Slinglink Turbo 1PORT Enet Connection Bridge

I have many Sling Media products and love them all. I am very pleased in general with Sling Media products. I just purchased a SlingCatcher to use in conjunction with my Slingbox because I have a TV in a room without a wired connection. The problem, is that my router is upstairs, while my SlingCatcher is downstairs. The solution should have been simple with the SlingLink...which is designed to turn your house's electrical wiring into an ethernet connection. The problem I found out was that the wiring upstairs differed from the wiring downstairs, so the SlingLink couldn't make a connection. After troubleshooting with the Sling Media people on the Sling Chat, it was determined that the SlingLink wouldn't work in my house. Instead, a wireless bridge was recommended. I then purchased the Linksys Wireless-N gaming adapter which has worked beautifully for my needs. All in all, the SlingLink may work for you in your house. However, beware that if your house is large (mine is 4000 square feet), then the SlingLink may not work due to the complexity of the electrical wiring. The wireless bridge will work much better. In a smaller house that is one level, I am sure the SlingLink would work fine. That is why I gave it only 3 stars.

I purchased this  Slinglink Turbo 1PORT Enet Connection Bridge (SL 150-100)  for use with my  Sling Media Slingbox PRO-HD SB300-100 . You ONLY have to buy the Slinglink Turbo if your cable/satellite/whatever you use to get television signal from is not located next to your router. In my case, my router and modem are located in my office on the main floor of my house. We only have 3 tv's set up to our Comcast Digital Cable (Regular Package comes with a cable box) so I had to pick one of them. I decided to hook up the Slingbox PRO-HD in our basement because that tv gets the least amount of use (Setting that up is a whole different review).Inside the Slinglink Turbo box, you get 2 Slinglinks. I connected one to the wireless-n Linksys router that we have in my office. All you do is plug one of the extra ethernet cables that comes in the box into an open slot on the routher. And you HAVE TO plug the power cord into an actual wall socket. YOU CANNOT PLUG IT INTO A POWER STRIP. Then, I set up the other Slinglink, in our basement where the SingBox PRO-HD is located. Once again, I plugged the ehternet cord from the Slinglink box into the back of the SlingBxo PRO-HD's ethernet port. I powered the Slinglink into an actual wall socket and kept the SlingBox PRO-HD plugged into a power strip.When I ran the software that you download from slingmedia(dot)com, it recognized the SlingBox through my houses wiring via the Slinglinks. We have Comcast High Speed Cable Internet just incase you were wondering.Product works great!

I really don't want to give a particularly bad review for this product because it worked well at my friends house where we tested it after it didn't work at my house.The problem for us was that we have direct runs from three rooms in our house since we knew these rooms would have more electronic equipment. (A direct run is basically just a separate electrical system in a particular room directly connected to the street service.) This is not the fault of the SlingMedia, it is the way our house was constructed. But it wouldn't surprise me if lots of custom houses are built this way in this day and age where we use so much electronic equipment. Nobody wants electrical problems when you turn on the blow dryer.That's just the way that this technology works. Everything has to be on the same grid. Our house was just not set up that way. The two rooms with the most equipment, including the router, are on different grids than the rest of the house.

Firstoff, I would say this device does what it is supposed to. Having used several powerline products like this, I will say that this one performs about as well as competing units. That said, there are few caveats I would point out. First, you're only going to get acceptable throughput when both sides of the link are on the same household circuit. This is especially true with older homes who may have gone through electrical upgrades (like mine). Also, your throughput will suffer when you use other electrical devices on the circuit. For example, my video gets choppy whenever someone turns on/off the bathroom light which is adjacent to the bedroom where I have this unit located. For basic internet usage this is not a big deal, but if you're streaming video to a media center like I am, it is somewhat of an annoyance.

My computer, cable modem, and wireless router are upstairs in a 37 year-old house. My cable-box and TV are downstairs. The idea of using the Slingbox Turbo Bridge (one unit upstairs near my router, the other downstairs near the sling box) by using existing household wiring seemed like a great solution. However, finding "clean" wall sockets that are on the same circuit, yet within reach of the cable box and router without using an extension, didn't work. I could not get a good, strong signal so I returned the Slingbox Turbo Bridge and purchased a Linksys Wireless-N Ethernet Bridge, which works fine.Note: To be fair to the Slingbox product, I suspect it would work fine if the wall outlets were on the same circuit and located close to the Slingbox.

While this thing IS able to create a connection across multiple circuits in our house, the connection thus gained is horribly unreliable, not at all suitable for slingbox streaming, as it randomly flutters from 100kbps to a max of around 3500 (in VERY short-lived bursts every once in a while). I drilled a hole to the basement and ran a 200ft shielded ethernet cable (wasted a lot of money on that, b/c about 125ft are coiled up in the basement :P) to replace these, which gives me a solid 8000kbps, and thus is a superior option. If it's at ALL possible to run ethernet cables or connect wirelessly, both options work better than these in my experience. That said, they do work.