Sling TV Opens Doors Wide, Adds $5 Sports Bundle

we need a package NOT forcing us to subsidize sports,
that's why most of us cut the cord to begin with

We want Golf, no movies.

Considering there are many streaming news sites that give themselves away for free, and many that are dying to become more popular, it would seem like they could get more news channels on their news package.

RT, CBSN, Newsmax and ABCNews and many others can be gotten for free and it would seem like they could add that. Al Jazzera, Euronews & BBC is free in the UK. One America News Network is desperate to become a more popular alternative to Fox News. Etc & etc....

I wonder if the stations start getting greedy and asking for too much if you start talking about adding them to the service? It seems like they could do better.

BTW: I want a multiview app. Wouldn't a streaming service that just had live news and sports streaming and allowed multiview be a killer service?!!! News and sports is all you really need for live streaming and multiview works great for both of them.

How is this subsidizing sports? It's an add-on for an extra charge of $5. Seems more like they're having sports pay its way.

Don't subscribe to the $5/mth sports channel bundle.

art - a surprising minority of the fastest growing costs associated with the programming on the average cabletv bill goes to paying off sports.

»www.forbes.com/sites/mau ··· -sports/

people dropped cabletv so we would not have to pay these sports costs that we NEVER watch, so we're certainly not going to pay to stream them.

Well the $20 package carries ESPN which is over $5 a month cost to carry. So what if one likes the channels, but doesn't want ESPN. That package can be like $13, not $20.

In any case I was looking at this for the parents, but will continue w/ Hulu+ because it has the channels they want, they can watch them when they want.

These guys are strictly going for sports heads that want to cut the cord, the other channels are like lipstick on the pig to maybe upsell the wife.

This is by NO means meant for the non sports person. This is the beginning of a sports tier, which is great because once people can divorce themselves and they tier sports people who like a specific sport can pay for it, and not ALL of them like today.

The multistream is likely contractually limited in this first run by Disney because they don't want people sharing the account (which of course they will). Bandwidth is cheap.. The only channel this matters for (really) is ESPN, the other channels cost are miniscule and multistream on these boost ratings and ad impressions which is likely a positive.

I believe people have no idea on how their cable bill is DOMINATED by sports costs today, and every "deal" is the least common denominator of what the sports content people want. Spiraling Retrans costs (broadcast fee), etc are due to the networks signing billion dollar sports contracts for sports XYZ. I think the going rate at this superbowl was $4m per 30 seconds. I remember when $1m per minute was outrageous, and that was only like 10 years ago. 8x the cost in 10 years, how long can this last?

first you don't know what ESPN is charging Dish for this. And if you think without ESPN this service would be $13 you're crazy. it would still be $20. It was never going to be priced lower than that. For all we know including ESPN and still charging $20 it may be a loss leader just to get people to subscribe.

My mistake for thinking multiview was descriptive enough. I mean like Uverse's multiview, which is a bit like picture in picture. Where you can watch several different stations each in it's own box and the one you select is the one that has the volume playing. Uverse had several multiviews for sports news and whatever and Directv had something like this for their Sports too, but I can't remember what it was called on Directv's end. This kind of service works great for sports & news.

I believe Dish is the first provider that has the balls to do this. Is it perfect? No. Is it a cord cutter's dream? No. But it is surely a start for those who want a few channels, but do not want to pay through the nose for local sports teams. (Such as the Los Angeles market, where if you want CNN and Food Network, you MUST pay for the broadcast rights of the Lakers, Clippers, Dodgers, Angels, Ducks, Kings, and Galaxy)

Dish is the first provider to realize that traditional television over a medium like satellite is going to hurt over the next 20 years, and they are preparing to diversify their business. They already have the experience with international streaming, and this is a great start in the right direction.

Sure, I would love to have this without ESPN, and pay $15 for the base package, and move ESPN to that sports package, but one must admire Dish for having the balls to break the trend. I think Disney and Turner are both still restricting them too much, but at least those companies were willing to talk turkey.

It's a start. It's a bit much for me personally since I don't watch sports (much) and the programming of Food Network and HGTV are largely available online on demand, but its a great start in offering an alternative to the "cord nevers" that may want some live sports, and those who are paying through the nose for cable, and may just want a live news channel "just in case" and has enough with the current channels offered.

$20 surely beats a cable package that probably starts in the $50 range + DVR costs + box rental + "broadcast fee" + "sports surcharge" + whatever else charges they make up these days.

The biggest downside is still the ONE stream, but if you combine it with OTA (unlimited and free), and a Netflix account (2 streams HD, or 4 if you pay more), you may easily be able to get away with it.

Agreed on the news channels, except that, if you have a Roku, which is almost mandatory these days if you want to stream, you can already get these. I agree, the average Joe may not know, but savvy cord cutters likely already do, and these people are the target market here. And consider, if they added these additional channels, people would be complaining that Sling is adding (and charging them for) channels they can already get for free. It's likely that these channels would at least initially give their content away to Sling for free, but they obviously wouldn't want Sling to make that publicly known, so then you'd still have people up in arms. And add to it the fact that Sling would likely insist that, in order to carry them, these channels would need to terminate their free feeds. That would really piss people off.

So, all in all, I think the status quo is the best way to leave things.

The link in the article is to a $20.00 p.m. package. No details of the $10.oo package, or the extra sports channels for $5.00!

I had a hunch that Dish would be using the same platform for this as their DishWorld service. They are. I got the invite a while ago but it wouldn't let me sign up because I had an existing DishWorld account. I could have used a different email address but I didn't want the hassle of managing multiple accounts. The strange thing is, I can log into the sling website/app using my DishWorld credentials and stream international programming....so apparently they just need to modify their billing system to allow me to subscribe to domestic programming using the same account but they appear to not have done that yet.

The BBC is free in the UK because it gets most of its income from a TV licence levied on anyone who uses a TV to watch live broadcasts. You don't need a licence to visit the BBC News website, but it doesn't matter as most visitors will have paid anyway. Like how Fox "News" lets you read their articles even if you don't have cable.

Sky News/Al Jazzera/Euronews/RT/NHK/the rest all have ads.

BBC World News (which is normally ad-funded) would probably be a good addition to the list. I understand it doesn't have great availability in the US (I'm not American)

I think that $10 is a typo. It's $20 for the package.

I'd give them today to fix that. They may not have realized the issue when they went live, and, since it was the weekend, their full IT staff likely wouldn't have been there. I have a feeling they'll be looking at that today.

ESPN and ESPN2 are in the main bundle, along with Disney. All three of those = pass.

Everything else about it is interesting and I'm all for, but I'd easily swap those three for HBO.

So it's back to "here's crap you don't want" along with "here's stuff you do want"

We don't know what ESPN is charging, but $10 is indeed the price point that people want - confirmed by that it's what the introductory price offer is, even.

So no, it wouldn't be $13.

I'll certainly try again but I don't think it'll be fixed....I received the invite a couple of weeks ago and have reported it to support a couple of times....their answer each time was to use a different email address to sign up. I'm sure they have their hands full with the launch and this is probably low on the list of priorities. The package is an awful value and doesn't have much content I actually want...but I wanted to offer my support so it shows the content owners that there is demand for a service like this.

It doesn't, but I believe the BBC has signed an exclusive marketing deal with some company to offer it here via cable. AT&T U-verse has it, but it's on a tier I don't sub to. Also, many PBS stations carry its programming late at night.

Well, I signed up, using with Roku and Nexus 7 tablet.
Initial thoughts:
App seems fairly smooth on the tablet.
Roku app has issues to work out, not sure it was the app or the back-end on dish side.
Bottom line, I will be CANCELING at the end of 7 days. Why?
Only ONE devise at a time. No sports for me and HGTV at the same time for the wife.
Set up Roku, and was watching, when I added app to my tablet and signed in, Roku stopped and displayed message only one device at a time.
International customers can use 3 at a time. See FAQ.

Can I watch Sling TV on multiple devices?

There are no limits to the number of devices you stream on with Sling TV. Download the Sling TV app on all of your devices that we support. While you are able to stream on all these devices, customers have the option to only stream Sling TV on one device at a time. Sling International customers have the option to stream international content on up to three devices at a time.

We are OTA. Never had cable. Never wanted HBO, Starz and the rest of the junk. We prefer books. Would rather have Fox 1 sports.
MLB takes care of baseball via Roku.

You're missing the point with this offering. Many people want to cut the cord, but won't _because_ of missing live sports. I know many people considering this in combination with Prime/Netflix, etc to save money and still have access to live sports.

A true cord cutter would get their content from OTA, Netflix, Hulu already.

which is what i already have on my roku3 and atsc box.
most sling content does compliment what i have already,
i just do not want ANY sports at all polluting my subs if
i can avoid it - and i certainly don't wanna pay for sports.

We are cord cutters who use OTA, Netflix and Amazon Prime as well as PLEX to stream all of our media to our TVs using our Rokus. We thought Sling TV was a neat idea since we enjoy HGTV, Travel, TBS and Food Network, so we are on the 7 day trial. We use Comcast Performance Starter internet that tests at 7.1 / 1.2. First impressions:

HTPC - Win7 6-core Athlon @ 2.8GHz 5GB DDR3 & 4TB HD. The interface is okay but a little clunky and counter intuitive using a keyboard. The streaming is not as smooth as I would have hoped, and it appears to lag and glitch and jump without warning. Sometimes it will be choppy and then fall back from 720p to a nasty resolution and then buffer back up. This happens frequently enough to be annoying and the internet connection is not the issue. The guide is pretty quick and displays what is playing without to much delay. This system streams 1080p media with no issues on XBMC and 720p content on Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. with none of the above issues.

Roku LT - Maximum resolution on these models is 720p. Interface is nearly the same but much easier to navigate using the remote. The streaming is much smoother for some reason and there are very few issues watching content. The menus are very slow on our Roku LT, however, and sometimes it takes 20+ seconds for the guide to show what is currently playing. May be much faster on newer Roku models.

$20/mo is not a deal breaker but I'm still not sold on how the service is lackluster on our HTPC. We put an extra Roku LT on our main tv and are using it instead of the HTPC currently. We do not watch sports except for football, so ESPN may come in handy for Monday Night Football next season. The 720p stream uses on average around 3.5Mbps on either device, so most people should have more than enough connection for the service. We'll see how it plays out over the long run.

I'm a cord cutter. It's free in the U.S. As well.
I watch BBC World News everyday on oklahoma PBS OTC.
Sky TV with Slingplayer.
I stream BBC iplayer sometimes.

So, which is it? No limits to the number of devices you can stream on, or stream on one device at a time?

This sounds like Netflix. You can stream on any number of devices, but you can only stream on 2 (or 4) at the same time.

Just another provider shoving a bloated and worthless ESPN/Disney bundle down our throats.

It doesn't matter what people want. People would want free if they could get it because they're entitled and think everything should be handed to them. You're not getting what cable offers for $10 a month. PERIOD. TNT and TBS each charge cable/satellite close to $1.50 each