but the PQ at the mo may be ok for general 'house keeping' on the two devices but definatley not for any serious viewing.
You have been warned!