How to watch recorded TV shows/episodes when overseas?

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

I stay overseas (at one location) for extended periods of time and have tried a couple of different solutions to keep up with my TV shows / TV episodes back home (in the US) with very limited success.

I tried a streaming solution hooked up to my cable box back home (Slingbox PRO-HD, slingbox), but faced two major issues:

1) without very high bandwidth it was impossible to watch a decent picture especially when watching on a TV screen.

2) with the time difference streaming in real time was actually a disadvantage.


So I have been trying to find a practical solution that would allow me to schedule the recordings of the shows I want and seamlessly download and view them overseas on to my laptop (or a specified computer if need be).

As far as I can tell I have a couple of options (would love to hear more if they are out there):
- Try to "network" 2 TiVo's (one back home in the US and one overseas) and try and trick them to work as if they were on one network and use the multi-room feature. I don't now if this can work?

- Use 2 Linux media centers or other networkable dvrs?

They key in either would be to have flexibility to reduce file size to get a bearable download time.

Any help is greatly appreciated.