Tuyen's Blog

Posts for Tag: slingbox

Finally, a real reason to buy the iPad

via techcrunch.com

Curse you Reed Hastings. I was not planning on buying an iPad... AT ALL. Didn't see the need. Not quite a laptop, not quite as portable as the iPhone. But now Netflix had to go and ruin it for me. I will not be one of the fan boys lined up this Saturday to buy an iPad but it seems inevitable that I will buy one within the next year. Being able to watch my entire Netflix streaming library? Check. Add to that the soon to be released Slingbox app for the iPad? Check and mate. All the other junk like maps, email, web browsing, etc. are just nice add-ons to these two killer apps. You're an asshole Steve Jobs for making me buy your shit.

Slingplayer Mobile for iPhone - How f'ing cool is this? My video demo included.

So I just downloaded the Slingplayer Mobile app for the iPhone. It's pretty darn amazing. I had bought the original Slingplayer Mobile for Windows Mobile and I thought that was good. This iPhone version blows it away. Below is my quick video demo (apologies for quality - I only have the MacBook iSight camera available). There are a ton more things in the app, just didn't have the time to go through them all. I'm running this from my original Classic Slingbox (which isn't officially supported). Supposedly for the full effect, you need to buy one of their newer Slingboxes (how convenient, no?). The only drawback I can see so far is that the app was hobbled by Apple/AT&T to only run on WiFi. At least the original Slingplayer Mobile for WinMo worked no matter what connection you had. If you already own a Slingbox and either an iPhone or iPod Touch, this is probably the best app you could ever buy. Well worth the $30 price. Let's hope that AT&T gets their act together and allows the 3G connection so this app can be used to its fullest.

Who says Comcast Internet sucks?

I used to have a ton of issues with Comcast's Internet service. But over the past few months, they've slowly started to make improvements to the service. Specifically, they've really bumped up their upload speeds. I'm watching The Players Championship via my Slingbox and I'm averaging between 1000 to 1500 Kbps. This time last year, I would have topped out around 500 Kbps. Supposedly, they might be bumping up upload speeds for the standard service to about 4MB later this year. Can't wait!

Opening Day ... Giants Win!

Back when I worked in SF, I used to attend a lot of San Francisco Giants games. I worked in SOMA and used to take a few hours off to see the afternoon games or head to the park straight from work for the evening games. Then I left the working world to do the start-up thing (ie, no time and no money), the Giants started to go down hill post-Bonds, and the invention of the Slingbox have made for a confluence of excuses not to attend live games. Today's game should give a lot of Giants fans hope for this year. A ton of good, young, home grown players alongside some decent veterans might make this the best Giants team we've seen in at least 5 years. It's hard to tell from my Slingbox screenshot but that's a 100mph fastball from Brian Wilson to end the game. Not sure I get his pharaoh's end of game pose though.