Can Slingbox Stream Your Home TV Anywhere in the World?

[russ_watters]

Ever heard of Slingbox? http://www.slingbox.com/

Basically, you hook it up to your tv/tuner box and it streams the video on a network. With software to control the channel, this means you can watch your home tv from anywhere in the world.

For me, I see two big advantages of this:
1. I'm single and I have only 1 HDTV but I have two computers. So I can carry a laptop into rooms where I don't have a cable box and watch tv from it. No need for another cable box (they are expensive).
2. Watching tv on my phone.

Questions:
1. I'm not seeing anything about a monthly fee - am I correct in assuming there aren't any?
2. I don't see stand-alone devices to drive a tv, which would be nice to have: then I'm basically just multiplexing the tv signal for use in the house. Are there devices which can do such a thing? This would be more valuable than watching tv on my phone or PC.

 

[jtbell]

For #1, I don't think there are any fees involved, but I don't use one myself so I don't know for sure. For #2, it looks like what you want is a Slingcatcher.

 

[russ_watters]

Huh - oddly, they don't seem to have that linked from slingbox.com. Looking at retailers, it kinda looks like it might be discontinued.

 

[jtbell]

Looks like you're right. I can't find it anywhere either. I did find references to something called the Monsoon Volcano which was supposed to come out in March, but hasn't, yet. One forum has a guy who posted that he's given up waiting for the Volcano and is now trying to find a Slingcatcher. That sounds like there might not be anything else like this out there.