As I mentioned a few days ago, I got a free over-the-air antennae and an "AirTV Play" unit when I pre-paid the first three months of my Sling TV service in advance. I received the unit today and, as expected, I couldn't get any channels to show up. I live in a valley surrounded by hills and mountains, and the odds of picking up anything were slim. No big loss... it's not like the channel report I ran gave me even a prayer of getting a major network like ABC, NBC, or CBS. Just some weird local channels like "NCW Life" which I would never watch anyway, or a FOX affiliate that wouldn't give me anything I can't get streaming...
Oh well, the stuff was all free, so it was worth a shot.
So I guess I'm set.
Some shows on CBS I'm just out of luck on. I will have to wait until Star Trek: Discovery or The Good Fight or Star Trek: Picard is released so I'll be subscribing to CBS All-Access and can binge the archives then. Or perhaps they can be streamed from CBS online for free, I'll have to check...
There's also a few shows I can't seem to get on Sling Blue, Hulu, or Amazon Prime, but think I can stream online from the official websites.
The majority of my shows I can watch via Hulu or Sling Blue (with a couple coming free from the HBO Now which is bundled with my AT&T Wireless). Sling is preferred because I have their "Enhanced DVR" where I can fast-forward past commercials. But Hulu is just fine with commercials (because I don't want to pay extra to watch without them)...
Yesterday I had to make a trip to The Big City to return some things for work... and to drop off my DirecTV receiver at FedEx. As I feared, they completely brick the thing once your service is canceled, so when I checked to see if the last show I had on my DVR was still there, I couldn't even get to the menu. I guess that's only fair. I was renting the box, and my rental contract ended Sunday at midnight, so I shouldn't be able to use it. But... damn. That's cold. You'd almost think it was MY fault that I had channels missing and was forced to cancel.
I guess there's no going back now!
Not that I'd want to. I'm still bitter over the expensive packages that cable companies and satellite companies have forced us to buy for decades... because more often than not they're filled with shitty channels you'll never watch, which means you're forced to pay more than you should. Thanks to the internet we're finally to the point where channels can be purchased individually... or at least in smaller packages... which make more sense. Hopefully in the future our television programming will get to the point where it's 100% ala carte, and you can pay for exactly the channels you want.
We can dream, can't we?
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Elementary, at least, shows up on Hulu eventually.
I’ve long felt that the extra no-commercial fee I pay to Hulu is some of the best money I spend. Certainly, if I could pay the same amount for YouTube to not have commercials, I’d do so in a heartbeat.
hey! we had sling for years and years, and i had an antenna for the “normal” channels. i bought that box sling suggested to route normal TV via the sling app but i could never get it to work. after a while, when i struggled to get a good signal for TV for NBC or CBS on college football saturdays, i switched to google tv for $40/month so we’d get live TV for football (but now the price is going up).
I watch Sling on my iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, Mac Chrome browser, Amazon Fire, and even the little “AirPlay TV” box I got to receive any Over-The-Air channels I might get (which is zero). It’s worked flawlessly on all of them. I really, really wanted Hulu+Live because I love Hulu and like the idea of having local networks and CBS. But… Hulu doesn’t have Comedy Central. Since one of the few shows I *must* watch is The Daily Show, that was a no-go. If they ever get Comedy Central, I’d switch in a second. YouTube is $50 a month, which was too pricey for me. I don’t know that I ever looked at GoogleTV.
Yeah, ever since CC pulled The Daily Show from Hulu — originally, one of my primary reasons for paying for Hulu — I’ve just been watching it via the CC app or web site.
After my 3 months pre-paid is over with Sling, I may give Hulu Live a try and use the CC app. I love the idea of having network TV in time for the new Fall season.