thing is awesome...esp. if you travel...
I was lucky enough to have my brother who lives in the U.S. send me one the very first week they hit the shelves down there -- (although I paid about $400 U.S. at the time) -- well worth it IMHO -- have had it for months with no hardware or software glitches and use it every day at work.
Super easy to hook up, decent software packaged with it (have needed to install a few patches, but nothing big...)
I've got it looped through my grey-market Directv with Tivo and can watch anything I want from my laptop, anywhere in the world that has a high-speed connection.
Even from my older IBM plain-jane laptop, RIGHT NOW, as I type this, I'm watching CNN in a window (streamed from my house) at approx. 406 Kbps ( close to what you'd get from a decent Real Networks stream, and that's even through my network here at the office slowing it down I'm sure.)
If I shut everything down and just have SlingPlayer running, I can get a better stream. Full screen is so-so ( old laptop too ) but at 50% of screen, it's remarkably good quality. Best use so far -- if you're in a hotel with high-speed and want to watch a movie from your Tivo at home, it's perfect.
2T