3 Month Review of SlingTV & Chromecast

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Short Version: Huge Disappointment and unuseable.

Longer version:

Sling plays just fine and works great.... on my Android phone w/ 5" screen. But if I want to stream it to my 51" set via the Chromecast 2.0, forget it. It will hang and skip and downshift from 720p to what looks like 240p. All other streaming content going from my phone to the TV via the Chromecast 2.0 work fine and are smooth and never hang or downshift resolutions... YouTube, Netflix, and direct screen casting from the phone or laptop.

What's strange is the issue happened for awhile then went away after a simultaneous update of the SlingTV app and the Chromecast auto-updating it's firmware, but then after another update of the SlingTV app the stuttering, freezes, and downshifts are back and with a vengeance.

I give SlingTV a really big thumbs down.

http://downdetector.com/status/sling/news/147035-problems-at-sling

http://gizmodo.com/slingtv-is-so-bad-it-forced-me-back-to-cable-1786029642
 
I concur on SlingTV...waste of money. I had it for 5 months (90 day trial + 2 months paid) and just kicked it to the curb.
 
Netflix, YouTube, Prime, OTA & occasional HBO sub. My Internet is lightning fast, no taxes. Went from triple digits to double per month. Once you start adding all the wannabes the cost is higher than cable.

IMHO, there are too many Johnny come latelys to the streaming game. You need servers like Godzilla to host. And honestly the big boys just had too much of ahead start.

YouTube delivery model is the future of media consumption. Show -> viewer and screw the middle man. Honestly there's more interesting stuff to watch than "shows" (most of which are recycled claptrap) and pretend reality.

What little time I have for TV these days is in front of YouTube. Micro channels with a targeted audience.
 
I think I'm going to give DirecTV Now a try. They a a one-month free trial right now if you own a Roku player.

As for SlingTV, I used it some 2 years back on Roku 3 to access some Asian channels that I could not get through regular cable. It was working quite OK back then.
 
Originally Posted By: ChevyBadger
I have a Roku with Netflix and Amazon. Also watch some YouTube on it. I love it no problems.


I do the same. Love the Roku.
 
I have a Roku and no problems. Even though I have a bunch of free channels loaded most of the time I watch Sling or You Tube. But I must say I watch local ocer the air channels quite a bit more .
 
I have had sling for a year now on a Roku Premiere.

Zero hiccups on a 5ghz SSID at home.

People trying to sling HD content to the TV on a 4 inch unknown quality android phone shouldn't expect great results.

I also have a Roku 1, and it is very slow compared to the premiere, but still streams acceptably.

I had a chromecast paired to a newer samsung tablet, and prefer the remote control over a samsung tablet, so I went back to Roku.
 
LoL @ the unknown quality android phone comment. Moto X 2nd Gen, plenty of horsepower for streaming. So, tell me then... how come EVERYTHING ELSE off the phone streams perfectly? Netflix, Youtube, direct screen cast. No hangs, no buffering, no downshifts into 240p. Hum? What say ya?
 
Yep Roku is the device to have we have four of them been using them for years. Performance has been flawless. We also do OTA with a Channel Master DVR Plus. It's another fantastic device, it works just like any pay TV DVR...
 
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Here's my personal experience with SlingTV.

When I signed up for Sling there was a promotion where if you prepaid for 3 months of service you got $50 off at Best Buy on a compatible streaming device which I took advantage of. I've had SlingTV on a Roku 3 for close to 2 years, and my experience with it has been nothing short of good; at first there were some small quirks here and there on small occasions, but other than that I have nothing bad to say about it especially now since it has matured. Unlike now; initially: there was only one service available; then they added another one as a beta in which I ended up switching too due to different channels I would of rather had compared to the original content. Since I had chosen this BETA plan that had multi-streaming in addition to some newer channels - to this day I am still locked in to the $20 price (that's now the BLUE plan @ $25/month).


In December of 2016 they added CLOUD DVR as a BETA that you had to opt into with 100GB of storage. I haven't used it extensively since it's release, but for the times I have it's worked. I have the PC SlingTV app installed on my computer that I've watched shows on while my wife watches it simultaneously on the TV with no problems. I've also used the app on my phone on my lunch break to watch stuff with no problems. Several times a year they offer free preview on premium channels like HBO, STARZ, CINAMAX; of course recently they had HBO free for 4 days during a weekend, and well we got sucked into the Westworld series on the last day of the promotion. Along with Westworld; Game of Thrones(which we haven't watched in 3 years), along with whatever other content HBO offered, we decided to pay the extra $15 a month for it.



That being said, I was paying under $100 a month for internet, sling, and Netflix(4k) until I added HBO few weeks ago. After talking with several people I know their bills were significantly higher comparably.
 
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