The title says it all really.

I'm trying to stream video across our WAN from a cable TV STB at a remote site and then view it on a TV with a Slingcatcher.

The 'locked down' nature of the slingbox really pisses me off, I want to be able to view the output on any machine with VLC or Mediaplayer, not install some massive bloatware app. I'd like to be able to support more than 1 client at a time (not 100's at a time, more like 2 or 3). I want to be able to add the streamer by address from the UI of the receiver box and not sign up for some stupid 'account' with the supplier to link them all together that then requires me to poke holes in the corporate internet firewall just to make an internal connection between the two.

Then there's the Slingcatcher, what a POS. You can't add other web streams, it's super picky about what network drives it'll connect to and the picture quality sucks ass.

I'm loathed to have to install whole PC's at each end with VLC on, but right now they're the only option I have. I'd like something small and solid state that boots in 10 seconds like a slingbox and slingcatcher, but without all the crap that seems to go with it.

Anybody seen anything that would suit the bill? I know the Popcorn Hour, WDTV Live and eGreat M34A seem to get good reviews, but I need an encoding end too.

It's the encoding end you're going to run into the most difficulty finding. There are likely some software solutions which I believe have even been mentioned here before, but that necessitates what you've mentioned, installing a capable PC at one end. Software like Orb or that other one which I think starts with a "T" that Tony was looking at. You can also use SageTV. They may all require their own place-shifting software though, so you'll have to look more closely at them.

I don't know what codecs and protocols the Sling products use, but I'm fairly certain their platform is built to at least try and be robust and consistent. Whle also not pissing off the broadcast and content industry too much (ie. the restriction on placeshifting client connections).

With regards to VLC, I've used it simply to stream a video file over a network share on my own LAN and it seems to suck at that. It plays back local files well enough, but even over a rather fast LAN it chokes badly. Quicktime always seems to work fine, so I imagine it's all in the buffering code.

I thought the encoding side might give me grief.

On the whole I'm quite pleased with VLC. There's a heck of a lot you can do with it. The mosaic below was set up on a machine made from bits with just a DVB-S and a DVB-T card installed. Ideally I'd like to get the slingbox output on there, but you can't do that as they encrypt the stream. I'd also like to funnel the output of this mosaic to a real TV, hence another use for the slingcatcher.

I did a bit more searching around and I can't really find anything suitable other than what I've already mentioned. Or something similar, such as MythTV with VLC at the encoding end.

I'e also confirmed that with SageTV you'll need their Placeshifter software to do plug-and-play streaming, because it provides a local UI to the Sage server and its library contents. Alternatively, you can use VLC on the client side if you also install VLC on the capture side. This also requires installing a WebUI for SageTV (written by a third party but works quite well itself - mine is running 24/7, though not doing streaming duties).

You can watch your Slingbox through a small browser plugin at watch.slingbox.com. This is the method I use to watch a Slingbox Pro HD over the internet and I think the quality is superb (for what it is).

I also have a Hava Monsoon something or other. If you think Slingbox software is shitty, you have another thing coming. However, I do believe you would be able to watch the Hava through VLC, but you would be unable to change channels. Hava units are also somewhat compatible with Orb. I was able to watch the Hava on my iPhone (over 3G) through the iPhone Orb client, but was never able to get channel changing working with my DirecTV box. Other people have had success.

My parents have a Slingcatcher that they seem pleased with. They only use it to watch a Slingbox over the internet, so they have no opinion of the other multimedia features. I did have to recently buy a new power supply for it. Quality.

The most annoying thing is that the hardware for both devices is very good and were I using it at home, the software isn't too bad either. But because I'm using it in a professional environment with routers and VLANs and the like it just won't play ball. While you can add a Slingbox by IP address in the slingplayer application, you can't do the same on the slingcatcher.

I may just admit defeat and just build a tiny fanless Linux box with a hardware MPEG encoder and an SSD and be done with it.

It also appears none of those decoder boxes I mentioned earlier on will simply play arbitrary network video streams. Only stuff off network drives or places like Youtube. If anybody knows of a box you can just stick a URL in and off you go, please let me know. I want to get a bunch of them and just point them at a VLC server to stream live video.