Does slingboxes work in China?
 

In my preparation to move to the Middle Kingdom, I am planning not to miss any more hockey games. Does slingbox work in China?

Very mixed results, depends on a number of variables including where you will be located/type of connection you have. I considered setting this up last year, but the techie-types of expats I talked to told me that usually you just can't get enough speed to run the thing adequately...so I didn't pursue it. You might look at this thread for some tips.

Thanks for the reply. I am afraid of buying something, putting my hopes and relying on something that just does not work in China. Not the technologies fault, somethings just don't jive in China.

I had a VOIP phone that works great in North America but when we moved to Taiwan it did not work nor did it work in China but did work perfectly in Hong Kong. Spent hours with tech support and reconfiguring settings and we all just gave up. I realized that cause it works in one place is not necessary work in another place.

Don't want to make the same mistake again.

I definitely have a friend in Beijing who has it and watches the Daily Show every day... I know a number of bars have it, or had it when I lived there in 06-08.... That being said things may have changed

I've used a friend's setup to watch some football games a couple of years ago when I was staying in Wuhan. So it can be done. But as mentioned, it is possible things may have changed over the last year or so, but I would think that it is still possible.

Take a look at some of the expat forums.

I've linked to a couple here....

Shanghai Expat - Slingbox Experience
Slingbox Best Configuration

From experience it depends on your internet connection or the property you choose to reside in. Safer bet to go with a 4MB internet connection for the common ADSL setup and there are some new optically enabled VDSL estates which will provide good constant bit rates of up to 700k with just a 2MB connection.

Always variable in china, largely dependend on your expected relocation city and its investments into IT.

Good Luck!!!

In the case of a Slingbox, the so-called "Great Firewall of China" is unlikely to pose any issue: you will be connecting to a typical residential IP back in the US, so you shouldn't have any problems with access being specifically blocked by the PRC government. In this sense, Slingboxes will "work" in China.

Your main issue is likely going to be getting enough consistent bandwidth to stream content. My server in a data center in Beijing can get about 2200kbps of bandwidth across the Pacific on a good day, and in my experience, most typical residential connections in China get around half of that. And that's connecting to another server, not a residential connection from an ISP that may or may not have ideal peering with the necessary providers.

Assuming you can get a connection that can manage around 1mbps to the US, you should be okay for streaming SD content from your Slingbox. Most residential connections don't have more than 1mbps of upload anyway, so your bottleneck may actually be there, not with your connection in China.

My personal past successes with watching content from my Slingbox in Shanghai indicate that you should be able to do this. Just don't expect it to necessarily work well on a shared connection (such as at a hotel) where limited bandwidth is spread even more thinly.

Mine hasn't in either Shanghai or Guangzhou.

When I lived in Shanghai, my slingbox worked perfectly although I did have a very fast 10mbit connection.

Update
 

Mine is working now, and quite well. It does take several tries before it connects, however. I'm currently in Shanghai, and it was also working in Suzhou.