[sokoloff]

It's somewhat common for ex-pats to have one of these devices hosted in their home country (at one of their places or at a friends) to watch some of the local programming (typically sports as most everything else can be found fairly easily online).

[listenallyall]

Exactly, for an expat the Slingbox was perfect (well, the idea was, the actual thing was buggy, but...). You had full control of the cable box, so you could still record shows, timeshift, watch on demand, etc. Plus it only cost about $100 with no monthly fees so it was better deal than "renting" multiple TV series.