Slingbox Pro HD:

Pro:

• Digital cable tuner: this means HD digital channels can be streamed to 1 remote viewer while I watch different channels on a tv at home.
  
• Tech Support: Very responsive and helpful tech support over chat. They can also remotely connect to control your computer and see what the problem is. They didn't always get the problem right, and tried to say I had to do something and contact them again later. But I argued each time and they helped.
• Quality: Because it's got the digital tuner, HD channels are streamed within my home network at what looks like DVD quality.
  

Cons:

• There's frequently missed frames or entire seconds of a show, so watching the news I've missed some key words and phrases, so the news story doesn't always make sense.
• Only 1 person can connect at a time, whether at home or across the great waters.
• The Program Guide doesn't work with digital cable, and the channel numbers are screwed up. On the TV I have channels like 2,3,4,9,50, etc. In slingplayer I have channels like .247, 9.1, 50.1 and 50.2. No clue what each station is unless I change channels, no clue what is on each channel. They say they're working on it. I wouldn't bet on it.
• The remote control is lousy. Because they don't utilize the information about my service, they give me a stupid remote that I can use to press channel up and down.
  
• Changing channels takes about 5 seconds.
• Slinglinks (ethernet power adapter) don't work well. I have to use an outlet on the other side of the room and lay out an extension cord to get it to work.
  

Hava Wireless HD:

Pros:

• Multiple people can watch at one time.
• You can record live tv.
  

Cons:

• Tuner is only good for analog cable, not digital, so our HD channels can't be controlled by Hava, so no HD unless you want to let Hava control your cable box, which would mean you have to watch the same thing on tv as is being broadcast over Hava
• Lousy lousy lousy tech support. No chat option, you have to call and talk to someone who speaks softly and with a very strong Indian accent. They'll say something like you need to hardwire your computer to the router instead of using wireless, and they won't help you until you do that. With a desktop on a different floor from the router this isn't going to happen. Nor was it even possibly related to the problem of Windows Media Center freezing.
• Windows Media Center freezes or says I have no tv signal.

For me slingbox wins. There's no tv guide but I can watch and control the digital cable through the slingbox. If I didn't mind having to watch the same thing on the tv as on the slingbox this wouldn't be a problem, but it's a deal breaker.

For now I'm willing to live with having no channel guide. I can watch the channels in HD, and I'll just have to type up a list of what channel is what.

In my previous post, Hava and Slingbox were tied with the following:

• nice packaging
• easy set-up instructions that don't work
• mysteriously start and stop working
  
• lousy customer service

I've got both up and running now, and I've been able to view both.

hava:

Hava is connected wirelessly to my router, and I can view the tv and control the channels on both computers (laptop and desktop both running Vista). Unfortunately, there's no channel list and no program guide.

Luckily, hava is built to work on Windows Media Center. I got this working one time, and it actually loaded a program guide so I could scroll and click and it would change the channel to whatever program I saw was on at that time.

But that was once. Since then, neither computer's Windows Media Center (WMC) can view it. WMC just freezes on the laptop, and says there's no tv tuner on the desktop. So for now, I can't tell what channel is what or what is on each station without changing to every channel.

Summary: works in hava player but not windows media center, so there's no program guide or channel identification (where's the discovery channel - do I really have to flip through 100 channels to find it?)

slingbox:

I had the slingbox working when I had an ethernet cable stretched down the stairs and around the corner to the router. Now I'm uisng the slinglinks with no luck. Slinklinks are ethernet power adapters - one plugs into the router, the other into the slingbox, and they send the internet signal over the power line.

The "power," "link," and "network" lights were all lit on both slinglinks, but there was no connection. I tried a different outlet, then a third. I know it's working because:

1. I can connect to the internet with my laptop through the slinglink
2. I can connect to the internet with hava through the slinglink
3. The slingbox connects when I open the slingplayer on windows.
   

After it connects, however, no channel list is loaded into the program guide, and the screen is blank except for the message: "Weak or no video signal detected"

Summary: Can work, I've seen it work, but not working now.

Slingbox and Hava both connect to your television service and your internet so you can watch your tv service on a computer at home or around the world.

There was very little information online comparing the two - the last comparative review I read was from over 2 years ago.

So I ordered both so I could compare them.

They were both delivered yesterday and they have the following in common:

• nice packaging
• easy set-up instructions that don't work
• mysteriously start and stop working
  
• lousy customer service

I'm going to try to get them working again today, I'll let you know what I find out.

From the official voter guide in favor of raising property taxes again for more and more money for the Jefferson County, Colorado schools:

This tax increase furthers the goals of our teacher unions. It is consistent with a presidential candidate's promise for change, and hope for progress toward the Socialist utopia through education.

Really?

Please don't vote for 3-A.

It's soooo much fun to blame the President for mortgage companies failing. Yippee!

But what really caused this mess?

People got scared because the Indymac bank failed, so lots of people stated taking their money from their banks. The bank failures go back to Indymac. What caused Indymac to fail?

Democrat Senator Charles (Chuck) Schumer.





In a public letter to the FDIC, for everyone to read, he said that Indymac was about to fail. It wasn't. But his public letter scared Indymac customers and investors. There was a run on the bank. Everywone withdrew their money so fast, the value of the bank plummeted.

That's what led to the banks failing. A Democrat senator.

Bad news for the economy is good news for 2 other Democrat senators, Obama and Biden. The worse the economy is, the better chance they have of winning the election. Uh-oh. Now there's a bail-out package. Things might get better. The stock market has stabilized.

So what happens?

Another Democrat Senator, this time Harry Reid, said that one of the country's premier insurance companies was about to go bankrupt [source].

He wouldn't say what company, so tocks of all insurance companies started to plummet.

Democrat Senators are intent on destroying the economy, ruining your investments, and taking away people's life savings to win the election. yay obama.