Sling Adaptor Field Reviews

[Dirtydan]

Thanks Don, Where might I find this?
Dan

 

[JDGJr]

It works fantastic and if you have good internet conn.

Question: if i am viewing on a PC downstairs in my house, is the video going thru my ISP and back again, or directly from my 722K to my PC?

 

[Dirtydan]

Directly
Dan

 

[JDGJr]

Cool. I just ordered one. Does anyone know where they ship from?

 

[Tyralak]

I just got mine about 15 minutes ago. It was extremely easy to set up. Just plugged it into my 722k and it recognized it within about 5 seconds. Logged on to my dish account with my desktop and started watching live TV. Picture quality was really good. Next I tried it on my iPhone. The picture quality was certainly watchable, but not as good as Netflix. The difference between WiFi and 3G was surprisingly minor. I have a Comcast internet connection 20Mbps down and 5 Mbps up.

 

[Tyralak]

Cool. I just ordered one. Does anyone know where they ship from?

Colorado.

 

[Tyralak]

The only real issue I have is well known to everyone. I have to log into my Dish account to watch anything. My 7 year old son wants to watch on his laptop, but I'm not giving him the password to my account. They need to fix this problem. Other than that, it's well worth the $100.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Remember there is a new version of the iPhone client coming.

 

[TheForce]

Thanks Don, Where might I find this?
Dan

As I said, when you install the application with Firefox, it is downloaded and installed automatically. Nothing for you to hunt for when you accept the install of the player after plugging in the sling adapter.

 

[TheForce]

Question: if i am viewing on a PC downstairs in my house, is the video going thru my ISP and back again, or directly from my 722K to my PC?

I'm not sure that is so. I checked and the data flow through my modem connection was quite active when I was watching. I'll need to check again because I also had my stock ticker streaming at the same time. I know with my sling box classic, it uploads to sling and back down to me so there was a considerable delay from say my PC in the same room as the local feed.

 

[TheForce]

The only real issue I have is well known to everyone. I have to log into my Dish account to watch anything. My 7 year old son wants to watch on his laptop, but I'm not giving him the password to my account. They need to fix this problem. Other than that, it's well worth the $100.

This is just an idea- Can't you set up your son's laptop with your secret PW and have it remember it with the typical asterisks so he doesn't know it. Or, do you just not want him to have access to your Dish account info? Also, I believe you can set up a separate PW for dish.sling.com as for dishnetwork.com. I do here anyway. Then he has access to just the sling player and can't use that PW when accessing the dishnetwork account pages.

 

[TheKrell]

Well, I'm not doing so well. Yes, the Sling Adapter works, but apparently I don't have a PC with enough power to do HD. The picture is very jerky and audio is several seconds advanced compared to the video over my wireless LAN. SD seems to be OK, though there is a tremendous lag. I accidentally got a virtual remote to appear, but then I couldn't get rid of it and now that I've restarted IE, I can't get it to reappear. This browser-embedded client is non-intuitive and I wish IE were not involved. I clearly need to read the user's manual. To bad there is none.

The Firefox client installs on my W2K computer, but it won't run. So much for my attempt to get an unsupported client going.

The Android client on my Behold 2 is buggy as hell, laggy as hell, very hard to operate, and most of the time so jerky it's unwatchable. I am worried that it too is underpowered for this particular application.

All these things work perfectly with my Hava Platinum and either the Monsoon PC client or TestTube for my Android phone over my local wireless LAN.

 

[Character Zero]

So I have been playing with the playback across many PCs in the home.
iMac Core2Duo 2.93 4 GB Ram
M11X Core2Duo 1.73 4 GB Ram
Macbook Pro Core Duo 1.83 2 GB Ram
Macbook Core2Duo 2.4 4 GB Ram

Testing was done in 3 rooms the 722 is connected to a router bridging the main router that is connected to the cable modem. Wireless N. Office wired to main router, living room wireless, bedroom wireless. The goal is to replace the 211 that is in the bedroom and farther away from the router.

iMac streams HD great around 6mbs in all rooms (yeah I moved it from room to room) wired in the office and wireless in the other rooms.

M11X - Can't get a good lock on an HD stream both wired and wireless. Dropouts and stutters.

Macbook Pro- Dropouts and stutters in HD

Macbook - Dropouts and stutters in HD.

I think there may be a correlation between being able to process higher bitrates and the processor speed. According to the website you need a 2.2 Ghz in Windows or 2.4 Ghz in OSX to get HD. My tests seem to support the need for at least a 2.2 Ghz in Windows or 2.4 Ghz in OSX. The 2.93 Ghz was the best, so that seems to point to that. Anyone else see this issue with processor speed. On Good and Better, there aren't any problems.

Edit:
More testing seems to point to processor load when factoring in wireless. The Macbook Pro which is the oldest processor and one of the slowest seemed to do alright (3mbs) on a wired connection vs. wireless. I wonder if the overhead of both processing the wireless stuff AND the Sling video is causing issues. Taking away the wireless processing allows more for the CPU on the video. I wish they would go with Flash or something that could be GPU accelerated and offload some of the CPU processing.

 

[TheKrell]

Just did some more modest tests with the Android client on a Behold 2. This time I was LOS about 10' to my wireless G router, and it did much better. But! I can't watch recorded OTA broadcasts, either HD or SD. Now I can't get my PC client to connect to DISH Remote Access Login at all.

Edited to add: OK, I'm back in on the XP PC IE client. That does display OTA recordings, so the adapter is indeed transcoding as advertised. This PC client is underpowered for HD over wireless.

The Android client will not show OTA recordings at all. It silently goes to Live instead.

 

[Tyralak]

This is just an idea- Can't you set up your son's laptop with your secret PW and have it remember it with the typical asterisks so he doesn't know it. Or, do you just not want him to have access to your Dish account info? Also, I believe you can set up a separate PW for dish.sling.com as for dishnetwork.com. I do here anyway. Then he has access to just the sling player and can't use that PW when accessing the dishnetwork account pages.

I would be hesitant to do the first suggestion, because he takes his laptop back and forth to his mother's house. She wouldn't really do anything, but I just feel slightly uncomfortable with my ex wife having access to my Dish account. As far as the second suggestion goes, I can try but it says the page is going away soon.

 

[Character Zero]

Ok so I have done a little more testing. It seems like, and I mentioned this in an edit to my original post, that having wireless enabled on the PC watching the stream affects the type of processor that will work with HD. When I plug in my 1.83 Ghz CoreDuo (not even Core2Duo, but still dual core) to a wired connection, I get around 4.5-6 mbps on the HD stream and it looks great. When I switch over to wireless in the exact same spot with full bars, HD stutters and the bit rate jumps around. Same with my wife's Macbook with a 2.4 Ghz Core2Duo. Wired it runs fine, wireless it jumps. This is not the case with the iMac. Its 2.93 Ghz Core2Duo and it works flawlessly wired and wireless. Long term I was hoping to replace a 211 in my bedroom which is across the house, with a nettop or some small form PC. In the interim I was going to play around with connecting the laptop, but it seems that isn't going to work because of the requirement on it being wireless. Android app works great. It has its bugs, but I am listening to som Sirius right now at work. One issue is that the channel I am listening to isn't showing up in the guide, I had to type i in manually on the video stream. Couldn't even search for it.

Now a question : Homeplug. The 722 has homeplug built in. If I plug a homeplug into the wall at my bedroom TV and then go Ethernet into my laptop (turning off the wireless) would that would. Does the homeplugs on the Dish receivers only share the internet connection to other Dish receivers? Could I possibly get a better video connection because the homeplug would connected directly to the 722 if I am able to share that broadband connection?

Thanks!

Anyone have any questions about the Sling adapter? Or the android app?

 

[TheKrell]

I do. How do you change channels on the Android app? Note that mine doesn't have a numeric keypad. It does have a little circle, somewhat like an ipod, with select button in the middle. These physical keys do nothing.

 

[Character Zero]

I do. How do you change channels on the Android app? Note that mine doesn't have a numeric keypad. It does have a little circle, somewhat like an ipod, with select button in the middle. These physical keys do nothing.

So you can click on a channel in the guide. Or you can just choose "Watch" from the "More" button on the bottom of the app, when you use the "Menu" button. Does that make sense so far? On the guide, press the Menu button on the phone (the one with the 4 lines). Then in the bottom right corner there is a more button on the screen along with the DVR, Now, Grid, etc. And then top option is Watch. So on the video screen you have 3 options at the top. The "3 lines" Give you access to "Guide" "Live" " Info" "Record" "Zoom Auto" and "Recall". Then the second is VCR like controls. And the third is the number pad looking thing where you can type in the number of the channel. Hmm no no channel up and down there, let me try something else then. I think you can use gestures.So In landscape when video playing I swipe up and it says Channel Up, but doesn't change. Swiping down says Chanel Down, but doesn't change either. See if you can get it to work.

 

[jack byron]

How long a wait for a Windows Slingplayer app? Need my Windows Mobile 6.1 Touch Pro 2 to work on the road. Or does the $29.99 app in the windows marketplace work?

 

[TheForce]

jack the $29 app doesn't work. I tried the browser and a lengthy process to get to the Remote access page in Dishnetwork.com on the TP2 and it finally told me my browser wasn't supported.

I'm afraid that htcTP2 owners are SOL until a special app is made. I don't hold my hopes up for it. The only solution I see now for us windows mobile users is to buy slingbox solo and use the sling mobile access. I plan to give it a few more days to see what develops, contact sling tech support and get their thoughts. I paid for a sling app, $29.99 and it has worked up until 2 weeks ago and they shut it down. I'm not too happy about that.

It seems to me that Windows Mobile support is falling off these days. This is just another nail in it's coffin. While I personally never had any complaints with it, I think I may need to jump to Android OS next time I'm eligible for an upgrade from Verizon. My wife wants an iphone but I want free tethering and that means Android.