Sling.tv: My Experience
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Last night, I sub'd my family to Sling.tv. It offers a number of packages at pretty affordable rates, all without contract or equipment. Sling is a web-based tv content provider, similar to Hulu.
We decided to get both of the blue and orange packages for just $40/month, plus Cloud DVR (50 hours worth of recordings) for $5/month, like 4 packages (kids, news, sports, and comedy) for $10/month (a package is $5/month each), and Starz package for $9/month. When all is said and done, we're paying $64/month, which is nearly half of what we were paying with satellite, and we didn't have Starz then.
I first set it up on the LG TV that is connected to the network through its Sling app. It worked decently well. There was some buffering and the audio started out as mono, but eventually went to stereo. There is no "flipping through channels" as my wife likes to do, but get a navigation panel that is similar to Netflix. Also, we got our local FOX and NBC channels, but are missing our ABC and CBS channels. Other than missing CBS, we're pretty happy with the offerings.
Seems to be pretty easy to find and setup recordings from doing a search of a show or movie. Within an hour, my wife already had a movie setup to record, and I had already found the Doctor Who series and set that up for recording.
Other than the TV buffering, we are pretty happy. I think I'm going to change up some of the configurations in order to alleviate that buffering before I say its Sling, such as a Roku box, trying hard wire connections all of the way through, instead of over wifi, etc.
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Is it considered a "cable" account so you can log into the content providers apps with your sling username/password? For example , I can log into NickJr app on my table with my Fios account so the 4 year old can watch a show or play games.
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@jt1001001 said in Sling.tv: My Experience:
Is it considered a "cable" account so you can log into the content providers apps with your sling username/password? For example , I can log into NickJr app on my table with my Fios account so the 4 year old can watch a show or play games.
Haven't tried that yet. Might try that tonight.
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We cut the cord 3 or so years ago... We first tried sling.tv on an original FireTV Stick and it was a horrible experience; interface was super slow and the buffering was bad. We also had a Roku 3 that it worked great on, but the Roku was otherwise useless IMO. We had slingtv for about a year until they cancelled on us just recently (I think it was a billing glitch because we were never actually charged after the 7 or 10 day trial, whatever it was). Ultimately the service was solid if you had a semi-decent device to run it on. The bad part for us was that we were already so far removed from zombified channel scanning habits that most of the time we never even thought to switch on slingtv.
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@jt1001001 said in Sling.tv: My Experience:
Is it considered a "cable" account so you can log into the content providers apps with your sling username/password? For example , I can log into NickJr app on my table with my Fios account so the 4 year old can watch a show or play games.
Last I checked, you couldn't do this. Most of the auth apps don't even have our cable provider as an option, let alone sling.tv. You wouldn't need to do this anyway, because you'd just watch the channel on slingtv through your browser.
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I 'cut the cord' ~6 years ago, and simply started with OTA TV as I get solid service without needing an amplified antenna. I just recently picked up slingtv and added it to my Channel Master DVR+ box.
It's a nice feature and way better priced that classic cable or satellite service, so I can't ever see myself ever using anything else.
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@bnrstnr Problem is we pick and choose what our children watch (and usually watch with them to explain what is good and not so good) so we don't necessarily want them watching whatever show is on right that moment on the network.
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I'm considering supplementing local channels with a plex server and an HDHomeRun since Plex just released Live TV. Now if only Plex will find a way of bringing in Sling and Netflix.
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@jt1001001 said in Sling.tv: My Experience:
@bnrstnr Problem is we pick and choose what our children watch (and usually watch with them to explain what is good and not so good) so we don't necessarily want them watching whatever show is on right that moment on the network.
We aren't as picky, but we hate the idea of "whatever is on now" and so avoid that stuff for a similar reason.
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@nerdydad Are you wireless? You sound like you're wireless.
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@wirestyle22 said in Sling.tv: My Experience:
@nerdydad Are you wireless? You sound like you're wireless.
Yup. I'm going to do some home and network modifications so that I can cut the wireless out.
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I had sling.tv subscription over a year ago and it was horrible experience. Initially everything worked just fine, but about 2 weeks into, outages started happening every evening. AMC or Epix was impossible to watch. Picture quality also wasn't the best, someone reverse-engineered their streams to find it wasn't even 720p. We switched to PS Vue after 3 months, it currently is $55/mo for one of the higher packages (I think they have 4 available). There's no comparison in quality and reliability, Sony wins here.
