On The Tube

It occured to me recently that many people don't realize that we have full access to American television here, and if they do realize it, they don't really understand how it works.  When we first arrived here, before our shipment came, we had Japanese TV.  Which was interesting.....for awhile.  There was limited English programming but lots of strange game shows, South Korean soap operas and old kung-fu movies.

Fortunately, before we came Chad spent a period of time (not to mention a bit of money) collecting devices that would set us up to have American TV.  I admit at the time I had my doubts that we really needed all this stuff that he was buying but it turns out he knew what he was doing.  On the other hand, while he is great at rigging it all up, he isn't so good at explaining it to the general public.  I like to think I'm a little better at that. :)

First off, in the photo of our TV below I've circled a box in red.  This box is a computer.  It is hooked to our TV so that the TV is basically just a giant computer monitor. (And if you look carefully you can also see my sweatpants and cluttered coffee table.)

So when we turn on our TV we get.....

To control it, we have a tiny remote that has a full keyboard and mouse pad.....

Using the tiny remote, we click an icon on the desktop labeled "Slingbox".  The web brower opens and goes to the Slingbox website.  A Slingbox is a box that is hooked to someone's cable box.  And you can access it over the Internet where it acts like a "TV".   Of course, the "someone" has to be agreeable and willing to keep a Slingbox and let you piggyback off their cable.  Currently we have two Slingboxes.  One is kept by Chad's parents in New Jersey.  The other is kept by a friend of ours in Baltimore.  We paid for them both to get an extra high-speed cable box so we wouldn't see any lag.

Here is what our Slingbox website looks like.  You can see both of the Slingboxes.  Two might seem a little excessive, but they really come in handy.  Sometimes one will go down because of bad weather or Chad will want to access one while he is traveling (using his iPhone or iPad) and then I can still watch something else on the other one.  Also Chad DVRs a lot and if he's got one taping a bunch of stuff I don't want to watch, I can switch to the other one.

Once you select a Slingbox it will bring up a remote on the screen that you can use to control that "TV":

The remote/mouse situation can be a little annoying but the whole thing really works well.  We do see Baltimore and New Jersey news, sports and weather (as you can see above) which is a little odd.  Also we have to take the time change into consideration. (I watched the Oscars live on Monday at 10am.) But I have a great iPad app. called Zap2It that is basically TV Guide but it is smart enough to understand where I am and where my "TVs" are so it adjusts the time for me when it shows what is on. 

I do miss Japanese TV sometimes.  When we were in the US last time we found NHK World on the hotel TV and were fascinated by it all over again.  NHK World is the big Japanese network that gets piped out to the rest of the world.  We're considering asking one of our Slingbox holders to add it to their cable package. :)