Internet Viewing Picture Quality: Some common reasons for poor picture quality

 Issue

Solution

The upload speed of the Internet connection in your home may not be fast enough to host your Slingbox.

Contact your Internet provider and see about upgrading your Internet service. To use a Slingbox, your home Internet service should have a minimum upload speed of 256 Kbps. But that's the absolute minimum: the faster the upload speed, the better the picture you see when you're away from home.

The download speed in your remote location may be too slow for a good stream from the Slingbox.

Not much you can do here other than changing locations! Or, if you're in a hotel, you might try Internet Viewing during non-peak Internet traffic times (such as early in the morning or late at night).

The stream that you're using may be passing through a virtual private network (VPN) or though a proxy server.

With a VPN, all of your network traffic is directed through this VPN connection, which can slow things down. Some VPN client software applications have a feature that lets your computer bypass the VPN for network connections that don't involve your company's network (such as connecting to your Slingbox). Contact your local network administrator for help doing this.

Your computer may be downloading something in the background while you're streaming.

Check your browser's download manager. You can either wait for the download to finish, or stop it entirely.

If you're streaming on a Wi-Fi network, you may have a weak signal.

Look at your Wi-Fi hotspot's signal strength. Move closer to the hotspot source if the signal strength is low.

If you're streaming from outside of your home network, others at home may be taking up network capacity.

Someone at home may be doing something that's affecting your home network temporarily. You can wait until later, or call the house and make it clear that watching the game with your Slingbox is more important than whatever they're doing! (Just don't say it in those words.)