SlingPlayer for iPad hit the App Store earlier in the week giving Slingbox owners a chance to sling their television content from their Slingbox to their iPad, but is the new app any good? We’ve gone hands-on to try it out.

In the UK the iPad app is £17.99 from the iTunes store in the UK and $29.99 in the iTunes US store. It’s the same price as the iPhone version and if you’ve already got that then the bad news is, that you’ll have to pay for this one as well. It’s not simply an app that services both devices.

Once you’ve got over that fact, and downloaded the new app there is a second hurdle to jump; it only works with the Slingbox SOLO or Slingbox PRO-HD. Other units (Slingbox PRO, Slingbox AV, Slingbox TUNER, or Slingbox Classic) just aren’t supported. If you don’t own either of those devices and want it to work with your iPad you’re going to have to go and buy a new one.

If you have got those, and are ready to roll then the process is very easy and straightforward. You log into your Slingplayer account, pair the device up and away you go.

The app lets you stream anything from your Slingbox to the iPad and of course control it via the on screen icons and menu options.

That means the ability to change channel, or if you’re using the PRO-HD box the option to change device.

The Slingplayer for iPad app allows you to stream via 3G or Wi-Fi, although we have to warn that if you are planning on doing it via Wi-Fi then you really must make sure you are on a good data package. We wouldn’t recommend doing it abroad either.

Depending on the quality of your Wi-Fi network will depend on quality of the feed.

As for controls, it’s either via a range of swiping motions or on screen menus to access your feed and it’s all very responsive – swiping up for example is next channel, swiping left and right jumps between favourites you’ve stored.

Overall the experience, once you get over the intitial hurdles is very good and if you have a Slingbox and an iPlayer this is certainly one way of getting your TV anywhere around the home or the world. 

- VIDEO: SlingPlayer on the Apple iPad