Thanks for the thoughtful and informative replies. I've only used DishAnywhere in the past with the Sling adapter and the quality of the app itself (on the web and iPad) wasn't great and the streaming quality was subpar.
I understand it depends on your connection, but if you have a 100Mb connection nowadays, what can you expect the quality to be like compared to watching the Dish channels directly at home?
And how is the app for the iPad and FireTV now? Is it something modern and usable like Netflix or still kind of clunky?
Well, the H3 has Sling built-in and is superior to the Sling Adapter. The H3 Sling experience can be EXCELLENT.
The Dish Anywhere App has matured to the point where even I find it a GOOD option, and one I can now really use and live with when Charlie kills my Slingbox. In fact, I have been using Dish Anywhere on my tablets (where I can no longer download the Slingbox app), and have found it to be a GOOD experience.
The streaming quality will depend upon your home internet speed. What matters is NOT you downstream speed at HOME (you stated 100mbs), but on your
UPstream speed. Most often, in cable ISP's (they are asymmetric) the UPstream is often slower than the DOWNstream, and sometimes significantly so, but UPstream speeds as low as 4mbs will still get you very good PQ. You need run a speed test to measure your UPstream speed.
For the
very best High-Def PQ, about 8mbs
upstream is required--
HOWEVER, the Sling tech is so good that you can have 3-4mbs upstream and still get a very good High-Def PQ and can result in a PQ like watching at home or pretty darn close to it in the best of conditions
At first the PQ will look lower quality, but the Sling tech is trying to slowly adapt to your UPstream speed without losing a picture and will, after a few minutes, provide a very high PQ in good conditions.
DishAnywhere is Windows and ANDROID only, so your options are Windows PC, Android phones and tablets, and the various Fire TV connected devices or FireSticks (Fire TV's use a forked Android).
The Dish Anywhere Android App for phone and tablets interface does take a bit of getting used to, but once acquainted, you can do the most common things very easily. However, I do find a few things I like to do to be less intuitive, such as the process of downloading DVR recordings to my local device and the Closed Captions settings. It certainly can be better, but I do think you will find it vastly improved.
As for the Fire TV experience, well, it is not clunky as it is limited and simplified, and it too could be a little more intuitive, but you can learn it FAST and it is easy to do the CORE things you want it to do well such as Live TV and watching DVR recordings. The learning curve has to do with the very limited buttons on the Fire remote (just as limited as Roku remotes), so directly changing to specific channels requires using the "left/right" of the remote to select the numbers, but then again, you could always just have the Guide display and select from there, which is more intuitive. As tricky as it can be, I often prefer to enter the channel number directly. Of course the Up/Down can take you to the next channel above and below during Live TV.
Frankly, the negatives can quickly become quibbles when compared to the power of watching LIVE TV from your H3 (or from the channel's streaming source--in that case just press record to get full skip back/forward functionality) and playing back any of your DVR recordings anywhere you have an internet connection and on a nice, large PC monitor or a large HDTV with --to a really critical eye--
extremely close to like at home--but to 95% of the population--JUST as good a PQ as at home. The result is quite good that you get caught up in the content, and after a while, I thouhgt I was watching the Joey in the room instead of the DA on the Fire TV. The smaller screen and pixel density of a tablet will result in a Just Like At Home PQ. I find the PC and tablet experience require no adjustments, but if one is really picky (as yours truly), some HDTV's may need a slight adjustment or tweak of color saturation or brightness/contrast, but the 95% of viewers would not even bother the PQ is so good.
Dish Anywhere is clearly not designed for quick "channel surfing" like at home, but for the other features of Live TV and playback of DVR recordings when we watch the content, one can really become amazed at how we are watching our Dish as if we were at home or even as a substitute for a Joey in another room if one wants to save money.
