how long can u run electrical in a truck while the engine is turn off to wacth tv so u wont have dead battery ? anyone have a picture or a mounting option to put up a small satt dish like dishnetwork?

 

First, I guess I'm a foagy 'cause I don't understand the need to have a tv, listening to a radio works for me. Second, when I'm in the truck I'm doing one of two things, driving or sleeping.
As far as a sat dish mount, I've seen 'em temp mounted on piece of PVC tubing clamped to a mirrow, with the lead running thru the windwing. Some are hard mounted to the sleeper back but I doubt a company would appreciate a company driver drilling holes in the fibreglass. BOL

 

Hey Kali06....if you have a notebook PC and have cable or satellite at home buy a "Slingbox". Lets you watch your home tv on your PC or even your phone. Costs $179-199. And there is no monthy fee either. Gotta love technology....lol

 

I ran my 19" tv and the sat dish for about 1 hour before the low battery buzzer started to sound. I am glad I had an APU because idling the truck just to watch tv would get expensive real fast, but then again if you don't pay the fuel bill then Idle on.
As far as the Sat dish goes.... I went down to the local RV store and bought a tripod setup for the dish. The RVers use them all the time in the camp grounds.
I would just secure it to the back of the sleeper while driving and then once I stopped I would bring it out and set it up next to the truck. Be sure to secure it to the truck if it is windy out. (Mine fell over twice, good thing it was a rental dish)

 

Is there any way to connect it to a TV in the truck rather than your pc? Who has these sling boxes? I have not heard anything about them before. Is there anything else you will need to receive?

 

Slingbox
REVIEW DATE: 06.30.05

Total posts: 5
$130.00 - $199.00


By Bill Howard
Sling Media's Slingbox scratches an itch you may not yet have. This technically impressive set-top box compresses and transfers live TV, satellite, or DVR video from your home to a computer anywhere in the world, all without requiring a PC to be up and running at home, and with minimal quality loss. Why, however, would you want to do that, when there's a TV in virtually every hotel room and friend's house around the world? It turns out there are some useful reasons as you dig deeper. But dig you must.

SLIDESHOW (10)

Slideshow | All Shots

Streaming multimedia content from your home to a remote PC (or other device) is a hot area, and Slingbox joins a handful of other devices or services targeting this market (most notably Orb Networks, Sony Location Free TV, and TiVoToGo). The Slingbox unit connects in-line with your TV set, cable box, DVR, or a PC equipped with a TV tuner and infrared remote. It has input and outputs for virtually any kind of video, plus a wired Ethernet jack. An IR blaster controls power, channels, and play/pause on the TV, cable box, or DVR. You set it up from a PC inside your house (hence the Ethernet jack), but that's the last time you need an in-house PC running while using Slingbox. That is, unless you decide to use the Slingbox like a media hub to rebroadcast video within the house, which you can do over Ethernet, powerline networking, or Wi-Fi.


Any PC with an Internet connection—but for all practical purposes, you need broadband—can connect and play whatever signal Slingbox is currently receiving. It's a one-to-one relationship of one player streaming to one remote PC, and the remote PC must have the proprietary SlingPlayer software installed (you can't just walk up to a Web terminal in a Key West coffeeshop and see the latest episode of whatever shows TiVo recorded last night at home).

Though the need for a special applet seems like a drawback, it's also Slingbox's strength, because the algorithms in the proprietary software do a first-class job of providing remarkably good video quality. It's markedly better than any streaming webcast sports event or news feed. If you've got a solid broadband signal, picture quality is roughly on a par with a good videotape recording.

Within the house, where Slingbox can use almost 1 Mbps of bandwidth, you'd have a hard time distinguishing the rebroadcast stream signal from the original. At times, we got better quality pulling video off a TiVo player three time zones away than we did from streaming the local cable provider's analog feed within the house (because of the variable quality of analog cable TV). The video initially comes up as a window, but you can expand it to full screen; the controls overlay the video (full screen) or sit adjacent (windowed). Also impressive is that the response to remote commands (such as to change the channel or pause a recording) takes just a second or two.

As for the "why?" part of Slingbox: If you're traveling, you can catch the local news. You could use Slingbox to play a TiVo-recorded movie in your hotel room (might as well, as long as you're paying $10 a day for hotel broadband). Distant grandparents could see home movies stored on your DVR or Media Center PC; they'd just need the SlingPlayer software loaded on their PC (and a guest-access password). One or two of the channels you set up could be home security cameras that you connect to, say, your VCR's or TV's video-in jacks.

While the concept is intriguing, there are some drawbacks with the current implementation. For starters, if you want to choose among multiple video sources, not just multiple channels fed from one source, you'll need multiple Slingboxes. The Slingbox can't stream content from a plain-vanilla PC's hard drive (it must have an IR remote), and it's not a one-to-many solution (in part because of concerns that rebroadcasting copyrighted content would put Sling Media in Hollywood's gunsights).

Sling Media warns that setup can be tricky if you don't have a universal plug-and-play, or UPnP, router (many current ones are), or if you have multiple routers. That said, we found that even with non-UPnP routers, setup wasn't that bad, and the company provides good general instructions. All in all, Slingbox provides a fine solution for a need some people have today and more will have in the future.


From PCWorld Magazine

Hope this helps GMAN, and anyone else interested. LOL NO I'm not a salesman, but, seeing that most of us still pay a cable/satallite bill why not get some use out of it.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

gman, we have a sling box, the Internet at most truck stops is very slow. So you will need a wireless card for your computer. Verizon says that they offer "unlimited" but its not really. After you use what they determine is to much they shut you down. Sprint on the other hand has true unlimited service time. The only truck stop my husband got fast enough service was flying j. Again plan to pay extra because watching streaming video will use all you per day use very fast, you don't get a whole day by any means. We find the wireless card the only way to go. Also, my nephew said yes you can hook your lap top up and see the sling box on a TV . But you still need a computer to get the signal? Didn't seem like that was a good thing. What Jamie does is checks both, sometimes he gets lots of good TV on the TV otherwise he uses the sling box.One other thing, I can't change the station here at home if the sling box is lit up, it will change it for him also. He doesn't use it much though.

 

If you are not working for a company YET, don't waste ANY money on any recreational stuff untill you are sure you will need it. Some jobs you'll have a lot of free time while others you won't have any. At TMC I rarely if ever have time to watch TV though I do have a laptop to fill any downtime.

 

Oh jeez - not this again. :roll:

Sprint doesn't have unlimited service - they just aren't nailing anyone for exceeding bandwidth yet. Their TOS clearly states that if you exceed bandwidth, they can shut you down.