Categories: General Sling Related Discussion
I recently started watching Heroes using Netflix's Watch Now feature and I'm completely blown away by the picture quality. On my 1440x900 TFT laptop, its as good as a DVD. How is that possible?? This video is being streamed in real-time over the internet. Granted I have a 20MBs FIOS downstream connection, but still its impressive. The picture quality is orders of magnitude better than the Sling video I get over my WLAN! In case anyone's wondering is a Slingbox Pro connected via composite cables to the FIOS STB. The WLAN is running in 11g 54MBs mode. When I expand it to full screen its definitely much more pixelated than the Netflix stream. I guess its because the resolution is limited to 640x200 or something like that. I believe that both Netflix and Sling use the WMV9 codec. I can't imagine how good the Netflix stream will look when they start using Silverlight. Perhaps Sling will take some steps to scale up the resolution or use a new codec. Given how much more available bandwidth there is in a LAN I would've expected the Sling video to look better than the Netflix one coming over the WAN.
This comes up once in a while.. The stuff on Netflix is already encoded sitting on a drive somewhere vs being encoded on the fly. I'm sure it's encoded at a higher resolution and they've got a huge pipe going out..
Slinging Tivo Series 2, Tivo HD, and TW cable from a Pro. Slinging Tivo HD from a Solo, Slinging Humax DRT800, and TW cable from a Classic to Sprint Mogul, AT&T SX66, N62, 8525, and Dell Inspiron 8600 with Sprint EVDO over Windstream DSL.
You want good streaming quality - Buy a Vudu. You should see how good their stuff is on HD. It blows Netflix away totally.
As for why services like this are so much better than a Slingbox - For one the encoding is not done on the fly as Ryan stated. Plus a Slingbox costs what, $200. The equipment used to do the encoding on movies is thousands of dollars.
Slinging with a Slingbox Pro, a Slingbox Solo and a Slingbox Classic. 3 Replay TV units, a Roku HD1000 Photobridge and a Roku M2000 Soundbridge, an AppleTV, a Vudu, and digital cable. www.na9d.net
Are there alternatives out there, that would yield a better picture quality (at a much higher price I would assume)?
What for remote viewing? Sure, but your biggest limitation is going to be your upload speed. But probably the single biggest difficulty is that with a product like a Vudu or Netflix downloads, the companies provide the data files already encoded from a high quality source. With a Slingbox, you are dealing with encoding on the fly (since it is TV) from a less than optimal source (typically 480i inputs).
Feel free to go buy a server with something like QuckTime broadcaster and provide your own streaming server...
Slinging with a Slingbox Pro, a Slingbox Solo and a Slingbox Classic. 3 Replay TV units, a Roku HD1000 Photobridge and a Roku M2000 Soundbridge, an AppleTV, a Vudu, and digital cable. www.na9d.net
Hi NA9D
You are starting to see that ISP's are raising the upload speeds. I can see that FIOS in the US are now offering great upload speeds, and we can always hope that the upload speed will start be a selling point.
But it would be nice if you could get hold of a H.264 realtime incoding PCI card (with HDMI og SDI input).
best regards
I'm not sure that network bandwidth is the primary bottleneck. I used to have Comcast and I believe their upload speeds were capped at 768kbps. I currently have FIOS with 5Mbps upload speeds and frankly I can't see any difference. This wasn't a scientific test however since I was watching the remote stream from different locations in Europe and Asia.
To the point though, I can't even see the difference on the LAN running at 54Mbs speeds compared to the remote WAN scenarios.
Me too, I wonder for a long time why a remote slingstream of 800 kbps looks worse as a 500 kbps stream from the internet. I know not much about encoding, but I know that my 30 USD TV card I bought in Bangkok has no problem encoding in DVD quality on the fly... The chips of (especially the second generation slingboxes) are able to stream in real time HDTV over the LAN, so why can they not encode in a better quality for low bitrate streams for the internet ?
OK guys - first of all most of your internet streams are in much lower resolution and displayed in a smaller window. Second, much of that stuff is encoded BEFOREHAND and not on the fly.
If you want to see the true quality of what internet streams really look like, expand something to full screen. Try something like NASA TV which gives a live feed and see the quality.
Slinging with a Slingbox Pro, a Slingbox Solo and a Slingbox Classic. 3 Replay TV units, a Roku HD1000 Photobridge and a Roku M2000 Soundbridge, an AppleTV, a Vudu, and digital cable. www.na9d.net
I'm not trying to "bad mouth" the Slingbox. It does the job ok (but not great on WAN, in my opinion), and it's cheap. Hard to beat at that price.
But I was just wondering if there is alternatives out there, that would yield a better result (better picture quality).
best regards
Not unless you want to spend big dollars. The Slingbox and all its competitors are going to give roughly the same image quality over the WAN. Again, the BIGGEST reason is your upload speed from your location. If you have the upload bandwidth AND the download bandwidth, then feel free to mess with the settings to maximize your image. Odds are you don't have enough of both...
Slinging with a Slingbox Pro, a Slingbox Solo and a Slingbox Classic. 3 Replay TV units, a Roku HD1000 Photobridge and a Roku M2000 Soundbridge, an AppleTV, a Vudu, and digital cable. www.na9d.net
I have plenty of download speed (I have a 20Mbit/2Mbit ADSL2 connection). The big problem is, as you mention, the upload speed where the Slingbox is located. Right now I can get arround 1200-1300 kbps, wich gives an ok picture, but is's not "like tv" quality.
I just hope someone will come along with a product that will use better hardware than the Slingbox, so the use of whatever bandwith you have, will be better than now.
Even at 2 or 3 years old, this technology is still pretty young. There's no doubt in my mind that it will get better and better. Maybe not at as soon as we want but what can you do..
Some of it is dependant on ISPs. I don't know the #s but I'd think it's tough for a company to justify spending alot of money on new development when 1 out of 100 people have the bandwidth to use it.
Slinging Tivo Series 2, Tivo HD, and TW cable from a Pro. Slinging Tivo HD from a Solo, Slinging Humax DRT800, and TW cable from a Classic to Sprint Mogul, AT&T SX66, N62, 8525, and Dell Inspiron 8600 with Sprint EVDO over Windstream DSL.
NA9D said: Feel free to go buy a server with something like QuckTime broadcaster and provide your own streaming server...
It can be done quite cheap in 10 minutes, all you need is a PC with (eventually) a TV card if you plan to stream TV, and a free program like VLC or Quick Time Broadcaster (never tried this one). With this program, you can stream everything to everywhere and have full control over the stream (bitrate, codec's, encapsulation,...). The quality is superior to the slingstream. The only reason I can think why the Slingbox has such a poor performance in remote streaming, is the fact that the devellopers wanted to bring something on the market which works with an upstream of only 254 kbps. I suppose that made sense at the time the first Slingbox was develloped, but not anymore in 2008 
Of course, the BIG problem with this set up is that you need a computer running at home all the time, which is not evident if you live 10.000 kms away from home, so for me a slingbox is a much more practical sollution. But if you every now and then want to see soccer at work, this is an elegant sollution. I use this system to stream over the LAN as I don't have a slingbox where I live.
And the cost of dedicating a computer to this task is far greater than the cost of a Slingbox. And the Slingbox has way less processor capability than your computer. Plus you can control your devices with the Slingbox - not so easy with the computer. And the upstream bandwidth is not limited to anything like 256 kbps - I don't know where you got that. I run mine at 500 to 600 kbps all the time and higher. And on the LAN, I stream regularly at 5 Mb/s to 6 Mb/s.
Slinging with a Slingbox Pro, a Slingbox Solo and a Slingbox Classic. 3 Replay TV units, a Roku HD1000 Photobridge and a Roku M2000 Soundbridge, an AppleTV, a Vudu, and digital cable. www.na9d.net
NA9D said: And the upstream bandwidth is not limited to anything like 256 kbps - I don't know where you got that. I run mine at 500 to 600 kbps all the time and higher. And on the LAN, I stream regularly at 5 Mb/s to 6 Mb/s.
I didn't say the upstream is limited to 256 kbps. The 256 is the upload speed Slingmedia promotes as good enough for remote streaming - and we both know that with 256 kbps you have a terrible quality on full screen (I use the Slingstream on my TV, after all that's what it's made for ???)
You say that you stream over the LAN at 6Mb/s, so in fact you say that the TI dsp has the capability to deliver a decent quality stream (by the way, my computer has no dsp) So the 10 million dollar question remains : why is the slingbox not using it for remote streaming ?
My point is that a couple of years ago it was probably a good idea to use a not so good codec because most people indeed had an upload of 256 kbps. I now have 1 Mb, which is the standard in the Netherlands, and soon it will be 30 Mb (fiber). So I would really appreciate that Slingmedia releases software which enables me to use the real power of the Slingbox - the possibility to send the stream you now have over the LAN to the WAN would be a good beginning 
What you say about the computer is all true of course (except the controlling, if you use a DVB card for instance, you can control it with "remote desktop"), and as I said, me too uses a Slingbox because it's so user friendly. All I wanted to show is, that it IS possible to have a better quality using the same bitrate.
Sinha,
Good post and your correct.
The added capabilites you stated are needed and should be addressed.
Hope they are looking at it.
FWIU, the new Solo's use a TI chipset. As for the WMV9 codec, it's really pretty similar to MP4/H.264. I wish they'd have used an open standard like H.264 instead of a Microsoft based codec, but such is life.
As for your speed, there is indeed a way to increase your speed over your WAN connection to similar quality on LAN if you have the bandwidth. You have to go in and manually set your SlingStream parameters. People are doing it and if you search you should be able to find some posts on it.
Slinging with a Slingbox Pro, a Slingbox Solo and a Slingbox Classic. 3 Replay TV units, a Roku HD1000 Photobridge and a Roku M2000 Soundbridge, an AppleTV, a Vudu, and digital cable. www.na9d.net
I googled a bit around about this topic, and found on another message board a reply written by someone from Slingmedia, just after the release of the original Slingbox.
" Good answers Jeff. You are totally right.
Hey Drew: regarding your question about streaming on a LAN...we have first focused on making sure video streaming works great on ANY in-home wireless networking including 802.11b (of course we stream outside the home as well). As you know, that goes against convential wisdom...you shouldn't be able to stream reliably (e.g. smooth stream without rebuffering) on 802.11b...using SlingStream optimization technology, the video stream coming off of a Slingbox will dynamic adjust it's parameters in real time to stay within the bandwidth available...that means a smooth video stream to the consumer.
Currently, with the first version of software (firmware on the slingbox and SlingPlayer on your PC), you will likely see a maximum of a 1Mbps stream (even if you have a hardwired ethernet connection in your home). We are working on improving the video quality across the board (all bit rates), but one area we are prioritizing is streaming at even higher bit rates if you have the bandwidth available....obviously, higher bit rates means better quality.
Since the Slingbox is built on a DSP, everything (including our audio/video encoder) is developed in software. That way, we can easily update the firmware with new and improved codecs/functionality over time...there is no such thing as full-blown future proofing, but this about as close as it gets to that holy grail. In fact, if you end up buying a Slingbox in the coming weeks, you will see that there is already a new version of software available for dowload. We will continue to make the product better and better...feedback from you guys will be great as it will help us prioritize which things to tackle first."
In other words, with adapted firmware, you can let the slinbox do everything you want, including using another codec. Maybe Slingmedia has a surprise for us with the release of Slingplayer 2 ???
@ NA9D : I tried everything with the Slingstream parameters, but I had to conclude that the Slingstream is the best sollution with my 1Mb upload. Maybe it will work with the real high uploads, but not in my case.
And now I'm going to humiliate myself in front of this board with this stupid question : does anyone knows for sure if the Classic supports 640 x 480 resolution ? I thought it did, but if I try, the result doesn't look different as 320 x 240.
So I recorded my stream with at large recorder, and yes, what was supposed to be 640x480, was 320x240.
BUT, when I let At Large recorder record in 640x240, it IS 640x240 ! Idem for 320x 480... So why not 640 x 480 ?
Anyone has an idea ?
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