Basketball Season Approaches - Do I Get Cable or SLING TV?

[What Would Jesus Do?]

As some of you may be aware, I cut the cable about 6 months ago. But with opening games less than 3 weeks away and my basketball jonesing nearing nuclear meltdown, should I sign back up to cable or get my fix through Sling TV?

Any advice - especially from those who currently have Sling TV?

I figure I would have to get the add-on sports package, too, although it doesn't add that much. So the total cost is $25. Cable will hit me between $50 and $60. But cable also comes with HBO and other channels I like, and with a DVR. Truth be told, it's the DVR and HBO I missed most when cut the cable.

How good is the quality on Sling TV?

FWIW, I'll be using Sling TV through my Roku. Just in case that matters.

 

[The Tradition]

Save your money and mooch couch space at your friends' houses.

 

[pocha444444]

You don't need to pay for cable, or for any other streaming subscriptions for that matter. You just need your friend's passwords. That's my liberal friend's motto.

 

[moral_victory]

You just need your friend's passwords.

Truth.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

You don't need to pay for cable, or for any other streaming subscriptions for that matter. You just need your friend's passwords. That's my liberal friend's motto.

Here's a moral conundrum. Maybe. Maybe not.

You have a friend who loves football, but you hate it. By contrast, you love basketball and he hates it. If one of you is paying the full price for both football and basketball, are you cheating or stealing if one of you watches the football and the other watches the basketball?

I mean this would certainly be perfectly acceptable if we are talking about 2 members of the same household, right? Even if the viewing wasn't at that household. After all, a household sharing a single account is perfectly acceptable and remote viewing is also perfectly acceptable.

It's also perfectly acceptable for you to invite your buddy over to watch at your house. So someone who is not a member of the household can also use this account.

The only difference is that the 2 people aren't part of the same household AND they are viewing from different locations.

 

[pocha444444]

Here's a moral conundrum. Maybe. Maybe not.

You have a friend who loves football, but you hate it. By contrast, you love basketball and he hates it. If one of you is paying the full price for both football and basketball, are you cheating or stealing if one of you watches the football and the other watches the basketball?

I mean this would certainly be perfectly acceptable if we are talking about 2 members of the same household, right? Even if the viewing wasn't at that household. After all, a household sharing a single account is perfectly acceptable and remote viewing is also perfectly acceptable.

It's also perfectly acceptable for you to invite your buddy over to watch at your house. So someone who is not a member of the household can also use this account.

The only difference is that the 2 people aren't part of the same household AND they are viewing from different locations.

I don't know, I guess I would think it's kind of cheap if one person isn't at least paying a portion of the bill. I really don't care though. I pay for directv and netflix and have a buddy that uses my hbo, netflix, and other account passwords without paying. I always give him shit about it because he's a big liberal and I tell him it's part of the liberal mind set to be a moocher like himself. My post was just a weak attempt at turning a non-political post into a political one. I had never tried it before.

 

[Phenomenally Frantastic]

HBO flat out said they don't care that folks share passwords. I wonder what other streaming service's stance is on this practice?

 

[ThorneStockton]

I've heard people comment that sometimes Sling's streaming gets pretty choppy, but with a Sling subscription you still get access to the watch espn app.

 

[JRHawk2003]

How good is your bandwidth? That will determine how good Sling is for the most part.

A buddy and I share the costs of sports packages.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

How good is your bandwidth? That will determine how good Sling is for the most part.

A buddy and I share the costs of sports packages.

Consistently 30 Mb/s. And yet when I checked something on ESPN3 yesterday, I never got more than 4 bars (out of 8) on signal quality. Not really good enough for basketball as far as I'm concerned, although I'll watch my Tar Heels any way I can. That's what worries me about Sling - I may have the bandwidth for it, but will they actually deliver it?

Side note: I get solid HD from Netflix at my speeds. Which is why I assume it wasn't a problem at my end with that ESPN3 experiment.

So, do you and your buddy share living arrangements. I mean splitting bills if you are sharing a house or apartment makes sense. Or do you have separate living arrangements and share passwords?

 

[cheeselog8]

I've had Sling through Roku for a little over a month and it has been frustrating to say the least. It has trouble loading a channel initially and it crashed the Roku making it completely restart multiple times during the Iowa/North Texas game.

I now just watch ESPN through the WatchESPN app without any troubles but my main gripe about that is it's not all that great to flip back and forth between games.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

I've had Sling through Roku for a little over a month and it has been frustrating to say the least. It has trouble loading a channel initially and it crashed the Roku making it completely restart multiple times during the Iowa/North Texas game.

I now just watch ESPN through the WatchESPN app without any troubles but my main gripe about that is it's not all that great to flip back and forth between games.

If I understand what you are saying, Sling is good because it lets you access WatchESPN through other devices, but Sling itself is not very good?

Can you watch all the ESPN offerings on WatchESPN?

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

It's beginning to sound like I should try the free trial of Sling sooner rather than waiting until the last minute.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

So . . . I decided to sign up for the free trial of Sling TV.

Because I have a Roku, it's a 2-week free trial instead of a 1-week freebie. That's nice. If you call Sling and bitch I wonder if maybe they'll give you 2-weeks even if you don't have a Roku.

Now why would you need a 2-week trial? Can't you tell if you want it in a few days? I mean either it works well or it doesn't. Right?

Well . . . the answer is simple. If you ask for it, you'll also get to test their add-on packages for free during that trial. And . . . wait for it . . . that includes HBO.

Free HBO for 2 weeks.

Do you know how many HBO shows I'm going to catch up on during this free trial?

Picture quality during my first test has been excellent.

So far, the only negative is that the interface is clumsy. And really slow. That could just be because I'm using an older, slower Roku box, but I don't know. Scrolling through the HBO On Demand choices takes way too long. Not a problem if you are binge watching, but could be a real pain if you are changing channels or shows a lot.

 

[JRHawk2003]

I had pretty good quality streaming the NFL game on Yahoo this morning.

I had the NBA, MLB and MLS apps....all have functioned very well for me.

 

[cheeselog8]

If I understand what you are saying, Sling is good because it lets you access WatchESPN through other devices, but Sling itself is not very good?

Can you watch all the ESPN offerings on WatchESPN?

That is correct, it is a way for me to have access to ESPN but IMO the Sling interface is not very good at all.

Not sure if Sling gets you the ESPN3 games as I haven't tried it but I would imagine it does.

 

[herecomethehawkeyes]

Can you watch all the ESPN offerings on WatchESPN?

i havent scrolled to see if this has been answered. You get access to the channels that are on the package of the account you log in with.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

I've had Sling through Roku for a little over a month and it has been frustrating to say the least. It has trouble loading a channel initially and it crashed the Roku making it completely restart multiple times during the Iowa/North Texas game.

I now just watch ESPN through the WatchESPN app without any troubles but my main gripe about that is it's not all that great to flip back and forth between games.

I'll try the Sling app on my computer tomorrow. I hope the interface is better.

I watched a few minutes of sports on ESPN. Nothing I was interested in, but the play was fine. OTOH, I watched an episode of True Detective (definitely one of the HBO shows I want to catch up on), and it stopped to reload twice. Maybe a 5 second pause (which felt longer, of course) and then 15 seconds of degraded video. Not a big deal, but I will hate that if it happens at a critical time during a live basketball game.

 

[The Tradition]

Do you know how many HBO shows I'm going to catch up on during this free trial?

Awesome. So, I guess you'll be away from the board for awhile?

 

[JRHawk2003]

I don't get why the quality is better in the direct apps like NBA or MLB than Sling. Its the same Internet connection.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

I downloaded the Windows Sling app on my Windows 10 machine. Again, the picture quality is fine.

The interface works MUCH more quickly than on the Roku. Interface is still clunky, but being able to move the pointer and click with the mouse speeds things up a good bit. And, for some reason, scrolling through HBO's On Demand list moves a group at a time on Windows but only show at a time on the Roku. That's a big part of the slowdown on the Roku.

OTOH, while watching an episode of The Leftovers on HBO, the sound and video got out of sync after about 45 minutes. I paused and that helped a bit. Then I backed up a little and that fixed it. So no big deal. But this was from their On Demand queue. I hope it won't do that on live shows. Hasn't yet.