N95 and Slingbox: Reese's couldn't do better

Better than peanut butter and chocolate: the N95 and a Slingbox.

The N95 makes the Slingbox make sense for me.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

If you've spent the money for the Nokia N95, a Slingbox is a must get. The company bought live spots on my program on KGO Radio months ago. My job was to read the copy, not test it. And from the commercials, to be honest, I wasn't totally sure what it did and how to use it.

Then I got one to try and now I totally get it. Wow! What Slingbox somehow does is enable you to take your TV room at home with you anywhere in the world. Whatever you can see at home, you can watch and control on a portable device. I have been doing it from a Nokia N95 smartphone, but more commonly the Slingbox was promoted as being used with a laptop, which of course gives you a larger screen and usually a faster broadband connection but just isn't as cool in my mind.

On the N95, system operation is just about perfect (an iPhone would be even better, but it's not set up for that yet), and the picture is flawless, too. The only negative is EDGE, which is a 2.5G network and just a bit slow. Watching on a Palm Centro with EV-DO is faster, but the screen is smaller.

Bottom line: This is one fun application. And for fun, realize that you can be watching TV in Tokyo while your family is watching the same program at the same time in San Francisco--but if you want to see another channel, you can control the set and change channels an ocean away! They probably won't think that's cool, but for you it's a hoot!

Another nice thing in this age of being fee'd to death is that the Slingbox is a product, not a service. So once you buy it and set it up, there is no service fee, it just uses the broadband connection you have at home to send you broadcasts. Bear in mind, however, you will be using a fair amount of data to watch that stream, so I'd recommend an all-you-can-eat data plan for your phone if that's what you'll be watching on.