Unboxing the SlingCatcher with photos
October 7, 2008 | Filed under Electronics
It seems like an age since we learned about the new SlingCatcher; it was announced way back in 2007 at CES. Well it looks as though the device has finally made it in the big wide world. Here we have found some unboxing images.
Some of the images are a little grainy, but hey at least they are pictures of the SlingCatcher out in the open. The guy who managed to get his hands on one was certainly lucky, as they have not even been released yet.
He did say that the guy who sold the SlingCatcher to him in store will not be making the mistake again. I wonder if the guy who sold him the device still has his job.
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Compressed HD video is about 13 to 14 Mbps, depending on your cable / satellite provider, and OTA HD is about 19.3 Mbps. So your Internet connection won’t be able to download HD video, as most providers max out at 10 Mbps.
I tried the SlingCatcher, although on a local home network. The SlingCatcher was only connected to a 20″ non-HD TV. No frames were dropped when I streamed it over the home network. I used D-Link’s Powerline connectors to connect the SlingCatcher to my router over my home electrical network, while I had a direct connection between my SlingBox Pro HD and the router.
But the picture did look grainy at times. For instance, when watching Leno last night, Leno’s suit was pixelated beyond belief. But other parts of the set were fine, and when other things were shown in the same broadcast, everything looked great. Commercials also looked non-grainy during Leno. So basically it was only Leno’s suit that looked bad.
The overall picture is a bit softer than my cable source on the same TV, but it still looks very good when there are no artifacts introduced.
I’m not sure if I’m going to keep everything at this point. It is nice to have my satellite box accessible upstairs without running RG-6 cable throughout the house, but this isn’t a cheap setup, and I’m not sure how HD will look on a home network if I do upgrade my TV upstairs to HD.