Can i sling in HD with a Series 2 Tivo?

July 17, 2007 3:25 PM

SlingFilter: I've got the Slingbox. I've got the Tivo. Will I be able to sling in HD? Electronics wizards inquire within!

I just bought a Slingbox Pro and set it up. Its amazing. I love the ability to stream TV to my T-Mobile Dash wherever I can pick up a wifi signal. But here's my question:

Right now I have a standard digital cable box from Time Warner. I feed that via composite cables into my Series 2 Tivo which feeds into the back of my Slingbox Pro via composite (red/white/yellow) cables. Same thing from the Slingbox Pro to my TV. (I know I should be using S-Video).

I want to upgrade this whole setup to HD, but I'm having a hell of a time figuring out if its possible to get the Slingbox to stream HD without a Series 3 HD Tivo. Currently I have an Sanyo HD TV with an HDMI port in the back as well as component connection ports and I've also purchased Slingbox's HD Connect cable . If I upgrade my digital cable box to HD cable - will I still be able to control my Series 2 Tivo through my Slingbox without having to upgrade to a Sereis 3 Tivo?

Here's the back of the Slingbox Pro: http://www.slingcommunity.com/imagelib/slingarticleimages/15265/15265-3.jpg
http://www.slingcommunity.com/imagelib/slingarticleimages/15265/15265-4.jpg

Halp!

posted by AsRuinsAreToRome to technology (3 comments total)

The slingbox pro does not have an HD tuner, nor does the series 2 Tivo. You could put an HD tuning-cable-box in front of the Tivo, but's it's only going to use the standard non-HD output from the cable-box. You could watch your HD channels, but not in HD, thru the Tivo 2. The slingbox can only stream what it recieves, so it'd be streaming the non-HD output from the Tivo.

The Pro would allow you to setup your Tivo2 as one of the non-HD sources, and your HD-cable-box as the HD source, but you wouldn't have any PVR capability beyond what the cable-box might provide ala On-Demand.
posted by nomisxid at 3:38 PM on July 17, 2007

I have this setup.

No - because your Tivo is SD (The Series 3 is what you want...with two cablecards.)

The Tivo2 is only SD.
The Slingbox can be HD (the Pro version).
Your TV can be HD.

Now, you have to get an HD signal decoded before it hits your TV.

You can do this via a Series 3 Tivo.
You can pay your cable company for a HD box (with or without a crappy non-tivo DVR)
You can get an OTA HD reciever.

For your slingbox...does it matter? Wherever you are watching the feed will, well, look SD (or youtubeish really.)
posted by filmgeek at 4:21 PM on July 17, 2007

I have a Tivo/Humax series 2 with component outputs and a slingbox pro. I can capture the component output, but the dirty little secret of the slingbox pro is that the player will not display in HD (even if this box could send HD). The hardware will sample the HD, it will pass it through, and it will stream it as SD.

So it plays well with HD, but your sling player is going to display SD, even from an HD signal.

The Sling player forums have a few complaints about this.
posted by MarcieAlana at 4:36 PM on July 17, 2007