Two Weeks Till Friday (?) welcome to ambivalence.

Go To Hell.

Before I start talking about one of the coolest gadgets I've ever seen, let me just say... Happy Dante's Inferno Release Day... I picked mine up today at work.

And there's only one word that can sum up the excitement of this game... "boobies". Unless of course you consider that two words. It took me a while to find a trailer of this game that didn't have nudity. My parents read this blog after all.

Boobies.

Ok, now on to more important things.

SLINGBOX. Is this something we really need? Probably not. Is it one of the coolest things I've ever seen? Heck yes.

So our good friend James who we once worked with here in Vancouver finds himself living in Florida. With the Olympics soon upon us, he was becoming concerned that he wasn't going to get the same coverage of the games on TV... particularly the hockey. And as NBC blocks Canadian IP addresses from viewing their online broadcasts, CTV does the same to Americans. Whoda thunk.

So James posted a facebook comment and someone suggested he get a Slingbox. I commented after that saying we would be more than happy to host his Slingbox for him. Next thing we know... there's a new Slingbox HD-Pro at our doorstep. So what is this Slingbox you ask? Well let me tell you.

It's about the size of a book. It sits beside your TV. The cable you have coming into your home goes from the wall to your HD PVR (or digital cable box). You then take the a cable and go from your HD PVR to the Slingbox. Then a cable goes from the Slingbox to your TV. I guess it would have been easier if I just said that it goes between your TV and whatever signal you have coming into your house. Oh well. You can see it now in your head.

You then take an ethernet cable and plug the Slingbox into your home router so it now resides on your home network. The Slingbox now has the ability to send your TV signal to any computer on your network. So I can now sit here, typing up this very fascinating blog post, and watch TV at the same time. If that wasn't cool enough, I can also send that video signal out onto the information super highway. That's right, the World Wide Web... also known to some as... the "Internet". Why would you do this? Because now anyone, out there in cyberspace, can download, for free, the Slingbox software and if they know my highly cryptic username and password, can watch my TV signal. I'll let that sink in for a moment.

I can watch my TV from anywhere in the world. Anywhere that has a broadband internet connection which is, oh, I don't know... everywhere?

Ok, I'm not done yet. So one of the pros to this is also a con (somewhat). The user who is Slingboxing into my network has control over our HD PVR. Full control. So if I'm sitting there watching "Christians in the Workplace" and the Slingbox user connects in and changes the channel to "Horny Vixens From Space", well, we're going to have a problem. The only way around this would be to buy a second HD PVR (or digital box) and set that up with the Slingbox. Hmmm. I wonder how much that would cost...

But anyway, you can see where this could be a problem. However, in this situation, James wants to watch the Olympic coverage. And I can tell you right now that come Feb 12th, this house will be playing nothing but Olympic coverage. So no worries there.

But this is where the Slingbox becomes down right dangerous.

I get to work today and log into my Slingbox to make sure it's working so I can give James the go-ahead. It's really freaky sitting 10km away from my living room knowing that I'm watching my TV. As you know the HD PVR records all our favorite programs. I can use my Slingbox to look at the programs that I've recorded. Or even set up a recording for that matter. At 10am this morning, the movie Never Been Kissed was on and... well... I happen to like that movie. DON'T JUDGE ME! So I pressed record on my virtual remote control and presto, my home PVR started recording it. I then decided to see what other shows I had recorded previously. Oh look! I have 30 Rock recorded. Lets see what it looks like when I play a recorded program over the Slingbox. It works! And 30 minutes later, when the show ended, it was still working. Without realizing it (well, I did realize what I was doing and I felt... almost bad) I had watched an entire episode of 30 Rock from my desk at work. Oops.

But can you imagine the temptation? The POWER! To watch TV anytime, anywhere. When I want. What I want. Pausing. Rewinding. Fast Forwarding. No commercials. All online. ALL THE TIME... Oh my goodness. This is the evolution of the media. It's not about being home by 7pm so you can watch Leave It To Beaver. It's not about setting up your VCR to record your program while you're out feeding the homeless at the soup kitchen. It's not even about computerizing program guides to auto record television series allowing end users to never watch a commercial again or sit through the mating rituals of the endangered Pinta Island tortoise on the Discovery Channel because nothing else was on. It's about all these things, putting them together and making them virtual. So they, it, whatever is there all the time, for me, at whatever convenient time I want or when my boss isn't around! It's mind boggling!!

And for only $29.95, I can get the Slingbox app for my iPhone. My recorded TV. On my iPhone. I can die now. I've seen it all.

Thank you James.