Macopinion

Kitchen TV, Part 1

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

Before Christmas I wrote a whole series about AppleTV in which I talked about some of my frustrations with high-definition television. I wrote that at present AppleTV's content is too limiting, cable HD doesn't get the channels I want, and satellite HD is expensive. I still haven't solved those problems. But I recently solved a different problem, one of a more pressing nature.

Long-time readers of Less Tangible know that just over a year ago I ended up in the hospital with pancreatitis and learned I was severely diabetic. I have since changed my lifestyle 180 degrees. I eat healthy, exercise, and follow a routine (routine is good for diabetics). The results have been awesome: I've lost 75 pounds, I'm off all diabetic medicines, and my blood sugars are at non-diabetic levels. I feel (and am) healthier than in decades. I love my new lifestyle and wouldn't change a thing. (I'm even publishing a book about my diet.)

However, there are little sacrifices and costs to this new lifestyle. I'm not talking about the obvious things, like avoiding the dessert menu, but subtle gotchas like having to shop for groceries more often because so much of my diet is fresh vegetables and fruits. One consequence of my healthy eating is I spend a lot more time in the kitchen. I used to get annoyed that microwave dinners took five whole minutes to cook: now I think nothing of spending 30 minutes chopping vegetables for a stir-fry!

I actually enjoy cooking, so this isn't a giant sacrifice, but I have been frustrated with my television situation. From my kitchen I cannot see my living room TV. Often I'd like to be watching a show while I prepare my dinner, but while I hear the sound, I can't see the picture, and for most kinds of shows that just doesn't work. (It's annoying to hear laughter on a sitcom and not get the joke because it's a visual one.)

When I first began my new diet I really needed to concentrate on what I was doing so the lack of TV wasn't an issue. But now that I'm familiar with my diet I find myself frustrated when I can't watch TV while I wait for something to cook or mindlessly chop celery.

Recently I've been noticing that the cost of LCD computer screens and TVs have been dropping. It's now possible to get small TVs for less than $200. This got me thinking: why not get a little LCD screen for my kitchen? For that kind of money it'd be well worth it.

I've always thought kitchen TVs were a bit ostentatious, but in my case, it would be a health issue to help me stick with my diet. Instead of rushing my preparations and possibly taking unhealthy shortcuts, I could enjoy TV and take my time preparing a healthy meal.

Of course, I'm a tech guy, so the first thing I think of after considering a kitchen TV isn't which model or where I'll put it or how much it will cost, but what video source I'll connect to it. That's when things get ugly, of course, because that can be complicated.

First, remember that I'm addicted to Tivo: TV I can't pause is practically unwatchable.

Second, because I have Tivo, I usually have shows I've recorded I need to watch. (With Tivo, if you don't watch a show soon enough, the hard drive will get filled up and Tivo will delete the oldest shows to make room for the new ones. This gives you an incentive to keep up with your TV watching.)

So piping live TV -- such as a cable feed -- to the kitchen TV just isn't going to cut it. I really want Tivo in the kitchen. But I don't want to pay for another Tivo box, let alone pay for an additional satellite hookup.

That leaves transporting the signal from my current Tivo in the living room to the kitchen. Granted, in my case it's not a huge distance -- ten to twenty feet, depending on where I install the TV -- but that's still a lot of ugly wiring. There are wireless solutions, but my brother had one of those and it sucked (the TV signal crapped out every time you got a phone call or used the microwave). But beyond the complexity of the wiring, there's a quality issue that crops up when you split the video feed. I could buy some sort of signal booster, but we're getting complicated again.

The Solution
That's when someone reminded me of Slingbox.

When I first heard of Slingbox a few years ago, I thought it was stupid. Why would I want to watch my home TV elsewhere? I mean, the gimmicky idea had some tech appeal, but how often would you actually use a service that lets you watch your home TV over the Internet? (I say this as a self-employed person who works from home. Your situation may give you a different perspective.) I remember being amazed at hearing how successful the product has been: apparently a lot of people love the idea.

Of course part of my problem was that Slingbox was Windows-only, so I couldn't actually try it and "get" it, and since I certainly wasn't going to a buy a PC just to run Slingbox, it was a product that dropped off my radar.

That has changed. Now Slingbox fully supports Macintosh and there's even talk of Sling making a player for the iPhone... imagine watching your home TV on your cellphone wherever you happen to be! (Sling already supports several phone platforms.)

With my kitchen TV problem in mind, I checked out Slingbox. And lo and behold I'd found the answer! I suddenly realized that really what Slingbox does is rebroadcast your TV signal wirelessly to any computer on the Internet... which obviously includes the computers in your own house. That gave me the idea: why not put my old PowerBook G4 laptop in the kitchen? (It'd be useful to recipes and other kitchen duties as well.)

With Slingbox broadcasting my Tivo signal to the laptop, I would have TV in my kitchen! Even better, it wouldn't take hours to install since it'd be wireless. The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. It also occurred to me that with this system I could watch TV in my office as well, not to mention watching it remotely (hopefully on my iPhone eventually).

Having access to my Tivo in my office would be really cool as at times I'm stuck in there working or waiting for some task to finish processing. (Like the other day I burned 50 CDs and couldn't leave the room for a few hours but spent 98% of that time just waiting for the burner to spit out the disc so I could insert the next.)

But how much do Slingboxes cost? My memory had them at $200+, which was expensive for my modest needs. But I was delighted to find that they can be had for well under that (the cheapest model is about $110). After researching the various models, I ended up getting the middle version, the Slingbox Solo. The cheapest one, the Slingbox AV, does not have AV-out so you cannot connect it in the middle of an AV system. The Solo also only lets you use a single AV source but does have AV-out so you can insert it in the middle of your video system (for example, between your Tivo and your TV or between your DVD player and your TV) as the system will pass the AV signal on to the next device. The $200+ Pro version supports multiple AV sources and lets you control up to four devices remotely, but I wasn't interested in that level of complexity.

I found the Slingbox Solo for under $150 online (including shipping), which fit my pricing perfectly. It cost less than a small LCD TV and since I'm using my Powerbook G4 as the viewer, I end up with a sweet 15" TV in my kitchen!

Also I should mention another extremely important point about Slingbox: unlike Tivo and other services, there are no monthly fees with Slingbox!

Next Time: Marc installs his Slingbox

macopinion@designwrite.com