[ music ]
^M00:00:11
>> Wouldn't it be cool to be able to watch what's on your big screen on your small screen? I'm talking your cell phone. Oh where there is a sling box, there is a way. Hey there, I'm Rich DeMuro with CNET TV and in this edition of Insider Secrets, I'm gonna show you how to sling box your cell phone. In case your not familiar with it, a sling box takes programming, in this case from our cable box, and slings it somewhere else using the internet. So you can watch using your computer or a cell phone. Now what you need for this project is a sling box, a router, a computer and a cell phone. It'll work on most recent Smart Phone models running Windows Mobile or Pocket PC and some Palm OS models. But keep in mind, if you're gonna do a lot of watching, you definitely want to get an unlimited high speed data plan. Hooking up your sling box is a cinch. Now we're using the sling box AV since we're going out of our cable box, but you can also use a sling box tuner if you're going from a coax cable or if you wanna sling HD content, you can go with a sling box pro. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna start with our audio cables. The red and white and hook them into the back of our cable box. Then we're gonna plug the other end of our cables into our sling box. Now if you notice, I'm only using the audio portion of our AV cable? That's because we wanna use our S video input to get the absolute best picture into our sling box. With your S video cable, one end is going to go into your cable box, then the other end plugs into your sling box. Now if all of your outputs on your cable box are already being used because it's connected to your tv or somewhere else, you're gonna have to get a splitter. But other than that, you're pretty much all set up with your video portion. Now it's time to connect our remote control. So the sling box is gonna need to change channels on our cable box every so often so, we're gonna plug our IR transmitter one end into the back of the sling box and then the other end we're gonna loop around to the front of our cable box and aim it where we'd normally aim our remote control. Next you have to connect your sling box to your home network so that it can send out a signal. Now keep in mind, it has to go through a router and a sling box isn't Wifi so you'll have to plug it in. See, wasn't the easy? Now that you're all hooked up, it's time to turn on the juice. Plug in your sling box and it should come to life. Before you can watch your sling box on your cell phone, you do have to set it up one time only using your computer. I call this provisioning. A Mac or a PC will work, but keep in mind it does have to be on the same network that your sling box is on. So take your disk, pop it in and just follow the directions. This thing pretty much sets up itself. It's just gonna ask you a bunch of questions like where you live, it's gonna update the firmware on your sling box, it's gonna make sure the universal remote feature works, then it's gonna tweak your router setting so that you can access your sling box from anywhere in the world. Now for that moment of truth. Let's see if it works on our computer and if we hooked up everything just right, our video should pop up and look at that, there it is. Well let's make this full screen. So now you see how cool it is on your computer, let's get going on getting that same content on our cell phone. To get sling video running on your cell phone, you have to install the sling software and there's two ways you can do this. You can either over the air download direct to your phone and then run it from there or you can download it to your computer and then use your sync cable to sync things up. Now all of your settings will be copied over automatically if you install the software from your computer. But if you do an over the air download, it won't do your settings automatically so you have to put them in yourself and that consists of a 32 digit sling finder id, which is basically like a username and then your sling password. But once you put that all in, you're good to go. Now before we can watch on our phone, we have to disconnect our sling player on our computer because you can only have one device logged in at a time. So let's find it on our phone, sling player mobile, fire it up and it's gonna go through some of the motions, find your sling box, optimize the stream and look at that. We have a picture. Now once you have this on your phone, you can do pretty much anything that you can do on your computer. You can adjust the volume, you can change the channel or you can even make it my favorite mode, full screen. Now we are still inside, but once you have this up and running, you can take your phone anywhere you get a signal and you can still watch tv. That's it for this Insider Secret, I'm Rich DeMuro with CNET.com.
