OTHER TECH

Day 3

"I am now watching TV on the computer," Kevin reports via cellphone from his home office. "I just got the Slingbox working. My wife's in the living room trying to watch Without a Trace, but I remotely changed the channel through the computer, so she just got pissed at me." Ahh, those HomePlug family shenanigans.

To set up, Kevin simply connected the Slingbox to a power source and the satellite receiver in his basement theater. He then installed some software in his upstairs computer. "And the picture's perfect," he says. "It's pretty neat that you don't have to run wire around. Even with traditional wireless, I've run into spots that don't work that well, like in the basement."

Making the box sling, thus, proved much easier than taming the HAL 9000. Speaking of which, "I took the security stuff to my office today and loaded it on my computer there, just to see if it looked any different. Everything loaded right away - I didn't have any of the problems I had before. So my install problems were mainly Denise's computer. And the picture looked nicer on my work computer. I don't know if that has to do with the computer or the wiring in the house."