It's been years in the making, literally. Sling Media announced the Slingbox Pro-HD and the Sling Catcher at CES 2007, and then again at CES 2008. A product pairing so exciting, it deserved to be announced twice!
Well, the Slingbox Pro-HD arrived in the house of Toyman yesterday and was up and running within ten minutes. Partially. I was able to hook up the box to the Tivo HD and home network within five minutes, but that's where the ease of setup stopped. After downloading the Mac SlingPlayer software, I was able to get a video and audio signal on my computer, but that's all. I couldn't setup the virtual remote to control the Tivo HD, which makes the Slingbox useless.
It wasn't until 20 minutes had passed that I discovered that I needed to run the Windows SlingPlayer to complete the setup. There is some kind of glitch in the Mac software that was preventing me from configuring the video/audio inputs. Thank goodness for VMware.
But my problems persisted. I still couldn't remotely control the Tivo HD. No changing channels, no pausing, nothing. The Sling Media support site is rather sparse, but I did find tips on how to check if the IR blaster was working correctly, which it wasn't. The cable is defective and requires a replacement. In the meantime, I've jerry-rigged a temporary fix that involves a paperclip and scotch tape. Didn't you hear? My other nickname is MacGyver.
Now that things are working, albeit a temporary fix, I'm very impressed with the video quality on my computer. Now I just need to wait for the second piece of the puzzle: the SlingCatcher.
