Thinking About a Slingbox

[blofgren]

Hello all. Our local campground that we go to no longer offers cable due to everything going digital. We do have a Jack antenna that works in some sites in the park but not all. Satellite is the same; it will work in some but not all sites.

The park did a major upgrade on their internet system and it works quite well now. I'm thinking that maybe a Slingbox would work for us to be able to watch some TV from home. We aren't huge TV watchers but it is certainly nice to watch the news or a movie if the weather is bad.

Is anyone here using them and how do they work? Thanks for the feedback!

[Crabbypatty]

Slingbox, or CG wifi, trying to stream anything netflix, slingbox etc, is completely dependent on the quality of the wifi internet signal. Slingbox requires a high speed connection from where its attached and you might have to pay more to speed it up as basic cable internet wasnt fast enough. Two, everyone in the CG is using the internet so it depends on their service, how many people are connected and how good your signal is.

For backups we bring dvd's, have a jackd digital antenna or park cable.

[Papa_Steve]

I tried to use my slingbox when I was in Boston and my house is in California. It was about a 10 second turnaround to control my directv box in CA (i.e., press a button on the remote in Boston, it has to be sent to CA, and the response has to be sent back to Boston).
I gave up pretty quick on using it. I could start a movie and watch that, but checking the guide and changing channels was painful.

[96Bounder30E]

I use my sling box frequently.... It works great with my unlimited data plan with verizon..... It's easy to use 20gb of data in a week.....

[SCVJeff]

They can also rent the boxes and remodulate them into the CG system on their own channel scheme and it's completely transparent to the end user

[wa8yxm]

Everything going Digital is no reason for an RV park to discontinue Cable. Ask if you need suggestions to give to management.

Slingbox burns up bandwidth.. Now if you are using park Wi-Fi, that can be a problem as they do not always have enough of that (Not always, Do they EVER?)

If you are bringing your own
Verizon has good data speeds.. And GOOD overage rates too they will ChaChing you if you burn too much bandwidth.

AT&T I'm not sure how that works... They are now advertising UNLIMITED but as I understand they do not allow teathering

T-Mobile has had "Unlimited" for some time but only so much HIGH speed. however they are now exempting some services from metering.. And as I recall Slingbox is one of the exempted services so that might work for you.. Worth looking into.

ME: I use park cable, which is a combination of digital and analog. and ANT.. I may reconfigure but currently

OTA feeds Televisions (Front and rear) and Digital converters (Same) which feed vintage Replay TV DVR's (Same front and rear) which get their program guides from Schedules Direct (Customable) so they auto choose Cable (Analog only) or Converter.. All but one TV work well with this set up.. one TV is picky about ATSC and will not decode it if set to cable.. (major pain in the operating system).

(Oh, Digital converters feed Replays via LINE IN not Ant in)

I plan on switching the front Digi-verter to Cable and see if that works.>L I know the cable sends ATSC, not QAM but there is some translation (Frequency) going on so I need to re-scan.. I may pick up a few more networks that way.

But cable systems doing ATSC... are rare.

Most "Digital" cable systems.. One of the cable systems (I will not mention name for fear of getting the wrong one) has gone all encrypted... It still works, but you need to rent a Set Top Box... The Campground can obtain say 2 dozen (for this CG) Set Top Boxes. and then rent with deposit.. Adding a bit to the real rental cost. Pick up a few extra bucks.. You get full cable. and everyone is happy or at least in theory.

[PatRenee]

I have dish and thought about sling also... I ended up just getting a tri-pod and a spare dish antenna and I bring that with us along with the boxes from the house... then we have all our shows and nothing changes... it only takes 5 min to set up dish....

[ford_truck_guy]

I use slingbox at times.... Like others stated , give it DATA and it will use it..
I make sure that I am on regular channels, and not on HD.. We like it

[SCVJeff]

The Sling is voracious with data. Whatever data you can provide it, it will use, and then some. You HAVE to manually throttle it back or there'll be a Lizzy Borden burnin' starring you.. 🙂

[TechWriter]

I use Dish Anywhere, which is Sling technology, between my Hopper and my iPad. The Hopper is in CA and connected to a cable modem. The iPad is in our AZ park model which is also connected to a cable modem.

Throughput on each cable modem is in the 30 Mbps range.

Sling technology works very good at those speeds.

However, I don't think even a campground with a very good WiFi system would come close to this. You can give it a try, but I wouldn't count on much.

[pianotuna]

Lots of data for video. The park owners won't be happy--and the other residents won't be either. Burn some dvd's and take them along. News you can already get over the wobbly wide web.