Sling TV

They just raised their prices like $5 but threw in 10 hours of free DVR and I've never had any form of DVR before and I love it! The extra cost is worth it - it's still cheaper than any cable or satellite package and I'll never go back. Even when I'm working and running all my programs, I can stream all day with no issues. You can also go back (on some channels) and watch shows that you may have missed. Maybe you fell asleep and missed the new episode of your favorite show? Most of my channels allow me to go back and watch the last 2-3 days of programming. There's also TONS of shows available on demand. I find myself watching this more than Netflix.

1) OTA channels integrated in their channel guide nicely - you need an antenna but for that modest investment, you get the purest, highest quality HD signal possible. My YoutubeTV had reduced quality by my perception on channels recently. Not an issue here. (I was once on a team that developed video compression software, so I know video quality, JND.) Oddly I can't get the local PBS station, which has their antenna in the exact same location as all the other big 4 OTA I do get, and I am 31miles away, in absolutely flat terrain. Still trying to resolve that. I have a new '75mi' antenna with rotor and it is aimed at 177 degrees precisely for my location.

2) Price - $30, even $35 is a great value.

3) Streaming channels have high quality.

4) Pleasant and available telephone support.

5) You get to chose how much storage you want - up to 2TB (32 bit limit of a drive) since you buy/provide separately from the DVR device.

6) You can swap from their Orange and Blue almost instantaneously.

7) Pretty solid sports offering on that Orange channel.

1) The User Experience is about 10 years old, for example:

- You can't pause/rwd/ffwd the current channel you are watching, unless you are recording it too. Very annoying. Yes, it takes up a decoder, but give me the option of making that a default feature.

- When you use the guide it does not keep a view of the current channel running. Old world. You get nothing but the guide.

- Lots of pause/buffering - I have a verified 112mbps - plenty of bandwidth with very little else - and still have issues. Hard to diagnose what is the issue. But I worry the 32bit Airtv is overwhelmed. Maybe it is when I am recording on one channel and watching another, but still HD should not consume more than 13mbps per signal (and more like 5).

- Guide does not start and stop shows on time. e.g., might record an extra 5+ mins at the end or beginning. So odd. My guess is YTTV manually edits the guide to fix automated channel selection.

- Limited prioritization of retention - e.g. Tivo lets you set 'last 5/25/all', Youtube keeps everything (like that is a big deal, they keep one copy of everything on a server I could host in my basement and if they need to serve it up, they spool up to deliver to the demand). Not sure why they can't do that too - other than cost of content - maybe their contracts don't allow it (part of getting that $30 a month deal).

- And this part is deceptively unclear in all the literature before purchase. Their DVR only records your OTA channels, not their streaming channels. For that you have to use up the very limited 10hrs of Cloud recording it comes with (so like 3 football games and you're done!) or spend more $$ to get 50 hrs (which is still not much if you enjoy a few series) YTubeTV is unlimited. (but, I know, YTTV is also much more expensive).

- Guide does not give you much info on live feeds, e.g. it says "College FOOTBALL" but not "NotreDame vs **" so you have to open it up to look. Like I said OLD school.

- Managing content/recordings is not quick or simple. I think the TIvo model is the best I have seen so far, particularly when the storage is your local drive as it is with them and Sling/Airtv.

There you have it - more info than you get before you make a purchase (that would be very hard to figure out in a 7 day evaluation).

However, once it was clear it did not work, and was a very unsatisfactory experience, we hoped to simply express our displeasure and get our money back. They are apparently notorious for not issuing refunds. In a world full of streaming service options, they cannot get away with this policy. We were left with such a negative impression that all I will do from now on is make sure everyone knows how terrible they are. That's poor marketing strategy on their part.