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6:39 pm
April 19, 2010
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DSTVASIA said:
Brandon when I mentioned on the old sling community forum that sling media was farming analytical data I was blasted as being an idiot. Question is why is sling compiling data anyways on people supposedly private connections? Slingmedia should not be holding any data.I can only say that this has happened before with sling medias servers being down. Thank fully all of my customers are able to use HAVA's for streaming as there are many major sports events on right now apart from normal TV watching.
I have been contacted by quite a few sling hosting companies who are pulling their hair out over no connections for their customers. Their business will take a big hit and the customers are blaming the hosting company. They thought sling was always better than the HAVA and in some ways they are correct because they used shared networks so need the multiple port forwarding which Hava doesnt have. I use seperate fixed IP lines with a router for each customer so that if one line has an issue others are not affected and also we cant be overloaded and we dont share bandwidth as other hosting companies do. Port forwarding is not required for a single hava user on a single router.
Sling software is good, and for normal usage home usage ok, but as a hosting site running 24 hours a day, when it comes to slings poor product reliability, bad firmware, bad capacitors, failing power supplies, and $30 service support fees, shutting down sling community… total rubbish.
Funny thing how all those sling users on the HAVA forums have suddenly gone quiet hehehehehe
Of course I am not biased at all no never not a bit nada zip zero
Apparently most people don't care that they are sending their info to Sling Media. But I bet if you posted the same info on the Answers site it would be killed real fast!
The info they compile isn't really anything personal like what you are actually watching. It is more like how many hours you watch, what rates you are getting and thing like that.
This has got to be hard on any hosting company. relying on a 3rd party to make sure your service works is a hard thing to have to do.
It will be interesting to see if Sling changes anything incase this ever happens again.
7:35 pm
August 9, 2010
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Why do you think you can only watch your 922 via DISH Networks website and not with any current Slingplayer software? That data is very valuable…
I wish that they would put as much effort into fixing the issue at SLING as they are deleting posts over at their forum.
4:28 am
April 20, 2010
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Brandon C said: Apparently most people don't care that they are sending their info to Sling Media. But I bet if you posted the same info on the Answers site it would be killed real fast!The info they compile isn't really anything personal like what you are actually watching. It is more like how many hours you watch, what rates you are getting and thing like that. This has got to be hard on any hosting company. relying on a 3rd party to make sure your service works is a hard thing to have to do. It will be interesting to see if Sling changes anything incase this ever happens again.
I know a few hosting companies wishing they had now followed my advice and had more than one system to rely on.
It's this type is thing they nearly killed my business several years ago with slings go slow firmware, power supplies I can just replace cheaply enough with better ones. That's when I went with HAVA instead. Solid, reliable, no fanfare… but streams better quality pictures with more stable speeds, never had one hava power supply fail or a HAVA fail since I started using them, can roll back firmware 
, can remote record, has both PAL and NTSC in the one device, can remote reboot, has good FREE support by email from management, and yes they even allow companies like mine to use HAVA systems.
Since sling got sold the company has been on a downwards spiral.
Now HAVA did also once have a server connection problem but it was only a couple of hours and after I notified their techs they fixed it immediately. Why could not sling have had backups of their old servers and switched them on when this problem reared it's ugly head.
Anyways this is good for my business in China Japan Korea Russia as we have many bars owners and residential home users in those countries using HAVA's, the other bars using slingboxes don't know why they can't connect, dont know about the sling website or this website. We even stream to the good old USA lol
People see my bar customers are streaming fine around 1.5 – 2mb and ask why is it so?
I tell them it's the Great Firewall of Sling Media and they should simply pay me for a better service lol.
6:13 am
April 20, 2010
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Brandon C said: Apparently most people don't care that they are sending their info to Sling Media. But I bet if you posted the same info on the Answers site it would be killed real fast!The info they compile isn't really anything personal like what you are actually watching. It is more like how many hours you watch, what rates you are getting and thing like that. This has got to be hard on any hosting company. relying on a 3rd party to make sure your service works is a hard thing to have to do. It will be interesting to see if Sling changes anything incase this ever happens again.
Yes well I think you should post this bit of trivia on the sling forums. Not some trouble maker like me.
Now why would they want to kill that info? Is there a possibility those little info packets contain more than you think? After all they saying are they?
Well it's my fault for choosing to be a hosting company lol. More bandwidth than brains have I.
4:37 pm
karyuudo said:
Yeah I just tried myself and it would just hang on trying to connect to the watch.slingbox.com site. Totally messed up these guys are. I guess we just have to sit and wait it out until they fix the server problems. What are we on day 5 now? Ya FAIL is right.
k – my buddy works at Sling as an analyst. He and other IT experts have been up for days trying to fix the issue. The migration they performed was big – yes, there were some issues, but the plan was solid. You shouldn't be so hard on these guys. First, you bought a device that happens to come with a "free" service. As in, no monthly service fees. How many products and services can you say have that? Second, its 5 days, not 95 days (not that they are related, but did they fix the oil spill in 5 days??) Here's a thought. Why don't you take some time off from your TV and read a book, or go for a run (probably could use the exercise). Sling brought you placeshifting when everyone else brings you crap with service fees. Give them a break.
5:57 pm
April 23, 2010
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Sling really does a great job at bringing this technology to the masses. It will have its bumps. If you own a sling or hava you should have the following:
1. a static ip from your isp
2. a logmein account (or similar) installed on a pc that shares the same lan as the device.
You can always configure your sling to have zero dependences on sling media
6:51 pm
April 19, 2010
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Aaron said:k – my buddy works at Sling as an analyst. He and other IT experts have been up for days trying to fix the issue. The migration they performed was big – yes, there were some issues, but the plan was solid. You shouldn't be so hard on these guys. First, you bought a device that happens to come with a "free" service. As in, no monthly service fees. How many products and services can you say have that? Second, its 5 days, not 95 days (not that they are related, but did they fix the oil spill in 5 days??) Here's a thought. Why don't you take some time off from your TV and read a book, or go for a run (probably could use the exercise). Sling brought you placeshifting when everyone else brings you crap with service fees. Give them a break.
Aaron, Thanks for the input. We know you have been working hard on fixing the problem. I think what you are seeing here are complaints on how they are publicly handling it.
5:24 am
April 20, 2010
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Aaron said: k – my buddy works at Sling as an analyst. He and other IT experts have been up for days trying to fix the issue. The migration they performed was big – yes, there were some issues, but the plan was solid. You shouldn't be so hard on these guys. First, you bought a device that happens to come with a "free" service. As in, no monthly service fees. How many products and services can you say have that? Second, its 5 days, not 95 days (not that they are related, but did they fix the oil spill in 5 days??) Here's a thought. Why don't you take some time off from your TV and read a book, or go for a run (probably could use the exercise). Sling brought you placeshifting when everyone else brings you crap with service fees. Give them a break.
Crap… the oil spill didnt stop be getting fuel for my car and transportation services didnt break down. BP's little glitch was isolated to a small geographical area. Slings was a world wide outage Mr Numbnuts. See how many were complaining they could not be at home as they are overseas viewers. Who is going to help them out?
No monthly fees… hahahahaha where do you get the content and bandwidth to stream from then? No monthly fees so dont complain about the US$30 tech support fee being charged by sling media even when they knew there own servers were down. Right, good deal that is.
I bring them better than crap ( marginal to be true ) as a hosting company, but I charge service fees.
Not one of my sling customers lost the service they paid for. They simply switched to HAVA Platinums. HAHAHAHA sling server down there's always a solution. Wow they even like the picture quality better and ask why I didnt tell them before. I did I reply but you didnt want to pay for an unnecessary upgrade. Well all of a sudden it was necessary.
Many of my customers use the streaming in their bars to get content. Not exactly good to say hey, force majeure, tough luck slings servers are out of action. Fark that they reply, get me my sports or my bar loses it's customers. Get the drift?
Slingmedia only screwed up a major long planned migration with no sense of having a backup plan if it went wrong. Several year ago for a few days same crap happened with sling media, servers down. You learn from your mistakes yes? Unless you are sling media that is. Some of us have been streaming around that long. I'll give them a break, by dropping sling pros and classics off my 15 storey building one by one boxload at a time.
Slings plan was not solid, more like force fed diarrhea, it was a farce with no support for customers. The first people to tell others to try 1.5 with a direct IP ( not so good for pro and Pro HD users ) were forum members who have really been streaming a long time. The newbies on board the last 18 months havent got a clue.
Slingmedia even started deleting posts advising that till they realized, holy shite, a backup plan they couldnt think of themselves actualy helped out. Sling spent more time deleting posts than actually answering any queries. no MEA CULPA nothing until a few days had passed.
I could not imagine the shite that I would be given if my company had a few " server" problems for 10 days. Especially as some of my customers are licenced sports bookies that rely and consistant streaming with very low latency. Not from slings or HAVA's obviously.
Have I had problems with my services yes. We had an earthquake http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2006/Earth-Quake-Asia27dec06.htm that broke the major fiber trunk lines off the coast of Taiwan, affecting all of Asia and traffic to Japan and the USA a few years back. Everybody suffered very slow speeds for awhile. That problem had to be fixed by laying a few thousand kilometers of undersea fiber lines between several countries They did that faster than sling have with their servers not buried underwater.
Again last year that left my home village with no roads or power for nearly a month hit and also damaged fiber lines around Taiwan. Another small earthquake alos did some minor damage, relatively speaking. My office in Taipei was ok.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170126/typhoon_mora…..ables.html
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/190887/taiwan_earth…..ables.html
Some things you cannot have a backup for such as Typhoons and earthquakes.
Sling Media should have had backups in place. They simply did not due to their own arrogance. It had happened before with sling media, so therefor lightning doesnt strike in the same place twice right? And you think people should take it easy. I disagree. But hey thats just me I wonder how many IT and other management jobs will become availeble in the near future at sling media. Heads are going to roll surely.
Sling users are like MAC users, think they have gods hardware and software gift given to mere mortals. Now they know like the Japanese that nukes can happen twice and that the Emperor after all, isn't a living god.
Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice shame on all of you. I got fooled once with sling media. Never again.
I think many sling users now share this experience like this.
8:47 am
April 26, 2010
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Yesterday morning was a good day for my Slingbox (worked without a problem) but today, freak me… I can't even stream for a minute without it locking on Optimizing and then going to the shitter.
In regards to an earlier post from Aaron who's buddy is working at Sling. No I will NOT give them a break. You're a multi million dollar company offering a product that should work. When it doesn't work, you have an obligation to fix it. Whether I'm paying for a service fee or not isn't the point. I bought the product under these pretenses that it will work, and therefore it should damn well work.
Brandon pardon my rant here. It's just annoying the fact that Sling has more excuses than a welfare bum who says he can't get a job.
4:44 am
April 20, 2010
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karyuudo said: Brandon pardon my rant here. It's just annoying the fact that Sling has more excuses than a welfare bum who says he can't get a job.
Hehehehehe, maybe some of them will be on the doing that real soon
