I tried Sling TV at CES 2015, and now I'm cancelling cable

So here we have Dish realizing there are people not signing up for cable. They want a lower cost solution. Why not take this same package and offer it to Dish customers for $20? It would still be a companion product to go with Hulu and Netflix. I guess this might even highlight the importance of ads even more becasue as a Dish customer you have access to a DVR. But there is jsut something funny about a company putting out a low cost new (and competing in a sense) product but doing nothing to lower the cost of their existing product.

If they would add the app to the hopper , I could see some subs doing this and downgrading the lower priced programming packs. But that would cannibalize the satellite part of the business.
 
If they would add the app to the hopper , I could see some subs doing this and downgrading the lower priced programming packs. But that would cannibalize the satellite part of the business.
It already is. I don't know what percentage I count as in the same boat, but I am most likely going to cancel my Dish service and go with Sling TV.
 
Would middle ground work for you?


McAdam added that he is hopeful that Congress will introduce net neutrality legislation that will find a middle ground, with a law that prohibits Internet service providers from blocking or degrading access to content services but doesn't impose economic regulations. "Frankly, the lack of certainty around this will impact capital deployment in the future and I don't think that the economy can stand that," he said.
http://www.bostonherald.com/busines...eyes_launch_of_internet_tv_service_with_20_30
 
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On the flipside of the regulation argument, once telecommunications was de-regulated back in 1996, you had content owners and media companies merging and buying up properties, leaving consumers with less choice and subject to the forced bundling and extortion which has led to higher frequency of disputes and ballooning costs that we suffer through today.
 
With only one connection at a time per account, they aren't gonna draw as many.
You are not the audience they are looking for.

They are going after the folks with no cable or satellite who subscribe to Hulu or Netflix as a way to give them live programming to compliment the others.
 
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As I stated in other posts , my family had trouble using just the hopper with 3 tuners between three of us. We ended up using the super joey to give us two more tuners. My wife likes to watch her super joey in the bedroom, my son in his room and me in the computer room. We occasionally watch movies together in the living room on the big hdtv. I can only imagine how it would be if your wife is home and you and her want to watch two different shows like HGTV and ESPN at the same time. Now if your wife and children are never home at the same time , I guess it would work just fine. Since the SLING Tv channels are almost all live ,except for the ones that can go back 3 days , I see this being a problem.

Do you really need all of those live streams though? Maybe I am different but most HGTV shows can be watched on demand through their website or hulu and same for disney shows. IMO news and sports are the big events that need to be watched live. I'd actually prefer to watch everything else on demand. It was said above but the whole cord cutting this is just as much about the $ savings as it is anything else. When you save the money you make concessions and live with them so having to "fight" who gets to watch live tv is worth saving $70 to me esp when you have things like netflix to offset the live tv needs.

And you mentioned the hopper/joey. That is honestly one of the biggest reasons I am dropping dish... the equipment changes have gotten out of hand and are no longer an insignificant part of the bill (my 1h/2j was almost $30 and that was me not having service on my 3rd tv because of the costs). You noticed there are no equipment charges with this because they did the smart thing and leveraged users existing equipment much like the original sling adapter does for tablets and phones. Dish would have been very wise to create sling apps for your tv too and then they wouldn't need to bother with the virtual joey but then they wouldn't be able to charge that extra $7 per tv. That is another annoyance of mine in having to pay that fee to get any kind of service on my tv's. I will be able to have sling tv available on 100 tv's if I want which is far more flexible even if I only have one live stream at a time.

What I'd like to see is DA for the Roku or other similar device.
So here we have Dish realizing there are people not signing up for cable. They want a lower cost solution. Why not take this same package and offer it to Dish customers for $20? It would still be a companion product to go with Hulu and Netflix. I guess this might even highlight the importance of ads even more becasue as a Dish customer you have access to a DVR. But there is jsut something funny about a company putting out a low cost new (and competing in a sense) product but doing nothing to lower the cost of their existing product.

They could have done it but it would have taken many customers away from higher priced bills which would eat away at their business. Still how awesome would a top 50 be with a custom hopper dvr that has 3 or 4 DA tuners and they had DA apps for yout tv/roku/xbox. Something like that could have been $40 total.
 
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Dish Network Doesn't Want Sling TV to Become Too Popular http://www.thestreet.com/story/1300...esnt-want-sling-tv-to-become-too-popular.html
Dish Network (DISH) wants its low-cost Internet-based Sling TV to become popular -- just not too popular.Sling, which is set to begin service this month, has a curious deal with its largest content providers: It must limit its total subscribers to as few as 5 million, according to Macquarie Capital analyst Amy Yong who attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. The service was also likely watered down from its original conception, Yong said in an interview. The cap isn't intended to be a hard number, simply a point at which Dish would probably stop promoting the service, Yong added. Dish wouldn't confirm or deny such a cap, and the media companies that will provide their networks to Sling TV were reluctant to discuss specific terms of their deals with Dish. Caps are not uncommon with smaller packages as larger media companies such as CBS fear cutting into the fees they receive from pay-TV providers such as Comcast (CMCSA) , Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Verizon (VZ) . The networks don't want to jeopardize the bulk of their profit for the sake of Internet-based services even as they recognize that's where younger viewers are increasingly going for video."A lot of these smaller packages have caps," said Tom Eagan, an analyst with the Telsey Advisory Group. "The networks would want these caps because they're assuming (and probably rightly so) that after the cap, the [subscriber] growth would cannibalize" the pay-TV base.In November, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen said he expected Dish would charge $30 a month for the service, as opposed to the $20-a-month basic plan the Englewood, Colorado-based pay-TV operator announced this week. Dish is also offering select add-on packages for an additional $5 per month. On Thursday, Dish officials declined to say why it shifted to a cheaper service or say what channels, if any, were scrapped as part of the decision to go with a lower price.If Sling TV can attract 1-2 million subscribers within a year, that "could open the flood gates for other players" to enter the over-the-top arena with similar services, Yong added.But some pay-TV operators may be "reluctant" to chase the same millennial demographic that Sling TV is targeting because of the "historically high-churn characteristics" of younger consumers, she said using an industry term for turnover. "If the services gain little traction, we think this will be further proof that even larger players like Dish may find it difficult to go skinny," Yong said, noting that there are only 12 channels in the basic Sling TV plan."It's limited probably because some content owners did not want to have [Sling TV] widely distributed," Yong said. "This is a $20 product, so it's not talking about a lot of money here. [The networks] are dipping their toe in the water because the world is moving in that direction, but you want to be careful" with the new over-the-top services.
 
You are not the audience they are looking for.

They are going after the folks with no cable or satellite who subscribe to Hulu or Netflix as a way to give them live programming to compliment the others.
They are limiting their audience then, as I said.

That's like coming out with a new soft drink, but instead of making it attractive to everybody, and selling 5 million bottles a month, they are making it only attractive to a select few, and selling 1 million.
 
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I like that none of this is from Dish, and then they also state at the end, "This is a $20 product, so it's not talking about a lot of money here. [The networks] are dipping their toe in the water because the world is moving in that direction, but you want to be careful" with the new over-the-top services."
 
IF they are purposely limiting the SLING TV to just 5 million then I don't see the working for either DISH or the millennials they are chasing after . This limit sounds like a detriment to both DISH and Sling tv in the long run.
 
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I don't understand this. What's the point of capping subs? I doubt Dish will have 5 million signups any time soon for the service, but why the limitation? Surely the content providers will be paid per sub. It boggles my mind about what goes on in this industry. I wonder if the per sub rate is much lower with this service.
 
They are limiting their audience then, as I said.

That's like coming out with a new soft drink, but instead of making it attractive to everybody, and selling 5 million bottles a month, they are making it only attractive to a select few, and selling 1 million.
This is actually more the norm in business, products & services provided for a particular market segment. Rarely there are new items that come out that are for the masses. Even the popular iPhone was only for a small market segment with the market it now commands built up over time.
 
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