While Slingbox technology is undoubtedly very useful and handy technology, the two avenues available for being able to utilize it basically make it pretty pointless for the majority of people.
On the one hand you can purchase your own Slingbox, connect that in your own home and stream. However, given that the vast majority of services supplied to a home user have an extremely low upstream, regardless of having a significantly fast downstream, makes it impossible to use.
Then there is the option of a hosting service whose upstream is clearly faster, making the service operational. But again, considering the significant cost involved to do so, and that is not trying to say that these companies are overcharging, obviously they have to make a profit as well as maintain the consistency of the service too, it is still far too expensive. Consider the other options.
A decent VPN for example, which has multiple offshore servers in many countries allows you to gain an IP in the vast majority of places around the globe. The major networks in the UK for example, stream their premier channels from their own websites and whilst there are a few broadcasts, such as certain shows and movies which are not available online, for the most part there is 24/7 live streaming of their service. Other than that you have free on demand players available from these networks, provided of course you have an IP located in that country which a VPN gives you, to watch as and when you want to. I am able to view pretty much all the US and UK, plus other countries TV, as and when I want to. The stream is consistant and the quality fantastic.
Another issue with live streaming of course is the problem of when 'primetime' tv is being broadcast. If you are located in Europe then perhaps primetime TV broadcasts are not too much of an issue. However, being located in a country around the other side of the globe causes problems. I for example am in China which means that primetime TV in the UK is only available to me in the early hours of the morning. You could use some media capture software to record said TV to watch at a more convenient time, but what is the point when you have aforementioned on demand services available to watch most of those shows when you want to anyway?
No disrespect to those who use these services or to those providing them. But in my opinion, and it is just my opinion, I feel that having the ability to stream everything live when you live much further away from the source you are viewing makes the service a waste of time. Perhaps if it was significantly cheaper then it may be worthwhile.
In the future that may change. There was a website which streamed all the UK freeview channels 24/7 and many people took advantage of this site from abroad by using a VPN. This site has managed to block access to those using a VPN now, something which they say is due to the legislation in the UK. So it is possible that in the future the major UK networks and indeed networks around the globe will take similar mesures to stop people using a VPN to access their services abroad, but that i not the case at the moment.
It is interesting to note however, that the site which streams all the freeview channels does allow one particular VPN service to access its streams, or so I am led to believe. Apparently this VPN services servers are located alongside the very same website hosting streams and payments for said VPN appear to be connected to the very same company so people need to decide for themselves wether the fact other VPN's are blocked really has anything to do with legislation at all. To me, if the ability to block them exists and major networks are that concerned with the availability of their broadcasts online then I am surprised that they have not done the same already.
] - provided by you ( we recommend a PVR model ) and the Slingbox solo - or we can provide these at cost.