The free service Orb (www.orb.com) works very well too and you don't have to buy a box. I already had a tv tuner in my home PC so no cost. Even if you don't have a tuner, some can be had for less than 50 dollars. I don't know about slingbox, but you can even use Orb on many phones. The pic quality isn't great, but better than nothing when you're stuck somewhere.