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A solution for overseas Huskers


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I have been over here in the world's biggest sandbox for almost 4 years now, and this will be my 3rd football season. I haven't missed many games, and this may be a solution for other displaced Husker fans.

 

I have a Slingbox ProHD set up in Maryland at a friend's house. It is connected to his internet system and DirecTV with the ESPN Game Plan package, along with the NFL package. While the Slingbox can be quirky to set up, I haven't had any of the negative setup issues described on their forum or on the amazon.com feedback page.

 

What the Slingbox does is allow you to connect to your satellite/cable system remotely from anywhere in the world via your laptop. You control the TV and DVR with a remote on your screen just like you were sitting in your favorite chair. What the Slingbox DOESN'T do is take care of itself very well, so it requires a babysitter, so to speak. It always needs resetting or to have the power turned back on after an outage or whatever, so it is not a 'set and forget' system. Another drawback is that you can not set up the system the first time from your overseas location. You must install the Slingbox and have it 'mate' with your laptop on the host internet system so that it can set up the unique IP address that allows you and your laptop to access it anywhere. So if the Slingbox goes out, as mine did last summer after a lighting strike near my friend's house and you have to get a new box, you are down until you get back to the States and take the laptop to 'fornicate' with the new Slingbox. For the same reason, another drawback is that the laptop you set up originally with the Sling is the laptop you a stuck with, so unless you haul your desktop or multiple laptops back to the host location, you can only watch on the one laptop you have set up. But with a stout system, good video card and an HDMI cable, you can plug your laptop into almost any larger screen. Right now I am using a Toshiba Qosmio with an Intel I7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce video card, and 4GB of RAM and I can connect the Dell 24" desktop monitor, the LG 37" LCD TV, and the Panasonic 47" plasma to watch games in a larger format (although the plasma has the laptop fans running full out).

 

What do you need? On the host end, you need the Slingbox, a cable/satellite package, and decent internet upload speed. On the remote end, you need a quality laptop, the Sling software to control the box, and internet. The speed of your overseas internet will determine the quality of the picture you get from the Sling. When I first set it up, I was operating at barely dial-up speed, and would have to walk away for a few minutes to let it buffer before I could watch without stops and starts. The picture quality was fair to poor. I have since upgraded to a 3G wireless system and at 300k and over, the stream is live, clear, and almost HD.

 

DSC05914.jpg

This pic is from 2009 using the Sling on my old HP laptop and connected via HDMI cable to the desktop's 24" Dell monitor. Cuban cigar and home made brew optional lol

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