Sling Media Slingbox M2 (Certified Refurbished)

The Slingbox M2 does not work with my set-top box Samsung SMT-H3362. The M2 does not work away from home but does work when I'm standing directly in front of it. States weak or no signal or will only stay on one channel if a signal is received. Slingbox will not add the set-top model number to its list of supported devices. My only choice is to return it. I really wanted this to work. I guess I'll try Slingbox's competitors and hope for better luck.Update 08/23/17: Strangely, I had to jerry-rig this in order for it to work. It has to be directly in front of the box at an angle to work. I don't know if it's a defect or not. Doesn't work in any other position that I placed it in.Update 09/01/2017: I returned the M2 to Amazon and went to Best Buy and purchased a brand new M2. Surprisingly, it worked as I expected the refurbished M2 to work. So, after all of the trouble shooting, the problem was with the refurbished M2 shipped by a third party vendor. I guess quality control is non existing these days? I'm happy with my brand new Slingbox M2 from Best Buy. It works as described.

This is a great value; half the price of a brand new Slingbox M2. I have owned Slingboxes for more than 10 years and never had a hardware failure. So I feel confident the refurbished M2 will be reliable.One thing that Slingbox overlooked in the refurbishment process is resetting the device registration on their servers. Although I installed it in November, its profile shows that it was registered in April 2017 (most likely by the original owner)! Hey Slingbox, ooops!!I have owned several Slingbox models, starting with the Slingbox Tuner in 2006. I currently use the 350 model but decided to purchase the refurbished M2 as a second Slingbox. Why the need for a second Slingbox? Due to conflict in usage between my brother in the Philippines and a buddy in Malaysia. You can only have one user at a time per Slingbox.My main cable receiver is a Tivo Roamio, which has 6 tuners. Attached to it via home LAN are 3 Tivo Mini’s (one in the home office and 2 in the bedrooms) so I can have 4 different TV programs simultaneously in different locations in the house, without paying extra monthly fees to the cable provider. The Slingbox 350 and refurbished M2 are attached to the Tivo Mini’s, so they do not interfere with whoever is viewing in the living room and the master bedroom.The other nice thing with this setup is that the Tivo Roamio has built-in apps for Netflix, Amazon Video, and Hulu. So aside from being able to watch broadcast channels, my brother in the Philippines and my buddy in Malaysia can also watch US NetFlix, Amazon, etc., without having to go through those ridiculous VPN workaround. And the best thing of all – they can watch for free! Bravo, Slingbox!!!

Some of the best money I ever spent! When I watch TV, what I'm actually doing is watching my recordings from the DVR on my TV. Hotel TVs meant nothing to me. Now, I can access my DirecTV Genie from my phone while I'm waiting for my car servicing, and next hotel stay I'm going to connect my laptop/s Bluetooth to my sound bar and HDMI to the hotel's TV for the "home" experience.This model has component HD connections only, which is perfect, since my Genie had unused component connections ready, and HDMI from most television can't be passed-through anyway, so installation was even simpler than the included instructions. It just sits there and does it's job. I'm actually a little surprised, because I thought my rural upload bandwidth might have been a problem, but it's not. Mostly...There are a few short pauses once in a while, especially right after connection, but occasionally it will just skip a few seconds to catch up. But because of the lag in my Rewind signal getting back to the DVR, and the buffered time to get the video back to me, I always WAY overshoot. But that's the Internet's fault, not the Slingbox. The DVR control features in the phone app are a little cumbersome to use, and one button actually missing for my DVR, and on device connection I'm often forced to watch a commercial first. But again, that's not the Singbox's fault, and really too minor to knock down a star anyway.If you want HD slung without any bells & whistles, this is the model to get.

Box itself works. However, their support is horrific. Better check to see if they have your dvr model supported, because if you don't, you can't use it.Also, I travel a lot, and didn't get around to setting it up within 90 days (closer to 110) amd so when I contacted them to ask "is the reason I can't access my dvr list because you don't have the newer model and I had to choose an older one?" They wouldn't even tell me yes or no unless I agreed to pay them $30. My dvr is two years old, btw.The idea behind the product is great, but there is literally NO support online, and unless you agree to pay them $30/call, they won't even tell you if the call will help. If I still had the box, I'd be returning it.

poor quality despite 50+ Mbit internet connection on both sides. On the windows app, constant advertisement that Slingbox provides and forces. Their "guide" function does not work (did a few years back), the company got sued for their approach to force their own advertisement onto the users of their products.If it works, it works O.K., but overall a poor product and I would not be surprised if the company goes down the drain soon, which would ultimately disable ALL slingboxes out there as there is no direct connection between the app and the device (well, yeah, how otherwise would the crooks be able to push their own ads...)