Head to head: Sony LocationFree TV vs Slingbox By John Archer
Going on holiday is all well and good, but it isn't half annoying when you get to your fancy resort only to find that the only English-speaking TV channels available in your hotel are CNN and (shudder) BBC World. And this irritation doubles when you suddenly realise you've forgotten to set your PVR/digital recorder to record one of your favourite programmes. Just as well then, that it no longer needs to be this way. For technology is now in place that allows you to not only watch your own home's TV channels no matter where in the world you might be, but also interact with your own AV equipment to the extent of watching recorded programmes, changing channels and setting new recordings! All you need for this seeming miracle to occur is a broadband connection in your hotel, a laptop or PSP, and one of the two 'video shifting' devices we're about to get stuck into below… Overview Model: Sony Location Free LF-PK1 Price comparison: Sony LocationFree TV LF-PK1 More info: Sony Size: 183(h) x 60(w) x 130(d)mm Video rate settings: 5 manually selectable presets, one automatic Built-in tuner: No PSP compatible: Yes Connections: Two composite video inputs, two sets of stereo audio input, IR repeater jack, LAN jack Sony LocationFree TV LF-PK1 Capabilities The LF-PK1 is the base station for Sony's LocationFree TV service - and provided you've got broadband and a laptop or PSP, it's all you need to make your globetrotting TV dreams come true. Design The PK1 box looks uninspiring. It feels overtly plasticky and lightweight, and shows all the design prowess of a breeze block. Hardly the sort of glamorous setting you might expect for such a cutting edge gizmo - especially one costing £230. Connections The PK1's connections are decent enough, and actually provide a concise insight into how this whole 'your video anywhere' business works. Two composite video inputs with attendant stereo audio inputs are provided for your source gear - so you could, say, have a Sky, Freeview or cable receiver piped into one and a DVD player running into the other. Then there's a LAN connection, allowing the box to send video from the attached AV sources down the internet to your laptop/PSP. It's also through this LAN, of course, that the base station receives remote instructions from you. The missing link in this system is solved by the final connection: a socket for an included remote control 'sender'. The box converts the instructions you send from your laptop or PSP into IR form, and then uses an infrared 'blast' from the remote control sender to manipulate your gear in the desired way. It's worth noting before we move on that the base station doesn't support wireless connection with your broadband system - which makes Sony seem a bit stingy for not including any LAN cabling with the system. Boo. Operating system How hard the PK1 is to set up depends largely on whether you've got a Universal Plug and Play internet router. If you do, you pretty much just have to hardwire the PK1 into the router, install the provided software on your laptop, and away you go. On the other hand, people without a UPNP router - like us - will have to brace themselves for a deeply unpleasant process of farting about with hideously complicated port forwarding techniques on their router. And the only real help Sony gives you on this is that if you don't know what you're doing, you should phone your router manufacturer. Er, cheers guys. If you're intending to use the PK1 with a PSP, you'd better also set a good hour or two aside for getting the PSP ready to join forces with the PK1. Especially if you don't happen to have a PSP new enough to already have an operating system modern enough to cope with the PK1 without the need for any updates. One other little niggle is the fact that you can only install the LocationFree software on one PC at a time. So if you want to install it on, say, a laptop at your home and a desktop PC, you'll have to cough up a deeply annoying £20 extra for another version of the software. Once you've installed the LocationFree software on your laptop/PSP, you'll also need to download the LocationFree remote control list - which we're happy to say works fine, and makes selecting the right remote for your source equipment about as easy as it could be. Performance The PK1's performance is ultimately slightly disappointing. With the 'automatic' bit-rate setting supposedly chosen by the LocationFree system to be optimal for your connection, our 1024K down/256k up connection delivered pictures quite badly affected by the sort of twitching and blocking noise normally associated with uninspiring video compression. Forcing the system to use its 'High' picture quality/bandwidth setting improves things considerably - but only at the expense (with our test connection) of occasional pauses in video transmission. Apparently you'll need a minimum of 300kbps each way to enjoy the high setting without any stutter. Sonically at least things are fine, with good levels of clarity and distortion-free detail. But one other daft annoyance is that while the PSP can show widescreen sources just fine, the laptop software doesn't have a widescreen switching mode. Duh!

Verdict Plus points Works well with the PSP, which gives the whole video shifting thing an extra level of 'cool' Minus points Flimsy, unimaginative design for the base station; it can be a royal pain in the arse to set up if you don't have a UPNP router; no widescreen switching on the PC browser; you can only use the supplied software on one PC, and getting another version costs £20; the picture quality wasn't great using the automatic setting supposedly optimised for our connection

Overview Model: Sling Media Slingbox Price comparison: Sling Media Slingbox More info: Sling Media Size: 46(h) x 269(w) x 102(d)mm Video rate settings: Almost infinitely flexible, but the automatic one works brilliantly Built-in tuner: Yes - digital and analogue PSP compatible: No Connections: Minijack input for composite video/stereo audio; S-video input; aerial input; aerial output; minijack composite video/stereo audio output; S-video output; IR blaster jack; LAN port

Sling Media Slingbox

Capabilities
Essentially the Slingbox delivers the same goods as the Sony LocationFree device ie it allows you to watch and control your AV gear from anywhere in the world. There are a couple of key differences, though. First, the Slingbox has digital and analogue tuners built in, so you don't need to add an external video source. Second, it's designed for laptops, smartphones and PDAs, but not the PSP.

Design
The Slingbox beats the Sony into a cocked hat in this department. Its elongated, crenellated design looks like a delightful chunk of the world's biggest Dairy Milk bar; the cream and grey colour scheme is delightful, and the cool Sling logo on the front is seriously groovy.

Connections
The Slingbox's built-in digital and analogue tuners mean it provides an aerial loopthrough, so that you can plumb your aerial feed into the Slingbox, and then pass the signal out again so that your home TV can share the same single aerial connection.

The Slingbox also, impressively, provides an S-video input alongside the more expected composite input, offering a better quality option which the Sony lacks. Whether the extra quality will translate across the internet, though, remains to be seen. Available on the Slingbox's rear, meanwhile, are S-video and composite video outputs, and a jack for adding an infrared remote control extender.

Operating system
We found the Slingbox much easier to set up than the Sony. For a start the packaging includes loads more cables, including S-video and Ethernet cables. Not having to faff around getting a PSP set up saved lots of time too, but more tellingly (given that the Sony doesn't, after all, HAVE to be used with a PSP) the Slingbox was also much easier to get working with our laptop PC.

The Slingbox's onscreen interface also looks better than that of the Sony, especially when it comes to the presentation of the 'virtual' remote controls for your AV gear. Particularly appreciated was how relatively easy it was to configure our non-UPNP router for the port forwarding process necessary for viewing our AV sources remotely. The ages spent on phone calls to our router manufacturer experienced with the Sony were replaced on the Slingbox with five minutes running through an onscreen guide. Excellent!

The business end of the Slingbox Performance The Slingbox scores over the Sony here, too. The system uses a high performance digital signal processor from Texas Instruments, together with Microsoft's latest Windows Media Video technologies - and these two mighty forces combine to deliver really rather excellent picture and sound quality. With pictures there's far less blocking noise and twitching in the Slingbox's 'Automatic' picture mode than we experienced using the same mode on the Sony box, although we used exactly the same router and internet connection. The Slingbox's colours seemed somehow more vivid and even the Slingbox's audio appeared to be slightly better, adding an extra dimension of richness to the simple clarity experienced with the Sony. The final big plus for the Slingbox is that its PC software provides a widescreen mode and a viewing window with much greater resizing flexibility than the Sony alternative. Verdict Plus points Elegantly designed; built-in digital tuner; S-video connection option; much easier to set up than the Sony; excellent automatic picture quality optimisation, price Minus points Doesn't work with the PSP Final verdict The first thing we have to say here is just how impressed we've been by the basic 'your TV anywhere' concept behind these two products. We used both systems during a recent trip to the IFA technology show in Berlin, and it's amazing - almost tragic, really! - how much we appreciated being able to access all of our UK TV channels and Sky+ recordings from our distant hotel room. We also got a real 'boys toys' kick out of using the Sony system with our PSP. Whenever we showed people the system working on the PSP (and believe us, we did this a lot!), we never tired of seeing the consecutive emotions of puzzlement, sudden wide-eyed realisation and then pure envy that invariably flitted across their faces. And yet for all the 'coolness' of Sony's LocationFree PSP application, the winner of our head to head is actually the Slingbox. For what it lacks in PSP compatibility (and how many of you actually own a PSP anyway?), it more than makes up for in better design, better operating system, and better performance standards. In other words, while the Sony system feels a little like a 'dry run' for a more rounded second-generation product, the Slingbox is already fully realised. And like all truly great gadgets, it's one of those things that once experienced is seriously hard to live without. AVR Glossary

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Discuss this article, 1 of 3 messages, read more: Nick Mills   Posted: 05/10/06 11:34:27 27 Really interested in the potential of the slingbox but I read in an article in the today's Guardian technology section saying it's really poor at displaying sports broadcasts. Apparently it can't process images fast enough to make football, tennis etc properly watchable. John, did you come across any problems relating to this during the review? Read more...

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