Sling TV review: Do cord cutters and “cord nevers” even want live TV?

When Dish announced its new Sling TV service at CES this year, the news was received as one of the biggest announcements of the entire show. For $20 per month, Dish said it would offer a standalone app—no cable TV subscription necessary—with access to 12 channels including ESPN, a network notorious for its protection of its content.

The move seemed to be a shot off the bow of cable TV, which has been struggling against the growing number of adult Millennials who have decided they don't need a cable TV subscription. The argument is simple: it's too expensive and forces its customers to pay for channels they don't care about just to get the ones that they do. Cord cutters have instead been content to watch Netflix and Hulu, go to local sports bars if they need to catch an important game, and (worst of all to the cable companies) torrent the TV shows they want to see.

HBO knows this more intimately than any company. Access to the channel's shows can only be had by people with not only a cable TV subscription but also an additional HBO subscription. As such, those shows are favorites among torrenters. But even this company recently announced that it would be offering a standalone streaming service—again targeted toward cord cutters and Millennials—that would not require a cable company subscription.

So Sling TV is the first service to the battlefield of bringing small packages of live TV to an Internet streaming platform, marketing the offering at a low cost per month to appeal to people who canceled their cable TV subscriptions or who never had cable TV subscriptions in the first place. Dish offered Ars an early look at Sling TV, and while the interface is well designed and (mostly) intuitive, we wonder whether the content offered through Sling TV will really be enough of a sell. Is this just a repackaging of the same stuff that cord cutters wanted to get away from in the first place?

The pitch

In a lot of ways, I'm in the best position to review a Sling TV subscription. My husband and I are 11 years apart—he's Gen-X and I'm a Millennial. While I've never paid for a cable TV subscription in my life, I live with one because my husband has paid for cable TV for a long time. Still, our cable TV subscription is a vestigial organ that's only draining resources at this point. Almost every single time we sit down in front of the TV, we're watching Netflix from the PS4. My husband justifies cable as a necessary expense to be able to watch football in the fall, but during the season we tend to be busy, we end up at a sports bar anyway, or he goes to a friend's house to watch the game.

I could probably count on my hands the number of times I've picked up the remote to watch live TV over the last 10 years.

So I'm the ideal demographic for a Sling TV subscription, and my husband is, theoretically, not. But while I didn't really see a need to get channels that I was used to never watching anyway, my husband was interested in getting Sling TV as a way to get much of the same programming he's used to getting already, only cheaper. Of course, Sling TV doesn't have agreements with any of the broadcast networks (yet). So upfront, Sunday NFL games—the whole reason my husband is still locked into cable TV—are out.

The setup

Setting up Sling TV was as easy as you would expect a Web-based service to be—I downloaded the app on an iPhone 6 as well as on a Roku 3 (which Dish sent me as review hardware), and after I entered my e-mail and my Sling TV password I was in. Dish told me the service was not yet available through a Web browser, but it will be soon. In fact, Dish lists a hearty handful of set top boxes and mobile devices that Sling TV will be available on. These are: Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Google’s Nexus Player, select LG Smart TVs, Roku players, Roku TV models, select Samsung Smart TVs, Xbox One from Microsoft, iOS, Android, Mac, and PC. One notable exception is Apple TV, whose API Dish says is too restrictive to permit support for its service. However, Sling subscribers can still mirror the Sling TV cast to their TVs from their iOS devices using AirPlay.

One interesting thing we found out was that Sling TV plans to offer targeted ads to its users, likely based on your browsing and viewing habits. A Dish spokesperson told Ars that "Sling TV will feature Dynamic Ad Insertion, allowing for targeted advertising that creates a better experience for the viewer, as well as advertisers and programmers." That business model is particularly smart, and it at least means that Sling TV won't be surviving on your subscription alone. (It might even mean that CNN's increasingly gruesome advertisements for all sorts of prescription drugs to treat stomach-turning ailments that you didn't even know existed could be mitigated.)

Once you've entered The Sling TV UI, you can choose from 12 channels: ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, Food Network, HGTV, Travel Channel, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, ABC Family, and CNN. On iOS, I found that ESPN started playing as soon as I opened it for the first time. I'm not sure if that's an intentional placement of Sling's crown jewel at the front of its lineup, but I found it easy enough to change the channel simply by selecting the list icon up at the top right of the screen. This slides out a side panel from the right where you can choose from different categories of channels like "news" or "entertainment," or you can just select all channels. Considering that there are only 12 in the basic TV subscription, scrolling through everything in the horizontal list that appears under the video box is not too overwhelming. If you select one of those channels, the current programming on that channel will show up in another horizontal list below that, where you can scroll to the right to see what's playing in the coming hours and weeks.

At this point I should mention that I was only set up with the "The Best of Live TV" basic service, although smaller channel add-ons will be available for an extra $5 per month. These add-ons include “Kids Extra," which comes with Disney Junior, Disney XD, Boomerang, Baby TV, and Duck TV, as well as "News & Info Extra," which comes with HLN, Cooking Channel, DIY, and Bloomberg TV. Dish says that a “Sports Extra” package is coming soon, although it's unclear what will be included in that (NFL Sunday match-ups would be a real—pardon my pun—game changer).