Customer Ratings & Reviews

returned because i felt product was inferior! not happy

It was difficult to set up and install, then really didn't like it any way

Tried this for a few weeks. Was able to use 40% of the time, never HD quality even when auto was selected.

The hdmi doesnt work.. Cable company only has hdmi out. Content is hdcp protected so won't work. Sling box says to use composite to fix problem... 2 things ... 1 most new cable boxes only have hdmi... 2 why would i pay extra for the hdmi model if told to use composite... Oh well

I have owned an original Slingbox, an AV, and PRO, and a PRO-HD. Wow... this one is the best. Let me start by saying that the picture quality is essentially perfect. Its full HD, there is no motion blur, it looks great. I was stuck at the airport on Sunday. Lucky for me, I had my phone and watched Red Zone the whole time I was waiting. Sling should pay me. I sold about 8 boxes while waiting for that flight. Setting up this box was super easy. I did it in about 10 minutes. Not missing my home TV where ever I am... thank you Slingbox Reading a lot of the reviews on here and on Amazon, people are complain about the HDMI port. I am trying to figure out why they are rating the product so poorly. The cable and sat companies encrypt the HDMI signals... how is this Sling's fault? Use component cables guys! I have and still do. I have an HDMI security camera hooked up to my HDMI. 5/5 Stars. Even if people don't like the HDMI... WiFi, on screen set up, and SlingProjector make this box worth $120 more than the 350. Thank you for making an awesome product Sling (if you ever see this review) you have a fan for life!

advertising says it works, it does not say what you have to go thru to get it working and keep it working. Not worth the aggrevation and money, nor the time and phone calls and get different answers and solutions from every one i spoke to

My goal was to totally separate myself from and cable or satellite provider and slingbox is great for guys on the go because they can get their cable anywhere BUT nor for us for are striving to cut the cable

Purchased two different Sling Media devices. Both were terrible and I returned both of them. No customer service support. Device kept buffering and locking up. Don't waste your money.

This was the biggest waste of money in a long time, Their is No point to Have HDMI on the box because u cant use it, The stream it puts out is worst than a VCR

A totally awesome product. The NY Rangers made it to the Stanly Cup Finals and I had an overseas trip coming up. I could not miss my favorite team so I got sling box. I set the whole thing up in 10 minutes without a glitch. I downloaded apps for my iPhone and iPad and found their site on line so could watch on my PC. All was easy and fast. The apps had to be purchased, PC access is free. That was it. I tested it last night from Uk. I watched game one from my hotel with full access to all my DIRECTV programming. Perfect! I was a little concerned at weak wifi in basement where I set this up. Even so, no glitches. Bottom line it is a great product, is easy to use and is very easy to set up. Five stars for sure.

Don't use HDMI cables as the service providers will block video during prime time. Will not stay connected to wireless router.

We bought the Sling box to watch TV at anchor on our boat. A full marine Dish or Direct TV setup starts at $3K, and another subscription to manage and pay for. We're already paying $300/mo for Fios at home. Solution is the Slingbox with 50MB up and down speed at home, ATT hot spot with 10 MB up and down on the boat, iPhone 6 with Slingplayer and a $50 Apple to HDMI adaptor. The picture quality is slightly lower than than home reception due to compression, but still very acceptable, and I am in the video business. We now have all channels and full access to DVR at home. The only down side is that it does chew up the data on your hotspot data plan, but it's still cheaper than the Dish or Direct subscription, and there's no contract. The Sling Player for Apple shows no ads, buffers only occasionally, and unlike signal loss with over the air, starts up where it left off when done buffering, so you don't miss any lines of dialog or the big catch.

It's amazing how easy it was to setup. I did not have any issues with setup at all. The streaming is fast and the picture quality is very clear. Now I can watch my TV anywhere. I am happy with SlingTV so far. :)

I'm a long time slingbox user. I currently keep a pro-hd in Japan, and watch in US on either my slingcatcher or the web slingplayer. I'm really excited about a new product from slingmedia, but I can see the placeshifting community will have some time to wait until some of the bugs are worked out. Here's what I've noticed so far: 1. Utility of HDMI feature: This is probably the #1 concern. All the documentation cautions you to use component as a backup because HDCP content will not be allowed on the box. I don't completely fault slingbox for this implementation. I pretty much expected it. It's not a technical challenge as much as it is a legal one. I suspect this is the reason an HDMI product from ANY company has taken so long. That being said, I tested it with most of the channels I get thru my "Extended Digital Cable" package thru Comcast. I received all channels so far(about 70 channels) directly from the HDMI of the Motorola cable set-top box. I can't comment on premium channels because I don't have them. There do seem to be some handshaking issues when I'll get a blank screen to start, fiddle with some inputs, and it will work. I'm not entirely sure about what the specific process is that gets it working, but once it works, it is nice. If I figure it out, I will post it. Component has not had any issues at all (again, as expected). On both HDMI and component, I must say that the picture quality is almost indistinguishable. Continuing on the HDMI. There are no products that I'm aware of that remove the HDCP and go from HDMI to HDMI. (You can go HDMI to component or to DVI) with some dongles but HDMI to HDMI is basically non-existant. Correct me if you know otherwise. Other theories I have that remain to be tested, if a the sourse signal is split between the slingbox 500 and a HDCP-compliant device, it is possible that the one HDCP-compliant device will provide the handshaking that allows the signal to be passed to both signal splits. Again, I'm new to this, so feel free to jump in and set me straight. 2. Slingplayer for Connected Devices: This is the feature that allows you to view your Slingbox stream on your home theater(without this, you only have the PC as an option). Surprisingly this segment has very few supported platforms including the SlingCatcher(now discontinued), BoxeeBox(recently discontinued), Western Digital TV HD Media Player, and the Logitech revue. Of these platforms the SlingCatcher is considered to be the best and most reliable. However, the new 350/500 does not work with SlingCatcher(confirmed by SlingMedia) and possibly not with the other slingplayer platforms listed above(unconfirmed, as there have been reports of it working for some and not for others). This could be because slingbox no longer uses port 5001 for internet traffic, but uses 5201 instead(not changeable, see network bullet below). In the SlingCatcher, my Slingbox500 appears in the directory of available devices, but it requests a password to access it. Since there is no manual setup with the Slingbox500(see above) there is no place to assign a password. Therefore you cannot gain access. A slingbox technician told me there are no plans to support it. This immediately places a serious cap the utility of the Slingbox500 for me and many others I'm sure. In fact before I knew this, I was ready to give up to 4 stars. With the slingbox500, slingmedia turns it's back on the slingcatcher user base which is arguably their most loyal customer base. 3. Network settings: you can use either hard-wire ethernet or wireless. The setup for both was easy to do, but lacks transparency in what it's doing. What really disappointed me about the setup is that I can't figure out how to manually configure the IP address and the port on either the wireless or ethernet connections. It appropriately picked up IP addresses from my DHCP server, but didn't let me assign one manually. I can think of a work around by reserving an IP address for the MAC address on my router, but that shouldn't be the way to do this. Without configuration ability it seems that the port will be locked on 5201. That could be a problem for people who have it blocked for whatever reason. I really think Slingmedia needs to make this configurable like before. 4. There is a bug with detecting valid email addresses of slingbox accounts. I tried logging into my long-held slingbox account thru the new IR remote setup interface. For some reason, it kept saying that my email address was invalid. I think it has something to do with a syntax checking routine which has some poor rules programmed. The acct it was refusing was in the format [email protected]. I'm not sure what the issue was(maybe .edu is bad?) but it accepted my yahoo acct. Slingbox confirmed to me that it is a bug and they are working on a new update that will fix it. 5. Basically inconsequential observations: the new power supply is 12V. (The previous plug was 5V). I know there were alot of problems with the previous supplies, so I don't know if this is better, but it's unfortunate that they aren't compatible with the older models. (Previously the slingbox pro-hd and slingcatcher used the same plug). Also, it's been pointed out that there is no longer a coaxial tuner on-board but as far as I understood this would prove to be useless now that all tuners must be digital. I don't miss it at all, I don't need another tuner. 6. Controlling your devices: It seems all the previous device remotes(PL binaries) that have been amassed over the years are still available(many thanks to the user community who spearheaded this). I use a somewhat obscure tuner/dvr in japan that was added sometime last year, and it's still available. Unfortunately the capability to "teach" new controls is missing in action. The website that allowed this with the Pro-HD was taken down several months ago. There has been no word if the site will be revived or if there is even a physical IR eye on the 350/500 to capture signals. Nor does there seem to be anyway to upload NEW PL binaries. This leaves a big question as to how NEW device codes will be uploaded to the new box. Don't count on Slingbox staying on top of this, as they have been notoriously slow for adding new devices. Without the generous user community creating these on request from other users online, many of the existing codes would not be available. 7. A couple of nice things: it looks like the built-in IR blaster(built into the unit itself) is pretty strong. My cable set-top box didn't need any specific pointing or angling to see the signal. Although there is an external blaster included in the box, you probably won't need it. This makes for an easier and cleaner installation. Also, the box doesn't seem to get very hot as compared w/ previous models. Overall, I think this product can only be considered a minor enhancement to the Pro-HD in terms of Wifi-access and possibly HDMI (which seems dependent on your channels and source hardware). In terms of accessibility it is a major stepback due to lack of support for SlingCatcher, SlingPlayer for PC, and now one less supported media player(recently discontinued boxeebox). I think the web-based setup, network and email problems I pointed out could easily be fixed with a firmware update. Overall, I am very disappointed in this product. Until these items are addressed, I find it difficult to give more than 2 stars for now. I would like to give more, but not in it's current state. I will update my review as the situation changes. In the meantime, my trusty Pro-HD will continue to be my main streaming device.

Sounded so good but did not meet what I wanted to do.

This is a great product. I have been using slingbox for a number of years. I caution you before reading the negative reviews as they All seem to be operator error. Many also complain about streaming quality. This ALL depends on what Upload speed you are buying from your ISP as well as the internet connection your are connecting from . If your on a cheap DSL connection with 1-3 Mb upload speed or have 1 bar of reception/slow hotel wifi connection, this will not work as well as you would like. Setup is not hard for the average consumer. Just follow the directions provided and set up one port forwarding rule on your current router....easy as that. Remember the quality of the streaming mainly depends on your upload speed from you residence. If that is good, this device works very well. Highly Recommend

As an expat in South America being able to watch US based TV is a godsend. Thank you Slingbox you have come to my rescue. Everything works as promised and setup was very easy.

I had owned a Slingbox Pro-HD for about 6-9 months and I thought it was a great product. Although it was great, the HD quality was not stellar and the functionality at times was not perfect. I was excited when I heard Slingbox was refreshing the boxes. I picked up the 500 and could not be happier! The performance is stellar and a great improvement over the Pro-HD. The HD quality is fantastic and functionality is better. It is easier to use and set-up. I use Slingbox on my iPad with the Sling Player app and on my newly purchased Logitech Revue. I love that Slingbox worked with Logitech, Boxee & WDTV to create a better TV experience. With any of these devices Slingbox is optimized for your TV screen so it is truly like have cable or satellite again, minus any boxes or monthly fees! Great job Slingbox!

This is not intended to be a full review, but I hope you find it helpful. CNET's full review is available on their website, but let me take an excerpt from their review to address the concern about streaming video from Comcast or other provider: "In addition to the IR and streaming features the Slingbox 350 has, the $300 Slingbox 500 adds some unique new features. It's the first Slingbox to offer built-in Wi-Fi #finally!#. It's also the first to offer HDMI support #again: finally!#, albeit with the usual caveat: if the broadcaster uses the most aggressive digital "flag," that channel or program won't be streamable via HDMI. For that reason, Sling recommends still connecting the component video input as well -- a "belt and suspenders" approach, a company rep told me." So, if your concern is being blocked on streaming protected content, then simply hook up some component cables too! If you found this helpful, then please vote, thank you.

Before I talk about the slingbox.... I would like to let anyone that is thinking about buying this box to JUST BUY IT... You won't be disappointed it.... I had the older pro-HD.... This one blows it out the water... The installation is a breeze, and it guides you along the way... To by pass the HDMI filter by the networks, you need to use the component cables... You can't even tell the difference from the HDMI cable.... With all this the box uses the the wireless router at home to connect... awesome feature... I can see every channel I have at home on my android phone in HD.... Of course, you must have a good cell phone data provider... or simply use a WiFi connection... this is every sports fan dream... out with the wife shopping? load it up start watching while she shops... at a boring meeting, training, or even just to watch your local news.... must have.... great product.... great price....