Xbox One owners can get in on the new live cable streaming service called Sling TV – a subsidiary of Dish Network. Along with the launch, are two special promotional limited-time offers that allow you to try the service out for free.
Current Xbox Live members will get the service free for 30 days. Also, the first five thousand people who purchase an Xbox One from microsoftstore.com or a Microsoft retail store, will get the service free for 3 months. After the trial period ends, if you decide to keep Sling TV, it will cost you $20/month for the basic package.
What is Sling TV?
If you haven’t heard of it, Sling TV is a subsidiary or Dish Network and provides “over-the-top” cable TV via the internet. It’s a a great choice for cord cutters, since they know traditional cable TV is on the decline. It allows you to watch live cable broadcasts and video on demand on a variety of devices including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, computers, iOS, Android, and now Xbox One.
In fact, the service is also coming soon to Google’s Nexus Player. And a friend of mine also is able to stream it to his Chromecast through his Android device.
The basic package for Sling TV is $20/month which currently provides you with 17 cable channels, including ESPN, AMC, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, and others.
It also allows you to add on additional channel packages for $5 each like Sport Extra, Kids Extra, and World new Extra. Each of these packages offer four to seven additional channels that are relevant to the package. For instance, the World News Extra adds HLN, Bloomberg, Euro News, RT, and other news channels.
While this seems like a basic cable deal, the cool thing is you don’t need “a guy” come over to your place and install anything, or paying to rent your cable box or DVR. You simply need a high speed internet connection and a supported device to watch it.
For more on the development with Sling TV and Xbox One, read this article by Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, where he has an interview with Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch. Or for a quick overall view of how Sling TV works on Xbox One, check out the video below:
We’ll be testing out Sling TV over the next few weeks and will have a review for you and whether it’s something you might want to consider – especially for cord cutters.
It is worth mentioning also, that it will work with the Kinect for Xbox One so you can control it using voice and hand gestures. Of course the most obvious thing you’d want to do is snap it to one side of your screen to you can watch TV and game at the same time.
If you’ve used Sling TV, definitely leave a comment below and tell us your opinion of the service.
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
