Some Folks Call It A Slingbox

Months ago when the World Cup draw came out, and I wrote all of the matches down on my calendar, I quickly realized that since I work an 8-5 PST shift, that the 6 a.m. and noon matches would not pose much of a problem, but those 9 a.m. ones would be tricky, as would the 8 a.m. ones in the knockout rounds. In time I resigned myself to following these online, and once the knockout stage came I would try to figure something out by trying to alter my schedule a bit.

Then about a week ago something amazing happened. My co-worker started talking again about maybe getting a Slingbox, so I said " Dude, if you get one this weekend I'll pay for half". By last Monday it was up and running, but thanks to Jury Duty I was out of the office all week.

Well this week I have to tell you that the Slingbox is the coolest damn thing since the iPod, and the TiVo before that. The bottom line is this: for $199 you can watch your TV over the internet, just as you would a streaming video from say CNN or ESPN or what-have-you. But it gets better: you can hook it up to your TV/TiVo at home as well, or even your DVD . Not only can you watch whatever you want on your TV from any high-speed internet connection in the world, you also get volume, can chancge the channel, and if you have a TiVo you can record shows on your TiVo or play shows already on the TiVo's hard drive. Or you can watch whatever movie is in your DVD player.

It is totally badass, and I cannot recommend it enough. Work on the West Coast and always miss the first part of big East Coast sporting events? No problem. College Football freak who has to work the Friday after Thanksgiving? No worries, you can watch Colorado-Nebraska and Texas-Texas A&M from the comfort of your cube. Surely it is the official 21st century technological device of Karl Childers.


"I reckon I'd kinda like to watch some soccer. Mmmm, hmmm."

I must report that neglecting work to actually watch the World Cup matches live beats the hell out of neglecting work to follow a live gamecast and wait for it to refresh every 60 seconds. The only negative is that for some crazy reason my co-worker does not get Univision in the town that he lives in, so I have to deal with the shittastic ESPN coverage. Even so, it is the coolest thing in the world to watch the matches live on TV on my computer screen at my desk.

Go out and buy one. Today.