Sling or YouTube?

[Rot 911]

For any of you that are using either one of the streaming services, your thoughts?

[stevej37]

I have slingbox...and it's for sale on Craigslist for $30

[Rot 911]

Originally Posted by stevej37

I have slingbox...and it's for sale on Craigslist for $30

I’ve got smart TVs and Roku. No need for a box. I can stream directly from either service.

[ramonesfreak]

i have youtube tv. i’m just someone who has developed a real dislike for cable tv so my feelings are the same as my feeling about my prior services, time warner and hulu plus. i literally can’t find anything to watch. i keep it so my wife can watch her miami dolphins and news programs. and we watch walking dead. after next sunday thats done and ide like to get rid of it

it works fine. i have no complaints about the interface or how it operates. works like hulu plus did.

what i do love and feel is worth every penny is youtube premium- no commercials. when i turn on my tv, that’s what i use the most.

[stevej37]

slingbox allows you to watch anything that you pay for....in any part of the world on another tv or tablet or phone.

I was in Panama (central america) a few years back and the final four was being played. Nothing but spanish sound...just connected via wifi to my slingbox and could watch the same as I could at home.

It's not for home use. It was the forerunner of sling tv.

[wdfifteen]

I have YOUTUBETV. It's not great. The back-up and fast-forward functions are slow and buggy. These problems might be due to our slow DSL service. But the controller sucks, and it keeps forgetting where I live. Every couple of months I get a "You are watching outside your viewing area - stop it" message and I have to go through a 15 minute process involving my TV and my iPhone to get it straightened out.

[ramonesfreak]

I’m using a roku so any connection issues I have with YouTube tv I attribute totally to roku or my 10 year old router

At the end of the day, the decision about which service to use depends totally on whether they offer the channels you want. You have to compare them and decide.

[asphaltgambler]

Ok, so we just made the leap from DirecTV, which I've been a customer with them from their inception. Since COVID, or possibly coincidence, re-runs instead of new shows have been the norm, or some shows just eliminated. prices continue to rise, etc, etc. We have supposedly all these channels, nothin but crap, info-mercials, promises of new shows that haven't materialized.

Have had 2 receivers, with a DVR (we own that) operating 3 TV's. We have the mid-level programming tier. Runs @$170/month.

WE'RE DONE !!!!!!

After much research, asking others we now have Firestick with voice commands primarily YouTube TV, YouTube and a few other free apps. It's freaking amazing! All these shows you never saw anywhere else, now at our fingertips. It is literally like in the early 80's going from 4 local channels to cable!

We have a low tier / cost web access that seems to support it w/o buffering. We've had it almost a week, no comparison to anything prior. Equipment cost @$40.00 delivered, no rental. YouTube TV is $54.95 for three months, then goes another $10 for the duration.

Could not recommend more

[porsche tech]

I tried the free week of YouTube but couldn’t figure out how to watch live tv. Is fubo the only one that includes Tennis Channel? Fubo wants your credit card number to look at the free trial week.

[Gogar]

I have Sling , i think (blue) with comedy $5 upgrade or something. Seems fine and I like the on demand part as well.
I like it just fine; I guess my only gripe is that the way it 'picks' commercials or something is pretty clunky and incredibly repetitive.

For some time I had an AirTV box wherein my housetop antenna showed up right inside the sling and for some reason I had to upgrade to AirTV2 and I could never get it to work right and I gave up.

Maybe they sorted it out and I can try again.

[astrochex]

We’re in the free (2 weeks) phase of youtube tv membership. It seems to work well enough for live and recording via roku, especially compared to spectrum. Getting used to the interface is the challenge.

[McLovin]

I signed up for youtubeTV a few years ago when it was $39 or so.
It’s fine. Like someone said above, you just need to compare the various services, the cost, and what channels they offer.
As far as function, it works well. Has a good Guide format that you can rearrange, so you can put your most viewed channels up top. Also unlimited recording.
They seem to allow 3 devices to be going at the same time, and don’t care where the devices are.
So I split it with 3 relatives (4 different households, haha). None of us watch much TV, so it’s very rare that anyone gets blocked out.
The worst part is the $39 is now much higher. I think around $65.

[A930Rocket]

We ditched Cable and only have Netflix, Prime and over the air now. But it’s rare that I watch TV.

Ms. Rocket likes to keep it on for background noise. Drives me crazy. 🤪

[Tim Hancock]

Several years ago we had one of the Sling packages (I think orange). The way they had it set up was such that some of what I wanted it for was on the orange package and some was on the blue. I was too cheap to pay for both. We ended up going with YoutubeTV and it has most of what I want... College football, MavTV (for motocross), Paramount and Fox News. Occasionally there is an old movie worth watching. It also has our local over the air channels which is nice for watching local news.

We do still use our antenna to watch local ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and FOX local most of the time, but out in my shop building the long antenna connection gives me limited reception even using a signal booster.... So in my shop I almost always just use the Youtube tv for everything.

[osidak]

i had sling and like tim - i wanted both but went with blue...... they kept raising their price so i dumped them

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by stevej37

I have slingbox...and it's for sale on Craigslist for $30

Good luck selling that.

Have you tried to use it in the last week?

https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/slingbox-permanent-shutdown-date-1235396413/

[Rtrorkt]

Done the math, by the time I pay for internet access and then say YouTube or something similar along with Prime and the Hulu my wife likes, I might as well stay with Cox.

[stomachmonkey]

Started with Sling. It's not bad. My beef was their pricing model sucked, why do I need two different packages to get everything I want?

Then there was feature parity across devices. Maybe it's gotten better over the last couple of years but the interface and available features were dependent on the device you were using.

Apple TV's were different from iPads which were different than on a PC etc.....

Been using youtubeTV last couple of years and it's got it's own annoying quirks.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Rtrorkt

Done the math, by the time I pay for internet access and then say YouTube or something similar along with Prime and the Hulu my wife likes, I might as well stay with Cox.

Check PLEX.

Great IP TV interface.

You'll get standard broadcast "OTA" and a bunch of other stuff which may or many not satisfy the need.

[asphaltgambler]

Our situation, we use COX cable, web access only w/ WiFi router (we own) for cell and other devices @$38/mo. Because of our location, we'll use that regardless of TV platform.

As said above, we're still figuring out the firestick layout, programming guide. The voice assistant is what makes it seamless, although not fool-proof. For example, some older / oddball shows may only be available on 1 app. So, from the home screen, the voice assistant may not take you directly to that app. It seems you need to be in that app for it to open and play.

Lots of capabilities, but need to figure out the interface, not difficult, but different than what we're used to.