I haven’t had cable TV for years and years. I could never justify spending $80+ every month for a bunch of channels that still had nothing on them. And when I had to choose between keeping cable or a smartphone, well, you’ll pry my iPhone out of my cold, dead hands.
Many of you know that my family suffered a devastating fire in January. We lived in a hotel for a full month while repairs were made to our apartment. The night of the fire my insurance company immediately started setting up accommodations for us, but when they called and asked what we needed in a hotel room, I was too frazzled to think of anything specific. We ended up in an extended stay hotel room. One room. Three people. Two dogs. 30 days.
Needless to say, there wasn’t a whole lot to do during a frigid Iowa January other than sit around the hotel room and watch TV. How did I live without Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives? As our hotel stay was drawing to a close, I was starting to have crazy thoughts about paying for cable again. After all, we had just been through a fire, we deserved to watch March Madness.
After perusing cable prices, I quickly came back to reality. But while I was googling, I found an intriguing streaming service called Sling.tv. They claimed to offer 20 cable channels for $20 a month. Wait, how does that work? Was it live?
They had a free 7 day trial, so I signed up while we were still in the hotel so we could compare it to regular cable. It really is 20 channels of live, streaming cable! Compared to the hotel Sling.tv lags anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes behind live TV, but for $20 a month, I could live with that.
We have kept our Sling.tv subscription for about 6 months now, and here is the nitty gritty on the pros and cons.
Pros
•Price
•Channel lineup – now, your viewing tastes may be different than mine, but give me HGTV and the Food Network and I am pretty well set. They also recently added the History channel, so bring on the Pawn Stars!
•No commitment – you can cancel at any time.
Cons
•Laggy – We have really fast internet, and our Xbox One is hardwired into it, but we experience some lag and buffering.
•Doesn’t work on all streaming devices – there is a somewhat limited list of devices you can stream Sling.tv to. We use a Roku stick and Xbox One.
When I signed up I took advantage of the offer to pay for 3 months and get a free streaming stick, which was a $50 value. Sling.tv also has additional channel packages available for $5 each, or HBO for $15 additional, but we haven’t added any of those on.
So, if you are looking for an alternative to the typical streaming services, check out Sling.tv!
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