Anyone Have Experience with Sling TV?

crimsonaudio said:

Make sure you watch some sports - especially something like football with lots of action on the screen - and make sure you don't see any compression artifacts. I've not tried all the services, but while my connection easily exceeds what's needed to stream HD at 60 FPS (several times over, in fact) I still haven't found a streaming service that wasn't visually degraded from cable.

I know I'm more sensitive to data compression artifacts than most, so it might not be an issue. Or these streaming services might have (rather drastically) improved.

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Part of it also depends on what you are streaming from. So a Gen 1 Firestick is NOT going to give you the processing power and wireless sensitivity of a Roku Ultra.

And factoring in that many of these things are connected to quality. There is the quality and speed of one's internet, and then how good is the router and modem being used to disperse the internet to their streaming device (if you stream from an Xbox or Playstation then you can hardwire into your router or modem), and then how good is the device itself, how much processing power, how good is the receptivity? Then, finally, is the service itself and the various things that go along with streaming such video. Sling has done a pretty good job. I still notice some artifacting in the blacks but that's not a concern for our games. Otherwise it's a consistent 1080p at 60p.

RTR91 said:

Probably stating the obvious here, but I gather this is pretty helpful. If possible, don't use WiFi but connect straight to the device.

Is this correct?

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Yes, a direct connection will likely be faster and more consistent, by avoiding signal interference issues.

RTR91 said:

That's what I figured. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't wrong in my thinking and reading some of the posts.

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A lot of the modern streaming devices lack this ability, however. Which places more of a premium #1 on the quality of the streaming device and #2 The quality of the modem and router one has for their WiFi. When at all possible I recommend a direct ethernet connection for the best possible internet signal. My Xbox One is connected directly via ethernet so I have a smoother gaming experience.
My current Roku does not have that ability but is still very solid because I have a decent router and modem with little traffic on it (just my wife and I) - however, the new Roku Ultra I mentioned earlier DOES have an ethernet connection.

Intl.Aperture said:

A lot of the modern streaming devices lack this ability, however. Which places more of a premium #1 on the quality of the streaming device and #2 The quality of the modem and router one has for their WiFi. When at all possible I recommend a direct ethernet connection for the best possible internet signal. My Xbox One is connected directly via ethernet so I have a smoother gaming experience.
My current Roku does not have that ability but is still very solid because I have a decent router and modem with little traffic on it (just my wife and I) - however, the new Roku Ultra I mentioned earlier DOES have an ethernet connection.

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The problem I would have with hard wiring is that my modem is in my living room and the things I'd want to hard wire are in another room. When we lived in an apartment I had everything hard wired because we had the modem and everything else on one piece of furniture. Do you run Ethernet cables through your house to hard wire everything or do you just have everything you want to hard wire in the same room?

crimsonaudio said:

Make sure you watch some sports - especially something like football with lots of action on the screen - and make sure you don't see any compression artifacts. I've not tried all the services, but while my connection easily exceeds what's needed to stream HD at 60 FPS (several times over, in fact) I still haven't found a streaming service that wasn't visually degraded from cable.

I know I'm more sensitive to data compression artifacts than most, so it might not be an issue. Or these streaming services might have (rather drastically) improved.

Click to expand...

I have Spectrum internet at 100 down / 10 up and Directv Now with an Apple TV 4K on a Sony 4K TV and a Roku Premier Plus on a 12 year-old 720p Samsung plasma. To say it outperforms the signal coming over the cable box is an understatement. I only have a few days left of cable and i won’t miss the crappy quality at all. Watching the Olympics the last few days has sealed the deal.

I wasn’t sure I could get OTA channels given the distance and terrain, but an indoor powered antenna pulls in 30 channels. The HD over the air blows everything away, even the 4K streams. Even if you don’t cut the cord, get an antenna for local channels if you live within broadcast range.

I should save about $50 a month but I’m giving up about 200 channels I never watch. My cable package was pretty much everything; HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and all the cable channels you could ask for at $79.99/month. Add another $20 / month for equipment rentals, taxes, and BS fees, the TV portion of my bill was basically $100/month. Oddly enough, it would have cost me more to drop Showtime and Cinemax and keep HBO than having all 3.

The DirecTV Now package I’m using is $35/month and add $5 for HBO. Dropping cable will add $10 to my internet bill. During football season I’ll have to go to $50/month package to pick up SEC Network.

Oddly enough, the cost savings aren’t driving my decision because $50/month isn’t that big of a deal. It’s the increase in picture quality vs. cable that’s driving my switch.

I was thinking about YoutubeTV once my contract is up on the TV portion of ATT fiber (I had to do a 1 year deal when swapping.) Any experiences? I've read the picture is better. My only issue is Google and Amazon are in a peeing match and YoutubeTV won't work on my Fire TV. So, I'd have to buy a roku.

BamaSC said:

I have Spectrum internet at 100 down / 10 up and Directv Now with an Apple TV 4K on a Sony 4K TV and a Roku Premier Plus on a 12 year-old 720p Samsung plasma. To say it outperforms the signal coming over the cable box is an understatement. I only have a few days left of cable and i won’t miss the crappy quality at all. Watching the Olympics the last few days has sealed the deal.

I wasn’t sure I could get OTA channels given the distance and terrain, but an indoor powered antenna pulls in 30 channels. The HD over the air blows everything away, even the 4K streams. Even if you don’t cut the cord, get an antenna for local channels if you live within broadcast range.

I should save about $50 a month but I’m giving up about 200 channels I never watch. My cable package was pretty much everything; HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and all the cable channels you could ask for at $79.99/month. Add another $20 / month for equipment rentals, taxes, and BS fees, the TV portion of my bill was basically $100/month. Oddly enough, it would have cost me more to drop Showtime and Cinemax and keep HBO than having all 3.

The DirecTV Now package I’m using is $35/month and add $5 for HBO. Dropping cable will add $10 to my internet bill. During football season I’ll have to go to $50/month package to pick up SEC Network.

Oddly enough, the cost savings aren’t driving my decision because $50/month isn’t that big of a deal. It’s the increase in picture quality vs. cable that’s driving my switch.

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Who was your cable provider? I currently have Direct TV and they're a big upgrade over the other cable companies I've used - Comcast, Knology and AT&T.

You have an Apple TV4K hooked up to a 4K TV but is the stream actually encoded in 4K? The reason I ask is the 4K TVs look great in the store because they're inputting 4K content. Nothing OTA is 4K and I didn't think any of the streaming services offered 4K yet. I guess what I'm asking is how much 4K content is out there to be consumed? I've thought about upgrading to 4K TV but when I looked into there was very little 4K content out there..

RTR91 said:

Some discussion of YoutubeTV in this ongoing thread from the football board.

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Not too much info in there. I think I'm going to try it. Just need to pick up a roku. I've got 100Mb fiber service. So, I'd hope any streaming service would be good.

Update: both SlingTV and Hulu are perfectly fine for 99% of the time, but both lag/buffer during primetime hours. Hulu has been worse. SlingTV has a better interface. Both seem to give me issues when I try to watch a DVRed show from the beginning while it's still recording. Hard to say whether it's the fault of Comcast or the apps, but I pay for 150 Mbps, which should handle streaming.

I'll be trying YouTube TV tonight. I've heard good things, and it's hard to argue with unlimited DVR (although they'll have to limit that at some point). There are no Vue or DTV apps for my Xbox, so I can't test those.

CharminTide said:

I'll be trying YouTube TV tonight. I've heard good things, and it's hard to argue with unlimited DVR (although they'll have to limit that at some point). There are no Vue or DTV apps for my Xbox, so I can't test those.

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I think it is only "unlimited" up to the recording being 9 months old.

CrimsonForce said:

Who was your cable provider? I currently have Direct TV and they're a big upgrade over the other cable companies I've used - Comcast, Knology and AT&T.

You have an Apple TV4K hooked up to a 4K TV but is the stream actually encoded in 4K? The reason I ask is the 4K TVs look great in the store because they're inputting 4K content. Nothing OTA is 4K and I didn't think any of the streaming services offered 4K yet. I guess what I'm asking is how much 4K content is out there to be consumed? I've thought about upgrading to 4K TV but when I looked into there was very little 4K content out there..

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Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable around here). As far as I know, there is no live 4K content. There is quite a bit of 4K content on Netflix and Amazon Prime. When I was streaming 4K, I expected the picture to be better than the 1080i/720p coming over the cable box and it was. What really surprised me was how much better the picture was streaming something like Discovery Channel over DTv Now vs. what was coming over the cable box. OTA looks amazing even though it's only 1080i/720p.

It seems like TWC just quit trying about 10-12 years ago. Their technology was ancient. My cable box/DVR is almost 10 years old and it's still the best one they offered. Now that Spectrum has bought them, maybe they'll upgrade the cable TV technology but I'm not holding my breath on that.

Update: YouTube TV was flawless during primetime. So far, it’s the performance winner.

CharminTide said:

Update: YouTube TV was flawless during primetime. So far, it’s the performance winner.

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Just an FYI if you like Youtube TV sign up before 3/13 to get current pricing. They just added the Turner channels and it will go up $5.