Several months ago, I posted that I had dumped my cable TV service and gone to a streaming service - Sling TV. I've looked at the alternatives, but they don't carry all the channels I want or they are much more expensive. I use their Sling's Cloud DVR ($5/mo) to record programs and watch them later, and it's been a decent experience so far - not perfect, but decent.
Then I noticed something peculiar - their DVR records the shows with ads, and you can fast-forward through the ads (as long as you don't go too fast), but there seemed to be an awful lot of ads. I also noticed that the playback times were often longer than the original program. The worst case I found was The Daily Show, which is a 30-minute program. The recorded show was often up to 41 minutes long. Comedy Central has a free app where you can watch their shows the day after they run (as well as their archives, all free), so I installed it and compared the same episode on both their app and Sling TV's DVR.
On Comedy Central, the show was 26 minutes long, including the original commercial breaks (which you cannot fast forward through). On Sling's DVR, it was 41 minutes long - that's an extra 15 minutes of commercials Sling added into the three commercial breaks the show typically has, ads that never ran on Comedy Central.
Very annoying, but I don't have an alternative streaming service yet that gives me what I want at a reasonable price. The closest I've found is Hulu Live, which is more expensive and has a fatal flaw (as far as I'm concerned) - their channel guide only shows what's playing live now and what's going to play next on each channel - you don't even see the full day's schedule, much less the full week that everyone else shows.
I understand there are a bunch of strean=ming services set to debur=t later this year or sometime next year, so maybe I'll find something better... For now, I'll put up with Sling and what I consider to be a deceptive practice. |
