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Sling Media’s Slingbox, Sony’s Location free and now Pinnacle’s PCTV To Go Wireless hook up to your set-top box (be it Sky+, Freeview, cable or even a DVD player) and stream the video around your local network and via your broadband connection to any internet-connected PC.
Once set up, you control your TV just as if you were at home. An IR blaster cable is included, which enables the PCTV To Go Wireless to beam infra-red instructions to the box to change channels and so on.
Sony lost out to Sling Media in a number of key categories – most notably by charging for every installation of the remote viewing software. Thankfully, Pinnacle has taken a leaf out of Sling Media’s book and won’t fleece you for multiple installations.
Installation isn’t particularly tricky and features a neat way of hooking up to your Wifi network. When installing most wireless devices, you need to hook them up to your router via a wired Ethernet connection in order to configure the wireless settings for your network. Pinnacle gets round this by creating its own temporary wireless network using the PCTV To Go Wireless as an access point – you’re then instructed to log on to this network and enter your wireless settings.
The device then dumps its temporary wireless network and hops onto your local one without an Ethernet cable in sight. If your wireless network isn’t particularly strong, an Ethernet socket is also provided.
Mpeg2 is used to stream video around your Lan, and quality is exceptional – even when viewed full-screen. However, we soon ran into a problem when attempting to connect via the internet.
Although the manual says you need only install the 6MB Player software on remote PCs, it soon became clear that you actually have to run the entire setup process. Pinnacle tells us this is a known problem and that an update to make the Player software work on its own is imminent. More importantly, it will also be available to download online – so if you’re in an internet cafe in Hong Kong, for example, you’ll be able to hook up to your home TV even if you don’t have the installation CD handy.
When viewing over the internet, Mpeg4 streaming is used. Through a standard ADSL connection in our labs, quality was good but the picture obviously suffered from greater compression noise than with Mpeg2.
Full-screen viewing isn’t recommended, but keep the window to a sensible size and you’ll get a decent picture. What the Player software couldn’t do was break through our corporate firewall – something the Slingbox managed.
Time-shifting is available if viewing within your Lan, but you lose this feature when accessing the device over the internet.
Unlike the Slingbox, PCTV To Go Wireless doesn’t feature a built-in TV tuner. The advantage of a digital tuner is that it enables you to watch any Freeview channel without having to change channels on your digibox and annoy whoever might be watching TV at home. Furthermore, Pinnacle’s device is currently Windows-only, although there are plans to make it available on more platforms.
As long as Pinnacle sorts out the Player software update, PCTV To Go Wireless will be a decent alternative to the Slingbox. You can pick up a standard non-wireless version for £149, which the same price as the Slingbox. Bargain hunters will find it even cheaper online – at the time of writing Dabs.com had the wireless version on sale for £127.80.
See also:
An easy way to stream video, music and pictures around your home 10 Apr 2007
Another media streaming device that fails to up the ante 15 Feb 2007
Happauge attempts to jump on the Slinbox and LocationFree bandwagon 02 Oct 2006All WirelessTags: TV Streaming
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