I'm about to move to another city and would like to still watch the local basketball team. The issue is I do not watch TV other than basketball, and thus do not plan on buying cable. I'd buy the overpriced cable package if I thought I'd actually watch the stations in it, but it contains more than 200 channels and I would only watch the one station that shows the games.

So what'd I'd like to do is stream my friend's cable to my TV so I can watch the games. It seems there are options to watch the cable stream on a PC, but I'd like to watch it on my TV.

After some research, a SlingboxPro-to-Slingcatcher setup seemed like the solution, but, of course, the Slingcatcher's out of commission. So what are my options for place-shifting out of the home to an actual TV? 

Do the Vulkano's support this kind of setup? One Vulkano on the cable, another on my TV? Or are there other options out there I haven't found yet? 

I'm adept at Linux and programming and it does seem like a MythTV setup might be an option. I couldn't find documentation that said it supported out-of-home streaming though. Seems to be intended to place shift within the home, not out of it. Anybody familiar with MythTV? 

Assuming there's no perfect slingcatcher setups alternative, what kind of device works best for a HTPC setup? 

Thanks for the advice. The more I look at HTPCs, the more I want one in general, not just as a solution for this. 

I was thinking Acer/Zotac HTPC (MacMini's are nice, but too overpriced for me. Like everything else Apple sells) that was running Linux/XMBS, accessing Slingbox from a browser, but it sounds like Windows gives you the best resolution with Slingbox? I hate Windows but maybe I'll make an exception. 

(Also, for closure and those who get here Googling, the MythTV setup theoretically would work over the internet, but you would need very fast upload speeds at the original site, and very fast download speeds at the remote site. There seems to be a discrepancy on how fast is 'very fast' but it's out of my reach.)

If you want to use your friends cablebox as your source and you want it on a TV either Vulkano or Slingbox will do that. I'm assuming you want a fairly good quality picture also. Avoid any other solution as quality is limited in the other options (Revue, etc). You will need (1) high speed internet at your friends home with good upload speed, (2) cable box that you can control without impacting the owner, (3) PC with HDMI output, and (4) good HD TV. You will have to configure the router at the source to work with whatever you chose and the bandwidth at the source (your friends home) will be impacted when you are using it. Vulkano will provide good quality but cannot take advantage of higher upload speed at remote so if you have internet with 2 meg or less (really need at least 1 meg for any quality) I would chose Vulkano, if you have 2 meg or better Slingbox HD would give the best quality. Hope that helps.