$20 a month gives you a 20 channels, including my wife’s must-have HGTV. $5 gets me a bundle that includes the kids’ must-have Disney Jr (you trying arguing with my toddlers). $15 gets you HBO, but I’m not interested. You can add other channels bundles a la carte and quickly go past what you pay with a cable-provider bundle… but the point is you want fewer channels, you only pay for fewer channels.
Still have to pay for cable internet, but that’s almost a given.
In my specific case, I’d be running Sling though the Roku 3 which we already use for Netflix and Amazon Prime. On an old tube-tv with an HDMI-analog converter, of all the perversities.
I’ve heard it works ok, but there are a lot of caveats. Like, live TV worked well as long as you had a good enough internet connection, but there were severe restrictions on how long certain on-demand programming was available for and DVR features (some channels disallowed them). I believe only one device can be using it at a time too.
Sony is launching a competing service Playstation Vue soonish with actual a-la-cart channels (like, no bundles at all). Hopefully the competition will help push Sling forward.
We used to use a Wii for Netflix streaming (didn’t actually use it for gaming!), but the internet connection got unreliable (kept dropping) compared to the Roku. We loved the profiles feature available on Netflix for Wii, and upgraded to a Roku 3 so that we could restrict the kids’ viewing a bit (they know to go to their profile by color and picture, and generally follow the rules).
No other gaming device in the house, so not an option for us. And only need it for the one TV, as well, so no worries on that front. Loss of some on-demand features will disappoint some, but I think better options are generally available on Netflix and Amazon Prime for most of the desired shows, anyway.
