I’ve had a Slingbox at home for a while now and it allows me to watch my home TV not matter where I am in the world. Having also got a Tivo it also allows me to catch-up on TV that I might have missed. To date this has all been from the client on my laptop but recently a version was released for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
The launch of the iPhone player was not without some controversy as initially the company had said that the player wouldn’t work with older Slingbox Classics (like I have) and that it wouldn’t work over 3G, only wifi. After some customer pressure the company relented and rather petulantly said that it might work with the Classic and if you wanted to have a go that was up to you but you wouldn’t get any support if it didn’t and it might stop working at anytime. Not so great after you have spend 17 quid on the app…
On the second point, playback over 3G, there was to be no shift in position. No reason has been given but the general consensus of opinion seems to been that AT&T put pressure on Apple who put pressure on SlingMedia to remove the 3G capability as their network wouldn’t handle the traffic. What this has got to do with customers on O2 in the UK I am not sure other than being left feeling that we are being short changed once more.
Anyway, that aside the app works well apart from an annoying black band around the picture. Given that you are already watching this on a small screen to lose further screen real estate is disappointing. To change channel you swipe your finger up or down the screen to go up or down the channels and if you want you can pull up a menu to punch in the channel number. As you will see from the screenshots below I was also able to control my Tivo and watch some pre-recorded programs.
However, the killer punch for me was that I WAS able to watch over 3G (well sort of anyway). I wrote recently about the software that I use on my Nokia phone called JoikuSpot that turns it into a wifi router. Well, using this I was able to connect my iPod Touch to the net and stream the pictures over 3G and it worked perfectly.
Now all I need is a new, faster iPhone with a longer battery life…
