Shameless advertising.

Ok, I have been thinking for a while. Why not make a post about something
that I know by heart, something that is technical and at the same time funny.
But what should I then write about? I toyed around with the notion of satellite
tv and similar things, but lets face it, there are a lot of sites that handles DVB-S
better then I can in a simple blog post. So, whats the next logical step?

Well, Here we are. The slingbox. In sweden it is available to Viasat Customers
and it is then called Viasat Everywhere. This was one of the things that I used
to give support for, so, I know it pretty well.
sling-500
This little silvery chocolatebar actually does the job very well. But what does it do?
Well, in laymans terms, it takes the audio and video signals from a unit, and
streams that via the web to a client that can be anywhere in the world.

Sounds easy? Well, it actually is.

slingbox-drawThis diagram shows how to connect it, but there really is
a little more then just this diagram. So, what do you need
to get this little thing to work properly. Well, I will take this
from the Viasat standpoint, because thats the one I know.

1 digital satellite receiver.
1 router
1 slingbox
1 account at an ISP that has an upload speed exceeding 256 kbit/sec

The first thing you do is hook up the input cables for audio
and video from your digital satellite receiver to the slingbox.
If you want to see what the slingbox are receiving, you also
need to take the output and connect that to your television set.

Now, you need to place the IR blasters. It’s the cable
that looks like the image to the right.IR blasters

Where to place them varies quite a lot depending
on what satellite reciever you have. On a Nokia,
you need to place it slightly to the right of the clock,
on a  Pace TDS 460 you put it just to the right of the
smart card slot. On on top of the receiver,
the other on the bottom.

Now, its time to connect the entire setup to the router.
I wont go into port forwarding here, because frankly,
there are waaay to many routers out there to list the
procedure for all of them, but if that is something that
you need help with I would advice you to go to
www.portforward.com

Why do we need port forward? Well, lets simplify it a
little. You are on a business trip, and you want to
watch some Swedish TV.
You try to connect to your slingbox, but alas, your router dont know
what you are trying to reach, and since the router itself isn’t sending
any signal that the slingplayer software can display, well, its a no go.

Also, if you have a router, you have internal IP’s and one external ip.
The internal IP is what is in your home network, for most routers
the internal ip range is 192.168.1.XXX where 1 is usually the router
itself. Your external IP can be pretty much anything that your
Internet service provider decides.

This in effect causes the router to not allow any connections to your
internal IPs before it is manually set, and that block means no TV for
you my friend. Anyhow, when you have set the port forwarding,
you are pretty much set to do the initial setup of the slingbox, wich
has to take place on the local network. You have to be connected to the
same router to be able to finish it all.

Simply start the installer, it used to be named “slingplayer setup” when I was
working with it, and the setup starts. Take your time and read the different
frames before pushing onward, because on one of the frames, you will receive
your slingbox ID. That slingbox ID is a good thing to save on a note in your
wallet, because using that, you can always access your slingbox if its on.
It works a little like a DNS name really, and that in itself is kind of impressive.

When all is completed, you can enjoy your TV from anywhere that you can get
a broadband signal. Not bad for a little plastic chocolate bar eh?