Let's Go Streaming!

I watch a significant amount of TV including almost every Raptor game of the season. When I was living in Calgary I had to follow the live boxscores on ESPN.com because most of the games were not broadcast nationally (fortunately that is no longer the case). Had the Slingbox been around when I was in Calgary, I could have set it up at my parents' house in Toronto and watched the Raptors games right on my desktop in my dorm room.

The Slingbox is something like the TV equivalent of the Squeezebox that I posted about earlier. You attach the Slingbox to your cable or satellite TV connection and also to a high speed internet connection at home and the device streams your cable content. What that means is that you can watch and control TV from any computer with an internet connection. I could have watched all of the Raptors games from my Toronto cable subscription while I was in Calgary.

The device comes in three versions: Tuner, AV and Pro. The Tuner ($179) can plug right into the cable without having to interface with the digital tuner from your cable or satelite company, but it can only access basic cable. If you have a digital cable subscription then you want to go with the AV ($199) which can access digital content as well as your DVR. The Pro ($299) adds HD functionality to the AV and allows you to connect multiple devices.