Hi there, I’m the guy knitting back together the cord he cut over a year ago, succumbing to my unanticipated need for a live TV feed. The good news is that I think I’ve found a service that beats most others, and one which most people are not talking about: Sling TV.
Cord cutting is not new, but the slow creep back to cable-like services is, especially for me. I dropped my cable TV service over a year ago, and since then I’ve relied on a hodgepodge of the best streaming services, including Disney Plus, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount Plus, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, and Apple TV. Virtually all of them have grown more expensive while also increasing their ad loads. I now pay more for less.
Other than Paramount Plus, none of these platforms offers a collection of live, local broadcast, and cable networks. This didn’t matter much to me except during live events like the Oscars, Emmys, and most recently, the MLB Playoffs.
You could argue that this is all the Mets’ fault. I’ve been a lifelong fan, and I didn’t want to miss the team’s stunning playoff run. We all know how it ended, with the Dodgers knocking out my beloved Mets and then clobbering the Yankees in the World Series for good measure. But let’s not dwell on baseball.
Play ball
Desperate to see the Mets first play the Brewers in a Wildcard series, I began searching for livestream game options. Did you know there are tons of TikTokers who game the system by split-screening their feed between a pirated live broadcast of games and their own on-air commentary? It’s not a great viewing experience, and nor is the video from TikTokers who recreate real gameplay in one of the MLB console games.
Most live TV bundles like YouTube will run you $70 or more. That was a lot to pay for what might be a few baseball games, and is a little too close to what I was paying for cable.
Then I stumbled on Sling TV. The DishTV subsidiary is not often mentioned alongside the likes of YouTube TV and Fubo, but it has many of the same features and, it turned out, Fox Sports 1 (FS1) which was broadcasting all of the games. In the voluminous Guide, I also noticed that most, though not all, of my local TV stations were available on the $45-a-month blue tier. There was no CBS New York, but that was the one network I could stream live on Paramount Plus.
Sling TV also has cable-like DVR capabilities (as does YouTube TV, and recording is unlimited as opposed to Sling’s 50-hour limit for my tier), which meant I could record live TV and pause it, just as I used to with my old cable service. Oh, the joy of not struggling to stay up to watch Saturday Night Live or to suffer through Peacock’s commercial-filled playback the next day. Now I record, watch, and zip through the ads. I feel freed.
As with other services, there are tons of channels and content I will probably never watch on Sling TV. I’m not even really a sports guy, which is one of the reasons I grew weary of paying cable for all of the ESPN channels I never watched. My plan was to use Sling TV through the playoffs and then cancel (can you hear the foreshadowing?).
Watching everywhere
My favorite feature though, turned out the be the mobile app. I ended up using this to watch playoff games on my iPhone 16 Pro Max while I was out at dinner. I had the sound off, but a couple next to us noticed me streaming the game and declared it “excellent” (my wife was not thrilled). I even kept the muted game going at the start of a concert. Later, I watched games on the train. And when we vacationed in Florida at a friend’s house who also did not have cable, we mirrored the Sling TV MLB playoff feed from my iPad to an LG TV. It looked great.
When the Mets fell, I prepared to cancel my SlingTV subscription. I worried the price might suddenly jump after this trial period, and I was also convinced that we wouldn’t use it for anything else.
I was, of course wrong.
Sling TV reintroduced us to our morning TV favorites that we loved having on in the background, like The Today Show and Live with Kelly and Mark. We started recording some other shows – and then had our first conversation about maybe not canceling.
Sling TV, after all, is cheaper than the competition, and we were enjoying all those live channels, and some of the cable ones I’d been missing, like FX, AMC, and Comedy Central. Look, I know that cable TV is dying, but there’s still a lot of great content on it that, if I’m being honest with myself, I still enjoy.
On the flip side, we’re now paying $45 a month for what is essentially a cable TV service. Our new conversations are about consolidation. Do we really need the now more expensive Apple TV+? What about Hulu, which keeps shifting and is now hidden back under our Disney Plus subscription? What about Max? Are we even watching House of the Dragon anymore?
I don’t know if we can give up any of these streamers, but I also realize that we may now be hooked again on a cable-like experience. At least Sling TV does it right, and at a relatively reasonable price. So there’s that.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
