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#slingtv — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #slingtv, aggregated by home.social.

  1. After a few days, looking over streaming services to see what might be a good fit for me, I have concluded there is no good fit.

    I mostly follow hockey, college football, and soccer and need 3-4 different subscriptions to follow just one of those leagues, from start to end, no matter who I go with.

    The NFL, NBA, golf, etc have no value to me and forcing me to contribute to Fox News because I want to watch a game is absurd if not an insult!

    With a degree in sports marketing and a past in the sports industry in different roles & levels, I am embarrassed to admit that it took this to bring me back to my senses and remember:

    A) I will be better off without these streaming services and get off the couch (Saving money & burning calories).

    B) Televised sports have no real positive impact on my personal life. Yet, I’ve thrown more & more money at these companies, who are determined to provide less & less by nickel and diming to push the next app or subscription required for the “rest of the games,” not included in the advertised package, and, of course, blackouts, regardless of what you paid for.

    C) Gambling is the fuel for sports revenue. Games/leagues are managed narratives to keep fans coming back for another fix of dopamine. So, why pay $1,000’s of dollars/year to pad the already insane profit margins of these media companies and “non-profit” leagues in the industry known as pro-sports?

    Years ago, some “cut the cord” in response to the media companies insane prices. The same players now control streaming, fighting like children about who gets the to bleed people while calling each other “unreasonable” for the cost of doing so.

    I know I [maybe we] can live without televised sports, but I doubt televised sports can live without me/us. It’s time to send a message and cut the stream as well.

    #sports #media #streaming #youtubetv #HULU #FUBO #SlingTV #ESPN #CBS #ABC #NBC #FOX #Peacock #Paramount #Draftkings #warner #Comcast #Disney #AppleTV #NFL #NHL #NBA #MLB #MLS

  2. I wonder how many free trial sign-ups #FuboTV, #Hulu+LiveTV, #SlingTV, etc, are getting during this very public negotiations spat between #YouTubeTV and #Disney (which covers #ABC, #ESPN, etc channels)?

    I went with FuboTV (5 days free) in order to catch tonight's Cowboys game, and then I'll cancel tomorrow. And then consider my options if the weekend arrives without an agreement, in order to catch the #Formula1 race* (#BrazilGP).

    *[which luckily won't be an issue anymore next year, when #AppleTV takes over F1 in the US, and my Apple One subscription includes it].

  3. Weekly output: Sling Select, Alaska Airlines + Starlink, Mark Vena podcast, Verizon Family Line, Bluesky blocks Mississippi

    I was going to spend part of Sunday night watching SpaceX’s 10th flight test of its giant, lately star-crossed Starship rocket–but the company scrubbbed the attempt “to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems.” Given everything else I had on my to-do list, I can’t say I mind the delay.

    8/19/2025: Sling Debuts Skinnier $20 ‘Sling Select’ Bundle of 11 Sports, Lifestyle Channels, PCMag

    I had to mention Sling’s subscriber totals in this post, so I checked its parent firm’s EchoStar’s quarterly earnings filing and saw not only that number (1.785 million) but a warning about insufficient projected cash flow to pay the company’s upcoming expenses that “raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.”

    8/20/2025: Alaska Airlines to Switch to Starlink Wi-Fi Starting in 2026, PCMag

    My attempt to get some clarification from Alaska about planes equipped with old air-to-ground connectivity hit a bizarre snag: The airline’s mail servers failed to deliver my e-mails to its PR department, instead returning error messages reporting that “the remote server is misconfigured.” My PCMag colleague Michael Kan relayed my queries from his own account, and that worked.

    8/21/2025: Ep 114 SmartTechCheck Podcast — Intel, smart glasses, AOL dial-up, new EV battery tech, Ford, Mark Vena

    I found a recording of a dial-up modem connecting to AOL to play at the start of that segment of our conversation and also dug out an AOL disk from my home office’s collection of obsolete technology to show off as a prop.

    8/22/2025: Verizon Tries to Reinvent the Home Phone Number With ‘Family Line’, PCMag

    This wouldn’t have been much of a story without my asking Verizon if you can port an existing number over to this service–and Verizon’s publicist checking and informing me that you can’t.

    8/23/2025: Bluesky Blocks Mississippi Users Instead of Making Them Prove They’re Over 18, PCMag

    I spent more time than I expected Saturday morning studying the Mississippi law requiring social platforms to verify the ages of new users, which has some confusing and vague parts. I’m not sure that this statute is quite as bad as Bluesky portrays it, but I am sure that Facebook and Instagram are in just as much trouble–which makes Meta’s silence on this issue look sketchy.

    #ageVerification #AlaskaAirlines #AS #Bluesky #cordCutting #homePhone #landline #Mississippi #SlingSelect #SlingTV #SpaceX #Starlink #streamingTV #VerizonFamilyLine

  4. Sling TV has introduced a $5 day pass, $10 weekend pass and $15 week pass for its live TV streaming service. Only available for the Orange Plan though, it lacks support for local ABC, NBC, and Fox, but includes Disney and ESPN. news.sling.com/2025-08-12-Slin

  5. Anybody else watching the #RoseBowl on #ESPNU’s #CommandCenter through something like #SlingTV? They been running the same ads for #NBA and #NFL games on #ABC and #ESPN…over…and over…and over again. 😑

    #CFP #Michigan #Alabama @cfb

  6. Watching @cnn (cause we pay for #SlingTV during college football season) and they have ads asking for donations for #StJude Children's Cancer hospital. Is that a thing that mostly only exists in the US cause we lack universal health care?

  7. I'm still following the #WorldCup I guess, as much as I can considering how busy I am

    I'm American but not tuned into #USA coverage, as apparently the only audio coverage is via #SiriusXM and while my parents have #SlingTV (which has #FS1, #FS2 and #FOX on streaming), I'm not watching TV while working lol

    I've been listening to #TalkSPORT, which has some good live talk coverage of what's happening, and #ESPNRadio has been checking in too. Both have complained about #Qatar's human rights violations, with the former actually pointing out that the stadiums were built on the backs of it, which is both grossly appropriate but makes it a bit difficult to kick back and enjoy the games 😅
  8. Slingboxes, streaming video way before it was cool, go dark tomorrow - Enlarge / The original Slingbox, on display at the 2006 Consumer Electr... - arstechnica.com/?p=1895932 #cordcutting #dishnetwork #streamingtv #dishhopper #slingbox #slingtv #hopper #sling #tech

  9. I hope #ESPN3 always exists.

    If it always exists and will always carry #CFB, I'll probably only very rarely pay for a #CableTV alternative like #SlingTV

    I love #CFB but don't have the time to follow everything closely, so I don't have who the teams are as long as the games are competitive and the broadcasting quality is decent.
  10. At our house, we have the #SlingTV Blue package so that we don't give money to #Disney. This means we don't have #ESPN. But were good, cuz we got #FOX channels like #FS1, #Comcast (aka #NBCUniversal) channels like #NBCSN, and all the league channels like #NFLNetwork, #MLBNetwork, #NHLNetwork, etc.