Originally Posted by PTravel
Yes, it actually works, within the limits of what it is.
When I travel, I set up a wireless router in the hotel room, so that I can use my laptop anywhere. My connection is wireless router to hotel wired-ethernet to my home router/gateway (via DSL) to a hub to the Slingbox. In most locations I get reasonable, but sub-broadcast quality. The Slingbox folks have developed software specifically tailored for the application, and it works pretty well. The video is buffered, sometimes by as much as 7-seconds, so freezes and drop-outs are rare. It does, however, make controlling the Tivo a little more difficult. As with any temporal compression video codec (like mpeg2, which is used for DVD), the more motion in the picture, the more data most be sent and the more likely that video quality will suffer somewhat. I find it is more than adquate for my daily fix of the Colbert Report and the Daily Show. If I was watching a heavily visual show (Lost, for example), I'd probably go to ABC's website and use their Flash download. Overall, I like my Slingbox a lot, and find that I use it quite a bit when I'm on the road, particularly if my wife is with me.
I purchase a lot of sports subscriptions from DirecTV and I was sick of having to watch 3-day-old Flyers games when returning from a business trip AND having to listen to just the radio feed while traveling. Now I watch the games live.
I do a lot of networking and the setup of this thing was NOT trivial. For the person having problems, do what you can and then call the tech support line and they'll walk you through it. Easier than banging your head off the wall -- I do that for my day job.