RIP Slingbox! Testing the Original 2005 Slingbox in 2022

I'm going to sling this over here greetings got an lgr blurbs video about uh the sling box 17 years later so uh you may have seen the news um over the past I don't know a year or so that this thing is going to be killed off in fact I just saw uh some more headlines go up about it recently because I you know the the time is approaching but I think they announced this about a year or so ago a year and a half or something like that I don't know but it's going offline or the other servers and whatnot are going offline November 9th 2022 so I've had this in my storage for a long time and uh well if it's ever going to still work and now it'd be the time to test it so what is the sling box in case you're not aware this is a device from 2005. this is the very first one for one thing I've actually never seen one of these demonstrated on YouTube so plenty of the later ones especially the the 500 and these became more popular later on but yeah it is a streaming device that allows you to take things that are playing in your house whether it be live TV or a DVR or DVD players or just whatever you plug it into this the Slingbox slings it across to other devices through your internet connection and it streams it to you so laptops that's the only thing that they mention here but there were also uh apps for pdas and self thumbs and just all kinds of stuff over the years I think this one I don't know this is the very first one right so like you could tell check out these system requirements Windows XP Pentium 4 256 Megs of ram 100 Megs of hard drive space a graphics card 24-bit color sound card CD-ROM ethernet this being the very first one I honestly don't know if it'll even still work but I figure servers are shutting down may as well give it a test and at least unbox it you know see what it's like to use this thing I've always been curious because yeah take whatever antenna cable satellite DVR DVD or video camera and then being able to access that anywhere around the world with your devices as long as you have an internet connection pretty crazy at the time I always thought this was really cool back in the day saw a bunch of them over the years for sale um just never picked one up I don't know I never felt the need honestly didn't have the money when these things were super popular well not super popular but more popular like around yeah 2008 to 2012-ish yeah I just I didn't have the money to do it back then but I thought it was really really cool so well yeah no monthly fees that was the other big thing too so you just buy this thing it's like 250 bucks or something back in the day I don't know exactly what this one cost but um yeah and the times before you had everything streaming this is pretty cool especially for local live television so let's see here I just noticed G4 gave it an award C Net retail vision foreign stock let's get going oh oh got CDs in here oh there we go look at that Windows XP we will definitely be trying it on Windows XP again no clue if this will work I also have you know there there's their current desktop version at least for the next few days yeah I I just know what to expect here since this is the very first model connect it to uh yeah Source Network Power software supposed to be stupidly simple yeah the fact that you can just connect it to whatever it's that composite Nest video RF I think that's it on this one uh pretty much the next year or so they added things like component and HDMI to get HD video but uh wow Rhapsody haven't heard of that in Forever number one rated digital music service okay let's see here what do we got this weird shape thing this first model oh it's so strange it's like a like chocolate or something like like a candy design again this one didn't even last long on the market uh the design is very very first gen type of my cable TV my DVD my radio my diva derpa oh man it has a smell too that smells like aging Electronics like in a very deep way almost like a fertilizer smell oh look at this power uh infrared blaster that's the other thing so it has an IR blaster so you plug that in and it's supposed to be able to control like set top boxes DVD players that kind of thing so you can not only watch and stream things that you have at home from anywhere on a laptop but control it if it's got infrared that it can control of course ethernet no Wi-Fi on this one s video out and AV out so that's the pass-through so yeah it's supposed to act as a pass-through connected to your TV RF antenna input as video input and AV input those are the main ones and a little reset button but uh hey plenty of plenty so we have our power adapter here I believe this is the infrared it's got an ethernet cable uh your standard type of thing here is like uh you get these with video cameras and whatnot too but um yeah it plugs in and gives you AV here's your other one for pass through and a couple of s or not One S video cable and one RF coaxial cable for connecting set top boxes antennas whatever there's our infrared blaster look at that you're supposed to I think adhere this to uh the top and kind of over wherever the remote connection is on your cable box satellite box DVD player whatever so yeah uh this is this is pretty much it it seems really simple and I'm sure it is or was back in the day now the question is will this still connect to the current servers and will the software even still allow itself to work on Windows XP I don't know let's hook it up and try it out okay so just as a quick test and see if it'll do anything I got it plugged in as soon as you turn it on plug in the ethernet cable the ethernet comes on power comes on that little end lights up that seems promising so just as a quick test I got hooked up to a LaserDisc player here the output going to a retro tank 5x just so I can see it on my TV a little better and then yeah the input is connected to the output uh the LaserDisc player so composite uh or rather RCA audio s video for video and I got back to the future going on LaserDisc because why not all right let's see if the software works okay so I have actually tried it uh with the modern software it does absolutely nothing it just says oh I can't find the Slingbox so uh that's the only results that I get on the modern software however got the Windows XP PC going here and this is the CD that it came with it says as long as the lights are on there should be good so uh I don't want to do updates I just want to see if it works as is so oh oh no way no way that worked immediately I wasn't expecting that dude he has to laser displayer upstairs oh dude this is cool wow I guess now the question would be will it work over the internet too because this is just local network I guess select what you connected directly to the Slingbox inputs external box yeah we'll do that video input is s video what do I have connected okay so this is going to be setting up the infrared I assume so it is a pioneer I don't actually have the the infrared plugged in well let me go see if I can get this the rest of this setup um this is super cool already I wasn't expecting uh these kind of results this fast this is awesome all right well I've been messing around with this for a little bit and um yeah trying to get the software going and configured and trying it on different systems it actually does more or less work on Modern computers as well like installing on Windows 10 or 11. the old version of the software that it came with the the newer ones just refuse to recognize that old Slingbox no matter what but this here I have um Asus Lamborghini laptop the vx2s I don't know why it's taking a while to load here there it is took a second um but yeah so I am outside uh and I am not connected to my home network I've actually got a wireless hotspot going with my cell phone and so we are away from my house but the Slingbox is back at the house connected over ethernet to the TV still the laser display are still playing Back to the Future and so um I have it set up there on uh if I set it up on the Windows XP machine first but at this point it's fully connected to I guess the Slingbox servers so yeah it it's just doing what it's doing so we have this right here we can just hit watch and get that manure Biff you deserve it [Laughter] so um the quality is not fantastic it does not seem to get around or over like 400 kbps uh at least that I've seen so far that could be any number of things but yeah that that's the settings that I've been able to get it to work the best at is this right here considering though that this was meant to be watched on things like pdas phones and laptops I mean this is this is fully manageable obviously watching movies or whatever is not going to be because it's not an optical way to watch movies but you could um but yeah you know in terms of like what they most advertised it for having things like oh man you just want to tune into the local sports game or something like that or the news or whatever when you're away from home this is ideal for that the audio is not bad like it actually does quite good yeah and there are of course settings that you can change around in here so let me see we have it stretching to fit the window uh here we go so some of these encoding things yeah it's just on the medium middle middle of the road neutral sort of settings low action and high action are the other settings I guess for what type of content you're watching we put it on a high action I think it's a I think that's like the highest setting or it's sort of supposed to optimize it for certain types of movement I think so high actions for sports or whatever or movies I guess I don't know it doesn't really seem to change much of anything in terms of the speeds or the video quality audio quality I've noticed really no difference switching between those but if you want to you can get very specific with manual adjustments too so you can change the bit around let's just put it up to like 3000 or something or like uh yeah let's just do that and we'll do video smoothness and we'll put that all the way up too oh okay so 1400k BPS is the max let's just do that okay well that gets us a little bit higher um yeah again I think we're just limited based on uh the hardware and the encoding of not only the sling box but like what this is capable of and you know the computer itself the software everything yeah you can see this is getting really choppy when you just let it go all over the place so yeah well that seems to have Frozen it uh yeah it's definitely not the most stable software um I've had a crash on all three machines I've tested it on but uh when it works it works pretty darn well it eventually catches back up but uh yeah I usually just have to close it down open it back up again and it also will not let you have more than one of them going at once it'll be like oh there's another user connected to this Slingbox so you can only have one stream going to one device at once of course you can watch locally you know back at home I could and have this going uh but no you can't have multiple streams going uh it does actually also say I saw a note in one of the bits of software in here where it was like do not use it with game consoles I don't know why exactly you certainly could uh but obviously you're not going to be able to control it you know remotely uh and you're going to get terrible lag like there's like oh gosh I don't even know how much lag between the stream back there at the house and then this oh and on that note in terms of controlling stuff you are supposed to be able to uh you get the infrared going I tried you have this control mode that you can go into here uh it's gonna go nuts control mode you're now watching TV in control mode um yeah supposedly this eliminates or you know slows down the lag that's supposed to uh help like if you're navigating menus or whatever on a DVD that being said I was never able to get the infrared to work with the Pioneer a LaserDisc player that I have it's no surprise I mean it only had a couple of settings for different Pioneer devices I tried every single one of them it wasn't able to get any kind of anything no response but yeah I have no doubt that it would work with um you know more readily supported devices sat top boxes and different DVRs DVD players things of that nature that it officially supports not a LaserDisc player dude this is so cool it's so cool I'm really glad that this still works and uh you know it sucks that the servers are going down that being said even though this right here is I'm gonna be going away like this ability to watch things over the internet it still seems to work even when it's not connected to the internet like if it's just uh on the Lan so I guess maybe you're still going to be able to watch things over ethernet which is no big deal I mean you can get video over ethernet do that kind of thing without a device like this uh but yeah in terms of getting things online as I'm doing now this is going away in a few days and that sucks so let me go ahead and just turn off the Wi-Fi on my phone just to sort of show that uh it's real there it goes turned it off and I think we yep lost the signal so that is the uh the sling box the original one from 2005 and the sling player application it's incredibly simple it's not made for recording or anything I mean you could use some other software to do recording I guess but it's really only made for playing back and um yeah the ability to play this on laptops cell phones pdas or whatever supported devices back in the day would have been extremely cool and uh rest in peace one quick addendum from the future in the editing Bay here yeah well it's the past now what you know what I mean I was just putting this last finishing touches on this blurb and Steve and Mac 84 we got to chatting and it turns out he was doing a video on this as well and he actually got it going on a Palm Pilot so check out his video if you'd like to see a slightly later model it's a couple years later but yeah the same basic idea just working in a different way he also happened to use a LaserDisc player to test it just that was kind of funny that we did not plan that but yeah and in the process of uh talking about that he was able to send me some files he found that make get this working on an HPI pack I'm gonna try a pocket PC with Windows mobile uh I have that I gotta find it on storage if I can get to that in time I'll try that too we have another quick blur but I just want to see it work but in the meantime his videos there so check it out anyway thanks for watching this sling blurb

Channel: LGR Blerbs

Views: 541,480

Keywords: slingbox, 500, 2005, setup, alternative, LGR, Blerb, 2022, original, new old stock, vintage, retro, classic, hardware, replacement, options, offline, server, test, testing, windows xp, windows vista, PC, computer, TV, television, sling media, internet, transmission, streaming, placeshifting, laserdisc, movies, TV show, DVR, DVD, infrared, smartphone, tablet, laptop, lamborghini, vx2s, witbox, HDHomeRun, remote desktop, remote access, servers

Id: 0XDlvegECG8

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2022