Slingbox

Beginning with v11, XBMC can function as a Slingbox client.

In order to add a Slingbox, add a source in the following format: sling://username:password@slingboxaddress:port/input

Where username is either "administrator" or "viewer" and slingboxaddress is either an IP address or DNS name that you can resolve locally and input is the input number you want to watch. Input is optional, if none is specified it will default to the first input. Port is also optional, it will default to 5001 (default Slingbox port) if none is specified.

If you want to change the default connection settings for connecting to your Slingbox, you can create a SlingboxSettings.xml file in the userdata folder (where the AdvancedSettings.xml file would normally be created also, for example) with the following layout:

Every setting is optional, so if you only want to override the audio bitrate, then that's all you have to specify, all the other settings will keep their default values.

If you need your Slingbox to send IR commands to control whatever your source is, you need to enter your button details in the button section. Currently only the channel up/down and 0-9 buttons are supported. They need a value somewhere between 00 and FF in hexadecimal notation. There are a few ways to find the correct values. One is by trial and error (most Slingboxes tested had values under 50 for all these buttons). Another method is to analyse the network traffic between the Slingbox and Sling Player ... not a very user friendly act. The third method is to get the information from the Sling Player itself. To do so, open Sling Player and go to your Slingbox directory. Select your Slingbox and then the Edit button. Next select the Information tab. Look for a field called Key Codes or IR Codes. The IR code for button 1 maps to the fourth character in the Key Codes field. The IR code for button 2 maps to the fifth character, and so on. The correct mapping for the channel up/down IR codes still hasn't been determined. Please remember that the codes listed in Sling Player are in decimal notation, while in XBMC they need to be listed in hexadecimal format.



One good source for IR codes is the JP1 forums for Slingbox Custom Remotes. If you find your source device listed, download the zip file. For my device (a Tivo Premiere) there was an enclosed zip file that had remote control definitions. Property.xml contained all the remote code mappings available on the remote.

If you are connecting to more than one Slingbox, you can specify settings for them separately, by adding hostname=slingboxaddress to the slingbox entry in SlingboxSettings.xml ... so it would look something like this: