Slingbox Shoots Your Shows to a PC

The device from Sling Media is the best way we know to get your prerecorded programs to show up on your computer

by Stephen H. Wildstrom

Reader Paul Lourd writes:

I have seen quite a bit of information about how to stream video (and other media) from a PC or Mac to a home entertainment center, but I have not seen much about going the other way. I have both TiVo and a cable company-provided digital video recorder, and it would be great to be able to view some of the content on a laptop in parts of the house that are not wired for TV signal. For example, watch a prerecorded cooking show in the kitchen, or a do-it-yourself show in the garage or the basement. I would love to be able to do this without having to burn a DVD (which has its own challenges). Is there a way to stream whatever content is being sent to the TV over the air to a laptop via a Wi-Fi network? Maybe I am missing something obvious, but I can't see an easy way to do this. And frankly, I think this would be more useful to many people than worrying about sending media from the PC to the TV. Have you seen any products that do this?

The Slingbox from Sling Media ($180-$250) does exactly what you want. It's a small box that connects to a DVR or set-top box and your network and streams the output from the device to the Sling Player software on a computer or handheld, either on your local network or out to the Internet. It uses IR blasters to emulate the remote control of your TiVo or cable box.

Other than this, the choices are slim. If you have a networked Series 2 TiVo (not an original TiVo, DirecTV Tivo, or Series 3 TiVo), you can get TiVo to Go software from TiVo that lets you transfer your recorded shows to a Mac or Windows laptop or any of a number of handheld devices.

With a Windows Media Center PC, you can transfer recorded shows to a Portable Media Center or burn them to DVD.

But with all the cable boxes I know of, you are out of luck. Short of hacking the box, there's no way to do anything with the content stored on that hard drive other than play it back on a TV set.

Wildstrom is Technology & You columnist for BusinessWeek. You can contact him at techandyou@businessweek.com .