New Technology TV

There are a lot of different television technologies out there that promise greater connectivity and the option of watching television anywhere. Portable video devices which store downloaded TV shows and movies on their hard drives and allow you to watch them just about anywhere on built in color LCD screens have been around for a while now. It's also been possible to watch DVD's on laptop computers for years, and more recently it's been possible to have movies and TV shows stored on the laptops' hard drives available for viewing anywhere as well. There are even companies offering the option of streaming video onto mobile phones!
Now there's a company that's providing greater control over how people watch television than ever before by rolling many of these options into one so that just about anyone can have a wide range of choices when it comes to what they watch and where. This company is called Sling Media and they supply a device called the Slingbox Pro that promises to deliver the ultimate control over how video is viewed and used by anyone willing to integrate one into his or her home entertainment system.

The Slingbox Pro uses proprietary SlingStream technology to stream video over either the Internet or a home computer network to a wide variety of devices. The actual Slingbox Pro is connected to your home entertainment center so that it can be used to access any of the home entertainment center's components remotely using a computer or some models of mobile phones. The Slingbox Pro can be connected to up to three standard definition and one high definition home entertainment center components. These components can include Digital Video Recorders, digital cable boxes, satellite receiver boxes, DVD players, and even video surveillance cameras.

Of course in order to work, the Slingbox Pro requires a pretty fast network connection in order to stream video with any decent quality. According to the specs, the Slingbox Pro needs a cable or DSL Internet connection with a minimum upstream connection speed of two hundred and fifty six kilobytes per second. A greater speed will supposedly supply higher quality video. The good news is that the home network that the Slingbox Pro is installed in will be equally functional whether it's wireless or wired. That means that with the use of a laptop computer it's possible to access the home entertainment system devices connected to the Slingbox Pro anywhere in the home. It will even work with Windows based computers and Apple computers.

The real beauty of the Slingbox Pro is that it allows access to- and control over- home video components away from home. All you need is the proper software installed on your mobile phone or laptop computer and you can watch TV from your satellite box or cable box or watch video from your digital video recorder. You can even program your digital video recorder to record more TV shows and movies.

Of course, all of the remote options are limited to places with high speed Internet connections, but with wireless and Ethernet connections available in an ever increasing variety of places, the Slingbox Pro promises to be useful almost wherever you go.