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Originally Posted by gullzway
Orb is free software to stream your Home TV channels and movies to your PPC(requires a PC and TV tuner (for live tv) connected to your Sat or cable box at your home.) Works great with XP but still can not get it to stream Live TV with Vista( Vista MCE takes over the TV tuner.)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jened
slingbox rocks - even if you can't find it on sale and even paying $30 for their player
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Its important to note a couple real drawbacks to both these services...
1) You are watching the quality of your source input. If your source is Analog your picture will be marginal, if you have Digital services or HD it will be better (however what you see on your device will not be HD).
2) You are mirroring your source signal. Meaning you are forced to watch whatever is being watched on the source box (or dedicate a receiver just for this use). just like the old days of having 2 tvs split off one reciever, they both show whatever the 1 reciever is tuned to.
3) You are killing your home upload bandwidth. Everything which is being sent to your phone is being streamed from your home (or source) internet connection. If your like most people and have a cable or DSL connection your upload bandwidth is less than 1mb (most cases 386-512kbps) which is very slow.
EDIT - As pointed out by DigiBlur in another thread when using any "HomePlug" or AC Powerline device you essentially sacrifice security. The AC power grid was never designed with security in mind meaning its wide open. Your signal goes as far as the wires allow it. Even building to building. The minute you put any AC version of these on the network you effectively open your network up to ANYONE with an AC plug in any nearby building which happens to be on the power feed. Due to how AC works nearby buildings share a common power feed from a local substation. Thats a whole heck of a lot of unrestricted access
