The Expats Great leap forward - hopefully

[hutstar]

Available Now. Live Aussie TV, Anywhere!

SingCatcher Set Top Box

Introducing TV From OZ, a television product to bring the Aussie Expat community home live from anywhere in the world.

TV From OZ offers customers a fully managed SlingBox hosted television service from Sydney, Australia allowing you to watch live free-to-air Sydney Channels on your TV, iPhone, Blackberry anywhere in the world no computer required…..

By design, TV From OZ is customer friendly and easy to install. Simply plug in the TV From OZ provided “Sling Catcher,” TV Set-Top-Box to your internet connection, enter your e-mail address, password on your remote control and you are watching live TV from home!
Launch

Television Colo LLC, dba TV From OZ began offering hosted SlingBox / Sling Catcher service in March, 2009. The startup video co-location service is successfully maintaining a 1200 - 8000 Kbps live television streams from Sydney to home televisions with SlingCatchers in the USA and other countries via their One Gigabit connection to the Internet. More than ample for a great night’s TV at home, from home on the couch!

http://www.tvfromoz.com/

 

[Tigers of Old]

Ta for the heads up hutstar.
Basically the cost is $300 to set up and then $50 a month from what I can see.

Not too bad to get the FTA games live at home but it's a shame Foxtel is not added to the service.
I'll keep an eye on it and hopefully they include that as an option in future.

My local pub has got a Slingbox here in Bangers too which is how I see all the games(including Foxtel).
Whilst the vision isn't regular broadcast quality it's still not bad and getting better all the time. It's certainly a clever little device.

 

[ToraToraTora]

Just got off a chat with these guys and am watching a free PC demo. The quality is not awesome...kinda watchable...choppyish....will look fairly grainy on a large HD tv i think. They are adding the new TEN HD channel soon but it will not be streamed in HD. I have a pretty fast internet connection...capable of downloading at 6000kpbs or so but this stream is aroung 600kpbs max...To tell the truth Im a little disappointed in the quality...I guess in a few years or less this will get better...but its very very very tempting right now....all prices US$ of course..

 

[Singapore Tiger]

Hi All,

I have had a slingbox at my brother-in-law's place in Sydney for about 18 months and use it to watch games here in Singapore on my computer (actually I plug my computer into the TV to watch on the big screen). He has Austar so I can get both free to air and cable TV. As pointed out earlier in this thread the key factor with regard to the quality is the streaming speed. When it streams at around 600 kbps (never seen it higher than this) it is ok, but if it is around 200-300, which seems to happen regularly, then its not so flash. I tend to get some pixilation and because Aussie Rules is such a fast game this makes the quality pretty poor. Also the streaming speed will vary during the course of a transmission.

The other issue I have is we seem to be unable to get the virtual remote control to work. This creates a problem as we need to contact Sydney to change the channel, so basically outside of the AFL season I leave it on Sky Racing. During the season I watch any Tiger games on the Australia Network (they are usually on a bit of a delay but prefect picture quality) and then shuffle around with the Slingplayer for the other Tiger games.

Overall its not a bad solution and would certainly be a bit more useful if we could get the remote working. Good luck to anyone giving it a go.

Cheers,
ST.

 

[Tigers of Old]

Just got off a chat with these guys and am watching a free PC demo. The quality is not awesome...kinda watchable...choppyish....will look fairly grainy on a large HD tv i think. They are adding the new TEN HD channel soon but it will not be streamed in HD. I have a pretty fast internet connection...capable of downloading at 6000kpbs or so but this stream is aroung 600kpbs max...To tell the truth Im a little disappointed in the quality...I guess in a few years or less this will get better...but its very very very tempting right now....all prices US$ of course..

You've encouraged me to run a demo too triple tee.
It even works on Macs!

I am streaming it at about 650kpbs. The demo channel's running very smoothly without delay to either sound or picture.
Image is pixelated but as you say it will get better with every release. I am reasonably impressed.

Spoke to a sales guy too.
Disappointingly no intention to run Foxtel on it at this point(may in the future) but it's very tempting as you say and will save me money and my health at the pub. :beer

Very tempting..

The other issue I have is we seem to be unable to get the virtual remote control to work. This creates a problem as we need to contact Sydney to change the channel

This has been one of my biggest concerns about operating my own slingbox from back in Oz.

Agree that Australia Network at 100% quality is always the best option.