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5:24 pm
My bad for editing what my wife said about polarity on the caps. She was suggesting that the "giant-brained engineers" that the Sling Media moderator/censor is leaning on for authority might want to take five seconds to check before packing the returned Solos for component level testing.
I checked again tonight, and she definitely agrees with pwongkk that these caps should be a stinky mess if installed backwards. (If I understand her correctly, a slow death would require a sustained applied reverse voltage under a volt.)
8:47 pm
Moderator
April 19, 2010
jin said:
haha, that video is great! i actually had no idea what capacitors did until now so am very pleased to learn something new. thanks for the write up and post brandon. if mystified and frustrated slingbox owners actually end up taking their boxes apart and see bulging caps, they will owe the solution to you.
jin
Looks like eferz on the answers.Slingbox site saw the same video. http://answers.slingbox.com/thread/2057
It is very funny how they use the cat.
8:51 pm
Moderator
April 19, 2010
Another SlingBox Solo success story regrading the capacitors. By EagleIDEyes. This is not just one unrelated problem…
——————————————————–
SWEETNESS!!!
About 6 months ago my Slingbox Solo started exhibiting the failure systoms discussed in this thread. I tried everything, including calls to tech support which were very unsatisfying. I am an electrical engineer and am pretty comfortable working on circuit boards. Even so, I didn't think it could be the capacitors. I was wrong. Having nothing else to lose with a Slingbox Solo that is out of warranty, I opened the box. Here's how it went down…
1.) Box was difficult to open until I read the part about the hidden screws under the rubber feet.
2.) The capacitors were clearly bulged and showing signs of excess pressure.
3.) The local Radio Shack had the two 470uF caps I needed. They were 30V caps, but that exceeds the original caps in my box which were 16V.
4.) The caps were difficult to remove with my relatively low temp soldering iron. This must be lead-free (high temp) solder. It took a little more effort, but the caps eventually came out.
5.) Installed the new caps.
6.) Reassembled the box.
7.) Fired it up and all self tests and initializations were completed without error.
8.) Tested streaming on my local lan.
9.) No problems – the streaming WILL NOT STOP!
Problem solved.
Total investment: ~$2.50 for the capacitors and about 30mins of time.
Thanks to all who correctly isolated this problem to the caps. It worked for me and I am once again able to use my Slingbox!
4:36 pm
My SlingBox Solo started to die in exactly the way described by others…after perusing the incredibly long thread on Sling's forums, I was directed here. I just took apart my SlingBox and what do you know…two bulging capacitors! I'm going online right now to order a soldering iron and some replacements.
Thanks for posting this!
6:54 pm
Moderator
April 19, 2010
Paul Abbott said:
My SlingBox Solo started to die in exactly the way described by others…after perusing the incredibly long thread on Sling's forums, I was directed here. I just took apart my SlingBox and what do you know…two bulging capacitors! I'm going online right now to order a soldering iron and some replacements.
Thanks for posting this!
Paul, glad you figured it out. Let us know how it does after you replace them.
Several folks have posted the same issue over at answers.slingbox.com and their post is deleted so fast that it's hard to help them figure it out.
Glad you did though!
8:23 pm
Hi,
I don't know if I have the same problem you guys are referring to but I will explain it in case there is. I just bought a slingbox, hooked it up, and connected to it on my laptop. Got the remote control working and everything, played around for about 15 mins with no problems. Then decided to try accessing it on another computer in the house to see how that worked. It worked fine for a few minutes and then started to have connection problems where I would have to re-enter my password. It would work for 30 seconds or so, then cut out again, re-enter password. The working time became less and less until now it won't even connect at all. I noticed the box is a little hot after the few hours since I unpacked it and tried to get it to work.
Did I do something wrong by trying to access it on another computer? Could something inside have just heated up and eventually fried completely? I don't want to open up the box as it is brand new, but does this sound like something I should send the box back for, or is it something related to my computers that I can fix without replacing the box?
9:02 am
Moderator
April 19, 2010
Try unplugging it for a few hours and then plug it back in and see if it does the same thing were it gets hot and stops working. If so I would send it back and get a replacement.
10:25 pm
Well I hadn't used my slingbox in quite some time. moved last August and the unit was setup idling away.
Now I am English and an insanely passionate soccer fan. Live in Canada and with the world cup timeshifting I thought it may be nice to sit out on my patio and watch a game on my Laptop.
My unit is a PRO-HD and it took a while for me to stumble across this link. The issue I had was that I could not connect to the slingbox over the phone or local. I went to look at the unit and there was no network light. Wasted a good hour, at first scratching my head and then trying to find a solution on line when all else failed.
Slings website does have a mention that if you have no network light that you should look at everything else on not the slingbox.
After reading through this post I decided to crack it open and check it out. Being a little bit hesitant as in the past I got screwed by doing this with my XBOX360, the next day they announced that they would honour all repairs of there cheap assembly also.
Low and behold the 2 16V capacitors are bulging with leaking capacitors. I will be picking up a couple of capacitos tomorrow to replace. The unit will probably be better off for putting a better capacitor in the unit anyway and maybe get a few more years out of the unit
Back to work on Monday, Lots of world cup soccer to watch and not enough hours in the day….Need my unit up and running fast.
Thanks to all for their insight and success stories
2:40 pm
Moderator
April 19, 2010
I will be interested in hearing if that fixes the problem on your SlingBox Pro HD.
Can you tell us if they are they same as the pnes pictured for the SlingBox Solo? Even better if you could take a few pictures of them.
Edit….
Mark,
Did you post the same thing on the Answers.Slingbox site and now it has been removed? I thought I saw it there earlier. If not then never mind…
12:28 pm
There has not been an "official" update or post from a known admin or mod for over a week. But someone has stepped in and seems to be a voice for sling even though they claim not to be. Completely defending slings policies as fair.
Interesting to say the least.
3:21 pm
June 10, 2010
Yeah, that's me. :P
Its all a mater of perspective I suppose. I've worked in call centers in my youth like Sega back when the Gensis was out, and the Learning Company with their Reader Rabbit software.
I understand what those guys have to go through. There are policies in place that limit what they can and cannot say. I know when you deal with other departments, they're very tight lipped to the customer service department. Most of the communication regarding something of this magnitude needs to be signed off by legal.
So, sure it sounds like I'm speaking for them but in all honesty I'm not. I'm just speaking because I'm able to see things from both sides. They're probably letting me get away with whatever I say in order to calm down the masses. Hell, one of those assholes edited out a post of mine where I told Quesnoy to just pretend that he's doing the troubleshooting, I guess they didn't like that. I put it back though, so fuk'em to whomever tried to censor me.
Now consider another company with similar issues, only with much more resources and a much larger user base. Remember the "Ring of Death"? I'm referring to video chip overheatting in the X-Box 360 that killed it. Since it was released back in 2005, there were cases of RoD failures reported from many places all over the web for two years. But did they do a mass recall? No, in fact, it wasn't till 2007 did they finally admit the problem and offer an extended warranty. Which means your system needs to fail before they will exchage it. They still won't trade my original 360 that I got from launch because it hasn't failed yet.
The only way for a company like that, to get attention to escalate this issue, is to do what California did against Microsoft in 2009. Yep, start a Class Action Lawsuit. Instead of being a bunch of whiny bitches on a forum, get off your duffs and take legal action. It's really the only way to force their hand and get the response that some of you guys are looking for.
Until then just do as they say because that's all that the policy will allow them to do anyways. But, like I said… the current policy in place is more than fair. It gets owners with a replacement system and it provides them with enough data for their bean counters to make a viable business descision.
5:54 pm
Moderator
April 19, 2010
Jason said:
There has not been an "official" update or post from a known admin or mod for over a week. But someone has stepped in and seems to be a voice for sling even though they claim not to be. Completely defending slings policies as fair.
Looks like something has come down from corporate on how to handle this topic. There still are several posts being deleted but it looks like they have been told "hands off" when it comes to replying.
eferz mentioning the policy is probably a good maybe the "me too" people will stop and read the information instead of jumping to conclusions.
7:11 pm
Moderator
April 19, 2010
eferz said:
Until then just do as they say because that's all that the policy will allow them to do anyways. But, like I said… the current policy in place is more than fair. It gets owners with a replacement system and it provides them with enough data for their bean counters to make a viable business descision.
The policy is pretty fair. It is not explained that well in their posts but they have stepped up in a way.
Sling Media's communication issues have been around for years. I have been Slinging since the time when I could just discuss with Blake the ins and outs of the Slingbox in person to now where you can't talk to anyone.
Without getting into things I can't talk about, I understand the average users frustration with the Sling Media product. It seems they go one direction then change paths to another. Let's just say there is a reason good people like Jeremy T, Megazone, Dave Zatz, Sharon Rylander and others no longer work there.
7:27 pm
I just wanted to stop by and say thank you guys for the info about this. I've been lurking on the Sling forums for at least a month now waiting for them to tell us why this was happening. I found my way here and decided to crack my slingbox solo open since it was out of warranty anyways… Funny how anything that breaks is just out of warranty.
No surprise, two bad capacitors here. I have almost no experience soldering but I managed to replace the capacitors with some radioshack one's rated at 35v so this should never happen again. Knock on wood. I haven't fully tested it yet but it seems to run pretty well although it did disconnect once with the same error I had beforehand.
Assuming this solved the problem and there isn't also an underlying firmware issue I still think with the apparently terrible customer support they have I'm likely to never buy a Sling product again.
7:46 pm
April 19, 2010
mjsmith said:
I just wanted to stop by and say thank you guys for the info about this. I've been lurking on the Sling forums for at least a month now waiting for them to tell us why this was happening. I found my way here and decided to crack my slingbox solo open since it was out of warranty anyways… Funny how anything that breaks is just out of warranty.
No surprise, two bad capacitors here. I have almost no experience soldering but I managed to replace the capacitors with some radioshack one's rated at 35v so this should never happen again. Knock on wood. I haven't fully tested it yet but it seems to run pretty well although it did disconnect once with the same error I had beforehand.
Assuming this solved the problem and there isn't also an underlying firmware issue I still think with the apparently terrible customer support they have I'm likely to never buy a Sling product again.
Glad you got it working.
At this point if someone asks us what slingbox to buy we would suggest a Pro or a Pro HD and to stay away from the SlingBox Solo. There are just too many posts about the capacitors going bad in the Solo. Sling Media may never own up to it but at this point it is apparent that the capacitor problem is an issue.
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