After trying all of the streaming services I could find to locate an alternative to SlingTV, I've finally settled on FuboTV. They offer all of the channels I got from Sling, plus the local CBS and NBC affiliates (which I was getting OTA), as well as a few that are new to me and look interesting. They also offer quite a few sports channels, including some regional ones, for those interested in sports.
FuboTV costs about $55/mo (I was paying close to $170 for cable TV) and includes 30-hrs of Cloud DVR with no limit on how long you can keep a recorded program. For an additional $10/mo you can get 500 hours, which is basically unlimited recording. The only other service I found with unlimited DVR is YouTube TV, which offers it for free, but they only retain for 9 months and as I said earlier, they don't allow you to schedule individual shows - once you select a show to record, you get EVERY episode of that show for the past 9 months, and it gets difficult to manage.
Unlike SlingTV, FuboTV does not pad recorded shows with additional commercials. I used them both to record the same content and then compared the run-times; SlingTV's recordings were consistently anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes longer, with the additional time being added commercials.
Both services allow you to fast-forward through the commercials, but Sling has a nasty habit of losing the stream if you go too fast, so you then have to try to resume the program if you can, or start from the beginning and try to slowly skip through to where you lost it. I never experienced that with Fubo. Fubo also allows you to pause and rewind live TV on all channels - Sling disables that on several (if not all) live broadcasts.
Fubo is not perfect - it has some quirks. You can watch it on your TV using a Roku box or something similar, on your web browser, and on your smartphone. The interfaces are all slightly different and I had to learn how to work around them because some of the features are still in a beta version, but once I did they became usable together. The streaming itself works perfectly on all platforms, and in the end, that's all you really care about. And it's pretty cool to be sitting in a waiting room at the doctor's office, pull out your phone, and watch some show you recorded last night.
During my research for this project, I discovered that many of these streaming services don't carry channels such as Comedy Central, History, and The CW (Fubo carries Comedy Central and History). Both Comedy Central and The CW have apps that allow you to watch all of their content for free. New shows are available the following day, and they make their archives available for free as well. History's app requires you to have a subscription to a cable TV service, but that gives you access to their archives.
And if you're PBS fan (I like to watch "Finding Your Roots" and "Antiques Roadshow"), they also have a mostly-free app. PBS is not carried on any streaming service I looked at, so the app can be helpful. The app asks for your zip code and finds your local PBS station; depending on the station, some of the content is not free - you have to buy a "PBS Passport" for $5/mo or more to access it. You decide whether it's worth it, but I don't think PBS is the worst organization you can make a donation to...
Overall, I've slashed my cable TV costs by more than half and am having the same TV-viewing experience I was having before, so I think the effort and the research was definitely worth it. |
