Any of you heard of a slingbox?

[Will]

As seen here: http://uk.slingmedia.com/page/home

I set one of these up this week - it's absolutely awesome.

Basically all you need is a broadband connection - you plug your sky/freeview/cable TV into it, then it streams over the net, and you have the receiving end (via a laptop or a PC) on your boat/flat or house abroad/friend's house whatever... and you can pick up and watch your subscribed TV. Obviously most laptops/PCs can be hooked up to a TV for a bigger picture.

This is awesome for the yachts as when they get out of the Sky spot beam (which they shouldn't legally be watching outside of the UK without a special contract ) they can no longer pick up UK tv. etc... So all they need is somone in the UK or the US (for example) to have one of these and they can keep watching their TV.

Obviously as boats go to different parts of the world they use different decoder boxes, DirectTV, Sky+, and others depending on the satellite service they have. However this would keep all these numerous racks of decoder boxes to a minimum. It's fantastic kit.

I'm thinking of getting here for our Freeview box, so we can watch it when we're in Cyprus (you can of course change the channel).

I'm tempted to setup a service at work have a full rack of them lashed up to hotbird (Sky satellite) and stream it for the yachts and make them pay a subscription for it.

We've used a few of them, and on a 60+ inch screen it does pixelate, but on a small 40 and less inch screen it's perfectly acceptable. You can even log onto the stream via your laptop

The clever thing is the encapsulation and modulation systems they use - they really are very clever little boxes - the stream quality is phenomenal.

If any of you have the chance to play one - try it, I'm sure you'll be impressed.