• Confirmed : I love the Slingbox
  • Confirmed: The Slingbox can stream your TV signal over the Internet
  • Plausible: The Slingbox can help alleviate boredom when stuck in a hotel room or airport lounge
  • Busted: The Slingbox Pro and Solo device can stream HD over the Internet

OK. I’ll admit that this little show was all done just to try and explain the final myth I posted above.

image

As much as I love their products, Sling does a horrible job explaining exactly what the Slingbox Pro and Solo can do. People see the product, see the features mention "Hit the road in High Def" and naturally assume that it will stream HD wherever they are.

The Slingbox Pro and Solo do NOT stream HD over the Internet. 

I’ll try and explain once and for all what HD means to the Slingbox Pro and Solo. These units can be connected to an HD SOURCE. What this means, is that if you have a cable or satellite source that spits out HD signals using "component connectors", you can hook it up to the Slingbox Pro (or Solo) and stream over the Internet at the same quality of any other product in the current Slingbox lineup.

The upside is that this is a higher resolution than the original (discontinued) Slingbox, but it still isn’t HD. It isn’t even anywhere near HD. The only real advantage of the HD connectors is that the signal quality will be slightly better than when using the composite or S-Video connectors and that you might not have any other options for hooking it up.

When you read the descriptions on the Slingmedia web site you’d be forgiven if you were convinced that I was posting gibberish. But don’t take my word for it, hidden away in a knowledgebase on the site is their own explanation:

IMPORTANT NOTE: While you can access your HD content in either of these ways, this HD content does not stream in high definition. Instead, it uses SlingStream technology to convert the HD video stream into standard definition, then it compresses the video to match the available network and Internet bandwidth. In this way, it streams the HD content in high quality standard definition form.

 

Sling recently announced a new Slingbox (The Slingbox PRO-HD) which really can stream HD (for real this time), but it will only stream HD on your local network (inside your home). It will not stream HD to your hotel 2500 miles across the country.