Simply Streaming to a laptop

[tdalton]

My friend is a non techie and wishes to be able to watch TV on his laptop. Two options come to mind, one is Replay TV which has a 3rd party software app available so that you can watch your ReplayTV library on your PC. This option is a bit cheaper than the next option. The second option is SlingMedia's Slingbox which I have not yet seen but it sounds like a cool product. If anyone has experience with both of these products and can offer a comparision that would be great! I'd love to recommend SageTV but as I said he is not tech saavy and I don't have the time to support him.

Thanks,
TD

[Crashless]

If his computer is fast enough (2.4ghz equiv.) he could use orb.com. It supports the major TV encoders and is location independant.

Oh, and it's free. minus the encoder card of course

[tdalton]

Yeah the only problem w/ that is he only has the laptop as his desktop is a P 333MHz w/ not enough use and besides I don't want to implement a solution like that where I'll be unofficially supporting it. Orb looks cool though have to check it out someday.... Of course I say that and it will probably be long gone before I get a chance to even look at it! hehe

[Crashless]

Well, a Pentium (I'm guessing pII) 333mhz is probably well below pretty much any of the software or hardware's minimum requirements that you've mentioned.

I'm not sure what I can recommend that will work with a system that old... IIRC, even SageTV requires a 400mhz machine.

[tdalton]

Well again what I'm looking for him is a STB type solution to act in place of a server which is why I mentioned ReplayTV and the Slingbox. The client is a Dell Inspiron 9300 which will work fine as a client but since the PC is out dated and even if it were not a PC based solution for him would be to complicated so I am trying to gauge ReplayTV or Slingbox as possible solutions. PC based PVR is not there yet for those who don't want to fiddle with it and he falls into this category he simply wants to be able to watch TV on his laptop. That being said I am leaning towards the Slingbox because with that you can change channels on the fly and I "think" w/ the Replay TV software you can only play whatever has already been recorded. Cost is almost a wash ReplayTV has a subscription but the PVR is cheaper. Slingbox is $250 but that is all inclusive.

[Crashless]

Oh I'm sorry. I misunderstood the question.

Well then...hmmm

Unfortunately I'm not totally familiar with either solution (which is why I mentioned ORB.com). So hopefully someone else will chime in. Sorry I can't help more.