The Slingbox Personal Broadcaster from Sling Media
Sling Media's Slingbox, made in the wonderful likeness of a candy bar (and almost as tasty), brought place-shifting to the masses this year, allowing you to view and control your TV from anywhere with an Internet connection. The perfect gift for that Desperate Housewives-deprived road warrior, the $250 device sits between your TV and your PC, hooking up with S-Video, RCA, and Ethernet, and acts as a remote control to change channels on your TV, or even shuffle through your DVR recordings or start a DVD playing. The video is then streamed straight from your home to wherever you'd like tune into the video stream — could be a hotel room, or just the next room over. No subscription is required and the setup is fairly straightforward, though watch out for cross continental fights over the remote control. There isn't any support for recording the streamed media, but if you can overlook that little inconvenience, you'll find yourself someone a pretty slick solution in the Slingbox this holiday season.
