I recently was able to get a Slingcatcher and now I'm trying to connect to my box in Japan. However the Slingcatcher cannot connect to the box at all, yet the software that you can use on the PC works fine. I believe this has to do with the way I set the Slingbox up where I had to force it to use SNATT rather than TCP for the connection by not opening the TCP port.

My question is, is that if I open that TCP port up, will the Slingbox revert back to using TCP again rather than SNATT or will it just continue to use SNATT?

For those basically wondering why I blocked the  TCP port, I had a problem where my Slingbox Pro-HD would constantly try and optimize and freeze while using TCP. Whereas with SNATT it won't freeze at all.

Hmm has Slingbox done anything since to fix this problem that everyone was having with it stopping to Optimize? I don't think there's been a new firmware update since 1.4.60 right?

Well I just tried changing the settings on the box to the old ones and although it did get the Slingcatcher to work, as usual it would do that freeze crap again. So I changed it back and it works properly, however I cannot use the Slingcatcher… gotta love how you waste $300 to find out you can't use a product. My only thought about this whole thing is that fault could be on the Buffalo router and how it handles the TCP connection to the Slingbox. Although I'm not sure what I can do exactly to fix this kind of issue other than to ask Sling to program a fix for the Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N router…

Really eh? So basically there's no real way of fixing this TCP latency issue? I can't return the Slingcatcher unfortunately. My only option is to sell it. Of course I'm sure I can get the money back on it considering it's a hot item right now… still it kinda bumbs me out that I spent money to get it in the first place.

What's your latency to your location? Is going with a differnt provider an option?

I recently bought a SC because we got a fiber line installed in the remote location (HK). The latency to the US is around 200-250ms, the upload speed of the fiber service is 20Mbps max. I guess my stream quality is a function of the latency, the upload bandwidth is not the limiting factor here. I get around 800kbps for a 640x480 stream and 1000-1400kbps for a "HD" stream. The quality is great when the connection is good. It does slow down everyday at 10pm PST and crawls to 100-200k..not good. But I can live with that as long as it comes back.

In HK a 100Mbps fiber line (20M to overseas locations) costs about $13 US bucks a month, so it's a no brainer for me to switch from cable to fiber.

I'm wondering if making an attempt to test the MTU to find out what works might solve this TCP issue. When I was checking the logs last night for the router. It said there was 4 errors detected with the connection at some point… I'm assuming that is when it was dropping the connection to the slingbox…

I found this one article on changing the MTU…

http://help.expedient.com/broadband/mtu_ping_test.shtml

It's so strange… i followed that article and i managed to figure out that my MTU should be 1426 + 28 so = 1454… but doing that screws the whole connection up on the router and i can't connect at all. I think it's a lost cause really. I should just park the Slingcatcher on Ebay and sell it .

Well what can you do right? I guess I'll be building myself an HTPC, unless you have a suggestion on a good one that I can get? ;)