64 Slingbox User Guide
Encoding Settings
You may never need to adjust the streaming characteristics when using the Slingbox. However, you can fine-tune the SlingStream based on the type of content
you’re currently viewing. These are the three TV profiles to which you can optimize the streaming experience:
•Low Action: Best used when the content you are watching has little action
but many details.
•Medium Action: Works best for most content, and should be your default
setting.
•High Action: Use during action movies and sporting events.
Manually adjusting the streaming characteristics
If you would like to make manual adjustments to your TV viewing experience,
select the manually adjust stream parameters option. When in manual mode,
SlingStream does not actively monitor or adjust the video quality. If your net-
work conditions vary, you may experience poor video streaming. You’ll probably
always want to use SlingStream mode, but feel free to tinker with the settings.
Video bitrate: the higher the video bitrate the higher the quality of video.
Video frames per second: anything below 10 frames per second looks jumpy;
above 20 looks fairly smooth.
I-Frame interval: While streaming video over a network, compression technolo-
gies are used to only show the incremental difference between each frame, and
I-frames are used to help keep the video looking normal. When intervals are
shorter, the video quality is higher but uses more bandwidth. You may be able to
increase to higher numbers and still have very good video quality.
Video smoothness: When video is “smoother,” action scenes appear more nat-
ural, but details are fuzzier. When video is sharper, action may be jumpier, but
more details are preserved. To maximize smoothness, move the control all the
way to the left. To maximize sharpness, move the control all the way to the right.
Audio bitrate: This setting cannot be changed while streaming.