After about a year of limited geographical release, Sony has slimmed down their Playstation Vue over-the-top (OTT) television streaming service to accommodate nationwide availability. Specifically, to get this done, the new packages do away with the locals (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) as those require market-by-market negotiation due to affiliate forces.
Sling TV, the leader in this space, starts at $20 a month, whereas Vue clocks in at $30/mo. However, that extra $10 gets you about twice as many channels – above and beyond some of Sling’s $5 add-on packs, including FX, Fox News, and three tiers of Nickelodeon. Further, Sony provides a pseudo-DVR service in retaining favorited shows 28 days for later viewing. Perhaps most compelling, while Sling TV is still restricted to a single stream at any given moment, Vue allows up to five concurrent streams to televisions with Amazon Fire TV – since many households have multiple residents and viewing areas. Yet, on the client side of things, Sling TV is available on more platforms including Android and the possibly ubiquitous Roku. As to interface and reliability, it seems both services have their work cut out of them…
In my household, we could definitely cut the cord. Between a service like Sling TV or Vue, plus Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, augmented by the occasional HBO Now or Showtime subscription, we’d have the vast majority of programming needs met. However, since our TiVos are a hardware sunk cost and Verizon is only charging us about $20 for television services, beyond broadband, I’d prefer to keep the more reliable and more easily accessible “cable” content. You?