Slingbox CC ?

radioman

radioman

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
3,034
Reaction score
30
Does anyone here uses slingbox ? I did a search here and found the posts are old by 2 years.

Right now I have tivo 2 and the contract is up and now paying month to month. I am not excited about the increased price and I dont think I really need to pay a monthly fee just to use it. My local cable offers dvr but no capability to transfer to watch on computer for away trips. Tivo does offer to tranfer to pcs but nothing is built in for tivo format to have CC on pc. you must either record it through another encoder (this reads as more junk) or dont watch it on pc, wait till you get home to watch right on the TV. This arrangement really sucks. :mad:

After doing some research, it seems to me that slingbox offers you to do same thing as tivo, and let you watch on pc. They even said if using a sling box and sling tv extender and use the windows media center on computer, and use media center to turn on caption will work. Has ANYONE done this? I want to hear your real world experience using slingbox or something simalar with pc transfer capability. I do NOT want a tv tuner on my laptop. period.
 
Only way to do this is to get HDTV box or a cable HDTV box with a built in CC then add slingbox to it.

Example I have a HDTV DirectTV box with a build in CC then I use a computer software DVR called SageTV and it will record with CC already display into the video to a computer mpeg file.

Then I can take it with me to anywhere on any mpeg player cuz closed caption become open caption.

But you can use slingbox if the CC is already decoded by the set-top box (DirectTV or Dish Network or cable box etc etc)

Good question is when slingbox compress video it will skip lots of picture quaitly that make CC look going too fast or missing many sentences?

I don't know cuz I have not experiement with Slingbox but i already use computer SageTV then use software ORB and watch my TV from any hotel or motel on my trip on my laptop thur Hotel or Motel Wifi

.
 
I have...

I test with EyeTV that is about same concept as Slingbox. Since it hook to my laptop and storage whatever I record it. I test it open from my iPod Touch thry wi-fi. It work well as it show CC which been already stick on the image since I use Digital Cable box that been hook to antenna only.

Yep, you can do it what TechBill told.
 
Just checked eyetv- bassically you need a tv tuner for laptop, and software app for iphone. Doesn't help me. I have blackberry and PC. I dont want to tie up my pc storage space. I prefer to have a standalone unit like tivo or slingbox.

techbill is same way- need tv tuner to record. this ties up the pc. even with sage theater, you need to ADD storage.

Right now slingbox seems to have features I need. It also has app for iphone or i touch like my son has. my wife and I have BB tour so it has app for that too. The app from slingbox shows feature you can do the same as sage tv like techbill does without PC.

I am still looking for someone with slingbox to tell me how they feel about it today.:cool2:
 
I'm tell you, it's safe to get sling, as long as you have cable box with built-in CC, it will be stick CC on display instead divide track
 
radioman said:
Just checked eyetv- bassically you need a tv tuner for laptop, and software app for iphone. Doesn't help me. I have blackberry and PC. I dont want to tie up my pc storage space. I prefer to have a standalone unit like tivo or slingbox.

techbill is same way- need tv tuner to record. this ties up the pc. even with sage theater, you need to ADD storage.

Right now slingbox seems to have features I need. It also has app for iphone or i touch like my son has. my wife and I have BB tour so it has app for that too. The app from slingbox shows feature you can do the same as sage tv like techbill does without PC.

I am still looking for someone with slingbox to tell me how they feel about it today.:cool2:
Click to expand...

What I told you in first place.

Your cable or satallite box need to support build in CC then you can probably just use Slingbox beause it would be recording video with CC burn in the video "Open Caption" on your laptop or Blackberry.

But I never tried a slingbox before so I could not tell how you good it will work because slingbox would compress the video over internet to your laptop or Blackberry and the open caption may look "clipped".

If you get slingbox and try it out please let us know how it work out for you but remember your set top box (cable box or DirectTV box or Dish Network box) must already support decode CC before send to slingbox.


.


.
 
thanks techbill- my cable box decodes the CC for me so the TV decoder needs to be turned off so I know what you mean.
 
The Sling software came out with the ability to decode captions over a year ago. Thus it's not absolutely necessary to have captions decoded before the video is sent via the Sling hardware. It *is* necessary to have closed caption data within the television program, however, and because HDMI cables don't pass through closed caption data, one has to keep that in mind. (HDMI cables only show the images of already decoded captions; they don't transmit the caption data because there's no common standard for doing that.) If you *are* using HDMI cables, then you'd be using decoded captions anyway, though.

I myself use an Insignia digital-to-analog converter box with my analog TiVo (Series 2) and I'm able to record open captioned programs and then transfer them to my PC. I like that and think it's pretty cool. The trouble with Sling is that if you're not using a DVR, you're not time-shifting the TV program; you're only place-shifting it. It sounds like that would work for you, however.

My understanding is that the Sling software itself was able to do the caption decoding, but maybe they decided to let Media Center do it.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top