Got it in one.
Correct, most apps require a login/subscription, and CW is a distinct exception.
About 4-5 commercial breaks scattered throughout. I’ve seen the house ad for Jane The Virgin a whole buncha times when watching Supergirl, The Flash or Legends of Tomorrow. Overall, it’s about 42-45 minutes versus the traditional hour, so it’s less time than watching the original broadcast as-is, but it’s a few minutes more of commercials compared to manually time-shifting it.
The commercial issue is found in nearly all the network specific apps, but it’s a small price to pay considering in most cases… it’s the only price paid.
CW superhero shows clock in around 52 minutes with their commercials through the app. I use them when exercising and just double checked my workout times for the last few days.
What’s “fun” is when sometimes you get a full commercial break with nothing but commercials for CW shows.
And watching four shows a week with that app means I’ve almost always got that “Dare to Defy” jingle stuck in my head, another risk worth mentioning!
I liked it when Oprah told me how easy it was to eat bread every single day… every ten minutes or so. As streaming gets better and more popular, we usually see the commercials improve.
Also, when an application fails, NBC has this problem more often than others, it’s often a failure shifting to a dang commercial.
Rather than deal with apps for network shows, I have a DVR and TV antenna. I get about 35 OTA channels in the Seattle area. Many are crap (shopping, religious, etc.) but I get CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CW, and Fox, and most of those have subchannels that show stuff like old movies and TV shows. Plus OTA TV has far less compression than cable/satellite/streaming. You can check AntennaWeb.org to get an idea what you’ll need to get the networks in your area.
That plus Amazon/Netflix/Hulu/various Xbox One TV apps make me not miss DirecTV at all.
Google’s throwing their hat in the ring finally:
$35/month includes the main OTA networks however Turner channels are noticeably absent. I think Vue is still the better offering but the 9 month DVR is a nice feature.
Why the hell can’t we get cheaper packages without sports? I mean seriously. I am not paying for ESPN. I’m not going to do it.
Six accounts, each with its own DVR, and three simultaneous streams offers interesting possibilities for friends/family splitting an account. Beyond that, there just isn’t enough information to tell if it’s great yet. Does it include the full youtube red, disabling ads on youtube? What about those missing channels? And yeah, why do I have to pay for sports?
SlingTV has two standard base packages. One with ESPN channels and another that removes them and adds a number of others in their place.
Yeah, I found the two SlingTV packages very strange. Neither of them is a sports-free package. You just choose which sports channels you want. One package has ESPN channels, and the other package has Fox Sports channels.
At least, this was the case back when I tried a free trial of Sling for the World Cup last year (I took the ESPN package, but I was sad that it didn’t include the other sports networks since that’s where the Copa America was being shown).
You can combine the two now for $40.
To me, the big use of the service is getting it with Earthlink in between promotional deals with your ISP.
This kills it for me.
Well yeah but as Rock8man says it’s just another sports package. I have no interest, read zero, in sports. I used to care about the Olympics and that’s about it. I absolutely understand there are sports fans who also cut cable and want viable options.
Sling isn’t completely a la carte, but the $25 package is still a good deal if you don’t care about sports. I also have the lifestyle and hollywood packages, giving everything we used to watch on cable (and then some) for $35/month.
Google’s offering looks interesting. They’re missing some channels, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they expanded their lineup quickly. It’s very cool to see so much competition in this space.
I would love to see Amazon do the same thing as Google. They’ve been doing some of that with the Showtime/HBO/Starz/etc add-on channels for Prime. It would be awesome if they had standard channel tiers though. I’ll probably end up trying the Google offering, I’ve sampled many of them so far, why not try theirs too.
That’s IF the Roku YouTube app allows it.
I’ve not enjoyed any of the Google Media services. I don’t like their music services, wth limited downloads? Their video services is pretty subpar unless you have a code that drops the price considerably. And they took forever to show up on channels on non-google devices.
That’s not good to hear, Nesrie. I’ll wait for reviews on it.
It’s weird because you would think Google would be right up there, like how can Google do digital worse than Amazon who used to be known for selling a lot of books. They have a 3 download limit on their music store. Amazon doesn’t have a limit at all. Chromecast was POS when it came out in comparison to Roku and Amazon.
I hope they do better with their TV offering, but it looks like the same approach as everyone else so far, just different channels and, of course, throwing sports in there.
Not really fair; Chromecast is a very different product than roku/firetv. AndroidTV is Google’s entry in that market and it’s excellent.