I was recently on a family trip to Barra de Navidad, Mexico aboard our old Stephens, Morningstar, when I encountered a problem. The Laker game was on and the televsion was off, at least as far as English-language programming was concerned. The solution came in the form of a little gem called a Slingbox.
Morningstar has a Sea-Tel 2498 Satellite TV antenna with Galaxy Latin America service. Except for some movie channels and CNN International, Galaxy Latin America, along with rival SKY Mexico, really have little to offer in the way of U.S. broadcasting. Each is Latin America's version of DirecTV, so of course it is geared toward Spanish and Portuguese speakers.
Sling MediaSlingbox
A friend of mine gave me a Slingbox about a year ago. The Slingbox is a funky ice tray-shaped device that attaches to my internet and cable service at home. I plugged an ethernet cable into my home network router and put a splitter on the cable TV coax to go to both my TV and the Slingbox.
What the slingbox does is it allows you to watch your own cable TV from anyplace you have an internet connection. Can you see where I'm going with this now?
To be honest, I had the Slingbox hooked up for a couple of months but never needed to watch TV remotely so bad that I felt the device was necessary. We downloaded the software into my wife's cell phone and could watch the Slingbox through her PocketPC, which is way beyond cool, but the novelty wore off after a bit. My buddy who gave me the Slingbox watches it through his cell phone sometimes, but he's in the wireless business and usually uses it as a demo at tradeshows.
So I'm sitting down in Barra with a desperate need to watch a Laker game and all the Sat TV is showing is every soccer match from Brazil to Spain.
I hadn't even loaded the Slingbox software on the onboard computer, so I was a little skepticle that I would get the thing up and running at all. But after about 10 minutes of downloads and 5 more minutes of configuring the passwords and such, I was watching Fox Sports on a laptop while sitting on Morningstar in a beautiful Mexican marina. And the Lakers won.
The Slingbox does require broadband Internet access, which is increasingly more common but not yet everywhere. For some reason my area in Newport Beach, California, has been about the slowest to adopt wireless service in it's marinas. From Alaska to Mexico Wi-Fi is as prevalent as dockside water and power, yet much of Southern California is spotty at best. No football team in Los Angeles and no Wi-Fi in Orange County. It's unthinkable, yet here we are.
But in loactions with access, the Slingbox can be a lifesaver. I've used mine in more than one "desperate" situation since our trip to Barra and it is almost flawless. You may not use it all the time, but you will be glad you have one when your traveling. At about $150 for the Slingbox AV, it's a worthwhile investment.
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Jeff McLaren is the National Sales Manager for Seawide Marine Distribution, a wholesaler distributor based in Southern California that works with all major electronics manufacturers. He has produced a series of instructional DVDs on how to use Raymarine navigation gear.
