Slingbox buyers beware

Update 1/30/2007 - Thanks to Todd Cochrane and Geek News Central for picking up on this story and talking about it on the podcast. Here's a link to the spot that he discusses it - LINK>>

My son just left for college in January. When DirectTV offered us $99 DVR's last year each of my kids got one. Now that he's away we started to investigate how he could record television from his college dorm room. Let me just say that neither of my kids is a TV addict. (I wish I could say the same for myself) They each watch one or two favorite shows, a movie now and then and for my son various sporting events and an occasional pay per view.

Since he just got a new laptop with Windows Media Center, the first option we investigated was purchasing a TV tuner card and using the laptop as a DVR. There are a couple of problems with that option; 1) The cards that actually work with media center are $125-$150 dollars. I tried getting a simple USB tuner that was on sale for $40 with a $20 rebate. It would work fine with it's own DVR software, (which was awful) but Media Center would not recognize it. 2) Since two people share a college dorm room, you need to start splitting cable wires, running one to the computer, and one to the TV. What a pain. 3) The recordings take up a lot of disk space, and it does tie up your laptop while recording, so you can't really do to much on it.

I had heard of the Slingbox over a year ago, and it sounded like a great techie toy, but I really couldn't see a real need for it. Suddenly the perfect reason to own a Slingbox had just presented itself. Considering that my daughter will be heading to college next year, the investment in a Slingbox now seemed to make a lot of sense.

For those of you that don't know what the Slingbox does, it's pretty simple; the box connects to the output of your DVR and also connects to your home network. You install software on your laptop, or any remote computer and using a unique ID number that is provided, you can remotely connect to your DVR from anywhere on the Internet. The local software application is customized for your specific television provider and receiver model number. It displays your remote control on the screen. Using an IR blaster whatever buttons you press on the application remote control are relayed to the Slingbox.

I convinced myself that this was the way to go and headed out to make the purchase. I picked up the Slingbox AV at Circuit City and headed home to install it. The installation was a breeze. Plug it in, connect a few video wires and a network cable, (I already had a cable run to my sons room) and presto you're up and running. I installed the software on my laptop which was on the network connected over wi-fi. It immediately found the box and initiated the setup routine. Within 15 minutes I was watching the TV on my laptop over a wi-fi connection and the quality was amazing. At least as good as what you would get recording the show locally through a TV tuner card.

So far everything was fine, but (cue ominous music) now we tried connecting to it from the college dorm 250 miles away. The video was very choppy and broken up. I checked the Slingbox site and they mention that the Slingbox needs at least 256 Kbps upload speeds on the network that it is sending from. I didn't think that would be the problem. My provider is Cablevision and they advertise 2 Mbps upload speeds. So I head on over to Speakeasy to run some network speed tests and to my amazement, I'm getting 10+ Mbps download but only 128 Kbps upload speeds.

I will spare you the details of the two calls that I made and the 2+ hours I spent on the phone with Cablevision support. They tried to blame everything else but themselves. It was my router, my computer memory, my firewall software, my cable wire..... One by one we tested and eliminated each of them as a possibility. Finally the second technician told me to bring my modem in to the service center and get a new one. Sure enough when I got home and plugged it in, the upload speeds jumped to 500 Kbps. My son connected again and said the picture was great and the box worked like a charm. The speed was still nowhere near what I would want it to be since 2 Mbps is the advertised speed, but I was happy with 500 Kbps since it was more than the Slingbox needed to operate.

If that were the end of the story, life would be grand, but as you probably have already guessed there's more to it. Today I get a call from Cablevision wanting to talk about my speed issues. My call was referred to them by one of the two technicians that I had spoken to. The technician tells me that there is a bandwidth throttle turned on for my account. He explains to me that anytime Cablevision sees continuous upload streams, depending on the current network usage they will turn a bandwidth throttle on to limit your upload speed. After the throttle was turned of I now had 1.5 Mbps upload speeds. The technician warns me that it may be turned on again if a continuous upload is identified.

I explained that I had installed a Slingbox device for my son to watch his DVR, and that when he is viewing TV there would be a continuous upload stream of between 256-300 Kbps. It was then that he began talking to me as if he were scolding a young child. Spouting out various phrases like:

• Our network and service is built to supply bandwidth to many customers and can not support continuous streams
• We only promise 2 Mbps as a burst speed not continuous
• In order to provide the best service for all we need to limit people using too many resources

I pointed out that based on this information I had just waisted $170 on a Slingbox that I would never be able to use. If bandwidth limits were imposed like this by every ISP, then the Slingbox is really a useless device that no one will ever be able to access. His response: "It's not our obligation to support any new invention or device that becomes available. Our goal is to provide the best service to all of our customers". I asked if all of this was documented in the terms of service. He said it was, but I find it to be rather vague. Of course they do say you can not run a server on their network, so I guess any ISP could define a Slingbox as a video server and tell you that you are breaking the terms of service.

He was not able to answer any of the following questions:

• Will a stream of 256 Kbps impose the limit?
• How long do you have to run a continuous upload stream before a limit is applied to your account?
• Why can't the limit be removed automatically once the upload stream stops.?

I guess he couldn't answer these because there is no answer. The Terms of Service have this unquantifiable statement under the section Examples of system or network security violations : Excessive use of bandwidth, that in Cablevision's sole opinion, goes above normal usage or goes beyond the limit allocated to the user.

Cablevisions sole opinion? What does that mean? If I'm uploading a 1GB file to a friends FTP server, is that a violation? If I'm uploading multiple large video files to You Tube? If my son watches an episode of "24" on the Slingbox and I send out 256 Kbps for 1 hour? Please quantify this for me.

I know that in no way shape of form is Slingbox to blame for this, but I definitely think they and every other manufacturer working on Video or file sharing applications should be concerned. ISP invoking these limits could put them out of business.

The epilogue of the story... I'm one of the lucky ones who has Verizon FIOS in my area and I've already started the process of switching over.... I better read the fine print on their Terms of Service.