SlingTV – my report

[leftyjace]

OK, so I went out and bought a new AppleTV 32G since I wanted to have one more for another TV in my house anyway. I got SlingTV and signed up for the 7 day free trial.

My thoughts are… if you don’t mind the $50 a month, it’s a good way to go.

The reason I say $50 is because if you want ESPN as well as the Fox Sports channels (like FS1), you need to have both the Orange & Blue package as well as the $10 sports expansion package to get the PAC-12 channels.

A couple of the stations are localized. Having all of the PAC-12 regionals are pretty darn awesome.

Watching the game I was surprised to find that I could “watch it from the beginning” and I could even pause it a bit. This must be new, as things I’ve read about SlingTV in the past said you couldn’t pause. Well, now you can. It doesn’t do full-on DVR functionality – you can’t save something and watch it later – but you can pause while you’re watching, and if you start watching sometime before the show’s regularly scheduled slot you can start it from the beginning or watch it Live, your choice.

Since I would only get it for the sports it seems overkill for me. I think I’ll be getting rid of it after the 7 day trial. But it was fun to watch the Ute game in (relatively) crystal clear HD on my TV versus another online stream. And it was also really cool to switch over and watch some of the other games on the other regionals.

So… if you’ve got the hardware and $50 is worth it for live TV, then go for it. I was pleasantly surprised.

[norm]

I watched the game on the trial too, and unfortunately my experience was mostly terrible.  It worked fine on my mobile phone, but on two separate Chromecasts and my desktop PC it constantly went to super low quality or just cut out completely for a couple of seconds about once every minute or two.  I don’t believe it was my network because it worked great on my phone using the same network connection and other streams work well.

Needless to say, I’m not going to keep the subscription as it wasn’t much better than an unauthorized online stream for me which is unfortunate because I would be willing to pay for the service if it was actually superior.

[leftyjace]

Ah. I see.
I guess I should have mentioned that I have the highest throughput that Comcast can give a non-business consumer.
And I also was using an AppleTV.

[norm]

Yeah, I did read that Chromecast support hasn’t been great so that may be a big part of it. Perhaps with AppleTV and your better Comcast service it would be fine. At any rate, I’m not trying to refute your experience, just giving my experience in case it’s helpful.

I would say that it’s worth it if one doesn’t have the issues I had during the trial period.

[norm]

And just now I find out I can’t use my Chromecast to watch Monday might football because of a rights agreement that won’t allow me to use a smartphone to watch that game.

I really wanted to like Sling TV :/

[Puget Ute]

Try using your Sling login on the WatchESPN app on your phone. And stream to your Chromecast. I can’t do that on my firetv, but it should work through your phone.

I have Sling and like it so far. I had quality issues until I plugged my android box directly into the network, but it works perfectly well through my FireTV (which is on the other side of the house). I am happy to have PAC-12 network with a bunch of on-demand games. That was a good surprise.

I just have Orange plus Sports, so I don’t have FoxSports. Note site what I will do this weekend for Arizona and for the ASU game. Probably use USIS’ stream on UStream.

But so far Sling works well for my needs.

[Tony (admin)]

I be your streaming issues @norm are because you have a slow connection, not because of Sling or the device you are using. Probably works ok on your phone because it’s a smaller screen width and doesn’t take as much throughput to stream on it.

I’m on a Roku and it is great. We are on the trial too and will probably do the full Orange/Blue/Pac-12 gig until football season ends.

[norm]

Maybe it’s speed, but I don’t have the same problems with Netflix. Also speed tests regularly show 20-30Mbps which should be plenty unless it’s fluctuating I guess. I don’t know…

[leftyjace]

I cancelled it this morning. Pretty easy process.
Man, I wish there was enough justification for me to keep it. But… I never used it, not once, the entire 7 days other than the Utah game last Saturday.