Place shifting television
First there was time shifting for TV using DVRs. Now there’s place shifting. Place shifting lets you watch TV shows you receive at home in other locations and on devices other than TV sets.
The Slingbox, for example, is a $250 piece of hardware that enables you to watch your TV programming from wherever you are by turning an Internet-connected PC into your personal TV. Walter S. Mossberg gives it a thumbs up:
I have been testing the Slingbox at home, in my office and on the road. In my tests, it worked exactly as advertised. At my office, about a dozen miles from home, I watched recorded episodes of “Charlie Rose” and “Desperate Housewives.” At an airport, I watched CNBC live on my laptop via a public Wi-Fi connection. And in a Boston hotel room, about 450 miles from home, I watched a live Washington Nationals baseball game unavailable in Red Sox country.
Slingbox has been demonstrated running on PDAs and cellphones too, but software for those devices isn’t ready yet. The Mac version is “in the works.”
