Sling TV Adds A&E, History Channel, Lifetime and More

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Dish Network’s Sling TV is sticking to its growth paradigm and is continuing to incrementally add channels to its lineup. This week Sling added The History Channel, H2, Lifetime and A&E, bringing the standard streaming package up to 20 channels, while still keeping the base price at $20 bucks. :cool:

Sling TV is available through the service’s iOS and Android apps, as well as apps on the Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, Roku streaming boxes and Xbox One.
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My father and I were just saying "if only they added the history channel" a few days ago. Now it seems like it has every channel we watch. :D
 
This is getting interesting. Cable used to offer a "basic" cable package for about $20. I recall getting local channels + a few extras. Minus the local channels, this is similar in quantity. Seems like a good value.
I have an OTA antenna for local (80% happy with this - I have a big antenna in my attic and get decent reception. I need to move my antenna to the roof and it will probably be damn near perfect). I'm going to get a DVR for this soon - then I'll have streaming local channels to my tv's.
I'm contemplating SlingTV. I just wish it were not Dish network. I hate that company.
 
I must have been living under a rock because Ive never heard of Sling TV. I cut the cord over a year and a half ago and dont regret it other than a few sporting events but sometimes wish I had some more channels than Netflix. This looks very good to me. Theyve got ESPN and now with History channel, TNT and TBS, I gotta admit that this looks like something I may wind up getting.
 
I've had Sling TV for a couple weeks now and overall the experience has been good. They need to improve their infrastructure a bit though. The sheer number of viewers for shows like The Walking Dead has been known to bring the stream to a halt.
 
Bought a Firestick last year and it just sat in the box until Sling came online. The only real criticism is the menu/listing setup. Be nice if they would rip off the DirecTV listing style so I can see what the hell is on a lot quicker. This along with 18 channels of OTA, and a few little known websites do the job.

DirecTV and my $90/month, ye shall not be missed.
 
So Ive been checking it out and it looks pretty solid. The only downside is that youve gotta sit thru all the commercials and cant pause and then fast forward thru them. Not a huge deal but still annoying. Might still be worth $20/month though especially for the wife who I know misses her cable but not the $110/month bill. I think I will give this a try. 7 day free trial and no contract so I wouldnt be out anything if I didnt like it.
 
The quality is shit on a lot of the channels, so keep that in mind. It's not even halfway to Netflix quality, a lot of it is 480p. The sports streams are also 1-3 minutes behind the actual event. Minor annoyance if you have an app that updates the scores for you, I just mute my phone while watching but just wanted to mention it. If I could get BeinTV anywhere else I would cancel right away. I'll try some of the other channels, hopefully they are better.
 
How is the quality? What's the deal with the commercials? This looks like exactly what I wanted when we were paying close to $100 for cable.
 
travanx said:
How is the quality? What's the deal with the commercials? This looks like exactly what I wanted when we were paying close to $100 for cable.
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OK so its up and running. Seems to be good quality picture and easy to navigate around in. Its got ESPN so Ill like it cause Im sick of missing out on big college football games. Best part is that during college football season I can get the Sports package which includes the SEC Network for $5/month extra and not miss any of my Vols games, then take it off after the season is over.

Wife seems to like it because its got the Food Network and HGTV which she watches a lot of. Not bad at all for $20.

The deal with commercials is that youve just got to watch them unless you switch the channels. You cant fast forward thru them as I understand it but I just started playing with it. May be a workaround or something I just didnt know about.

7 day free trial so its nothing to lose to check out especially if youve got a Roku or something like I do. Took all of 2 minutes to set up and I just use the Roku remote and it works just like my old Dish receiver.
 
I checked into SlingTV mainly because I wanted something besides liberal bias news programs. They offer CNN.
Pure sh*t.
 
xIronCrossx said:
The quality is shit on a lot of the channels, so keep that in mind. It's not even halfway to Netflix quality, a lot of it is 480p. The sports streams are also 1-3 minutes behind the actual event. Minor annoyance if you have an app that updates the scores for you, I just mute my phone while watching but just wanted to mention it. If I could get BeinTV anywhere else I would cancel right away. I'll try some of the other channels, hopefully they are better.
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Wow, my experience has been pretty good. Little difference between Sling vs Netflix, Crackle, Hulu, and Amazon. Quality has been very good.

Now if I can get the wife to quit binge watching entire seasons of shows at a time, Diversify dammit!!
 
My experience with it during the trial period was good. I canceled because I only watch an hour a day max and couldn't stand the commercials.
 
Hmm might have to actually get this now! I hope discovery channel gets added to this one day!
 
DogsofJune said:
Wow, my experience has been pretty good. Little difference between Sling vs Netflix, Crackle, Hulu, and Amazon. Quality has been very good.

Now if I can get the wife to quit binge watching entire seasons of shows at a time, Diversify dammit!!
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Have you tried BeinTV or ESPN? The rest may be good, but both of those are pretty atrocious and ESPN is probably one of the biggest appeals of SlingTV :(
 
ESPN looked pretty good on my feed. I sat and watched some college basketball for a little while and it was a solid picture. I wouldnt call it super bad ass high def or anything but it was certainly good enough and comparable to the compressed picture you get with Dish or DirecTV.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Have you tried BeinTV or ESPN? The rest may be good, but both of those are pretty atrocious and ESPN is probably one of the biggest appeals of SlingTV :(
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I saw that to some degree on the Amazon Fire Stick (and my PC experience was entirely unacceptable) but every feed looks great on the Xbox One. I attribute it partly to WiFi issues and partly to huge differences in app quality (XBO was better in every way, video quality and interface quality).
 
Babbster said:
I saw that to some degree on the Amazon Fire Stick (and my PC experience was entirely unacceptable) but every feed looks great on the Xbox One. I attribute it partly to WiFi issues and partly to huge differences in app quality (XBO was better in every way, video quality and interface quality).
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That might be it, I mostly watched on my PC or my laptop. Quality seemed great on my phone, although it's a smaller screen so I thought that's why. Sadly I don't have a Roku or Xbox One to test it out on. Hopefully they can make it better on PC though, because it's unacceptable on there.
 
xIronCrossx said:
That might be it, I mostly watched on my PC or my laptop. Quality seemed great on my phone, although it's a smaller screen so I thought that's why. Sadly I don't have a Roku or Xbox One to test it out on. Hopefully they can make it better on PC though, because it's unacceptable on there.
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It was bizarre that the video was so terrible on the PC, especially since it's not part of the browser and is instead its own program. Granted, the PC I'm using isn't the greatest (or even good) but it's a video stream, not the latest game. Netflix and Hulu go right up to [streaming] HD but Sling was so bad that I uninstalled it. Maybe they aimed at better-equipped PCs but if so then they're dummies.
 
On my wired fire TV... Espn has a jitter to it. All of the other channels are fine. On my wireless fire stick espn constantly gets blurry but all other channels are fine. It's good enough I guess.
 
History channel sucks. It's mostly just reality trash now. Pickup history international and I might be interested.
 
steakman1971 said:
This is getting interesting. Cable used to offer a "basic" cable package for about $20. I recall getting local channels + a few extras. Minus the local channels, this is similar in quantity. Seems like a good value.
I have an OTA antenna for local (80% happy with this - I have a big antenna in my attic and get decent reception. I need to move my antenna to the roof and it will probably be damn near perfect). I'm going to get a DVR for this soon - then I'll have streaming local channels to my tv's.
I'm contemplating SlingTV. I just wish it were not Dish network. I hate that company.
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I have a broadcast antenna and honestly we pick up about 30 channels that way. But maybe 8 of them are worth watching. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, The Justice network, meTV, GritTV, CreateTV. We get another called "BounceTV" with is Afrocentric programming. The rest are shopping channels and wacko name it and claim it/faith healer/cult religions channels.
Really the ONLY thing I care about watching is the news in the morning while I have a cup of coffee.
One of the local newstations has a "rollover broadcast" on a different station. But it is liking watching The View because it is a bunch of worthless girl talk. And they call that news. The liberal bias on the big 3 networks really pisses me off.
Would get SLINGtv if they had FoxNews.
 
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