The Slingbox is a TV streaming media device made by Sling Media that encodes local video for transmission over the Internet to a remote device (sometimes called placeshifting). It allows users to remotely view and control their cable, satellite, or digital video recorder (DVR) system at home from a remote Internet-connected PC, smartphone, or tablet as if he or she were at home.
User "chip" writes a negative "Amazon" review on the Slingbox 500 on January 7, 2017:
"I can no longer recommend that anyone spend money on their products
This is my fifth Slingbox and I've been a loyal customer for 15 years. I've promoted their products with my friends and have spent quite a bit of money on their products. Sadly, I can no longer recommend that anyone spend money on their products. Especially $300. Their support is very bad (non-existent) and they recently forced everyone to have to look at the ad's when viewing. It's simply gone so downhill over the past few years that I have to warn you to STAY AWAY from this overpriced model. It is not worth $300 and I'm worried that they seem to be asleep at the wheel and unable to support their own products. I leave this one-star review sadly, after years of loving them but the past couple of years, have been dreadful. don't do it. Or if you do, pick a cheaper model FOR SURE. I don't think they will make it thru 2017 :( (unusable without their service. Earlier models had the ability to connect directly to the device via TCP/IP but now this product can not be used without logging into their service which I sadly suspect must be draining cash and therefor) so sad. Thanks for reading."
Reviews
carsten pedersen says
"To anybody - don't buy a slingbox. It does'nt work and you can get no support. Waste of money"Tim says
"My slingbox is almost impossible to watch. It stops and restarts every second wherever I happen to be in the world. I can find no help whatsoever on the slingbox site. No email contact and the only information that keeps coming up is where to buy one. Just a complete waste of time. Been trying for 8 months now but it is always too poor to watch!"