Anyone have any experience w/ these products?

The upstairs bedrooms in my house don't have pre-installed cable outlets and not sure that it is feesible to try and run the wires all the up from the basement. I was looking into these options as potential ways to get cable TV in those rooms. I'm not bent on accessing it mobile (that would be nice, but not required).

Any thoughts/recommendations would be appreciated.

Not sure if slingbox is what you are looking for, unless you plan on watching via internet. I have a slingbox and it works great, but you can't go from tv to tv, it can only be watched on a computer or mobile device. If that's what you want, slingbox will definitely do the trick, but you may want to consider your usage and how much your Internet provider allows you to stream for the internet you currently have. If you go over it could either seriously hamper the quality or could get very expensive depending on your particular internet company.

Also, with slingbox, you want to be sure to have a really good internet signal. The quality is self adjusting and gets better the stronger the signal is. The worse the internet, the worse the picture.

I have no knowledge about vulkano personally

kidhawk wrote:but you can't go from tv to tv, it can only be watched on a computer or mobile device.

Well, unless you have a computer in the room and you can just hook an HDMI cable up from it to the TV.

RolandDeschain wrote:

kidhawk wrote:but you can't go from tv to tv, it can only be watched on a computer or mobile device.

Well, unless you have a computer in the room and you can just hook an HDMI cable up from it to the TV.

well yes there is that, but now that I think about it, I would have to get a smart tv to test it, but there is a facebook app that allows you to watch a slingbox, but I don't know if it would work on an internet capable television or not. Anyone want to buy me an internet capable tv so I can test this out?

Splitter + 50ft coax.
What's your cable situation? You says cableS, are you going from the cable box to the tv and need multiple cables, or gonna go coax and bring the cable box upstairs? Details!

-SH

I've had a Vulkano for over a year just for watching TV remotely. It works 1/2 of the time, but the other part of the time it's slow, choppy, and not a great picture. It's supposed to use the local network connection but I find that hard to believe since it happens even when I'm hard wired into the router. Still seems to be going through the internet, and their service is SLOW...

If you do get one go slingbox.

Call around to some electricians and see how much they'd charge to fish the wires properly. In a lot of places work is slow now in the building trades, and guys who are subs will do work on the side for much less than you'd expect. Just tell them you want cable runs with RG6 run properly and figure out the total. I've done it myself. It's not difficult. You can feed up right along with your HVAC stuff and go up into the wall with a "fish tape" and cut out and install a box. It isn't difficult. It takes time and patience, but it's worth it in the end.

I ended up installing 2 cables in each room in my old house and had everything feed off of one multiswitch that was in my laundry room. If you're using cable then you'd just use a splitter. If you can find a straight feed up from the basement to an attic, then you can bring multiple cables straight up to the attic, and then drop them back down into the walls and add the boxes and feed through there. It's not hard if you have attic space and you can see straight down the walls. Just go between two studs, send it down to where you've cut into the wall and put in the box and then crimp an end on and attach it to a cable cover plate. I don't think it would take a novice more than 2-3 hours, and a pro should be able to knock it out much quicker.

Another option is if you're just looking for something to watch, then Rokus are cheap and you can watch lots of free channels on them, and also Netflix, Hulu, etc. Of course those services cost money, but it is wireless and that's what my kid used when I took away his directv box and he never had trouble finding something he wanted to watch during his allotted TV time.