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Dish Introduces $20-a-Month Streaming-TV Service

Posted by samzenpus on from the watch-when-you-want dept.

wyattstorch516 writes "Dish Networks has unveiled Sling TV, its streaming service for customers who don't want to subscribe to Cable or Satellite. From the article: "For $20 a month — yes, twenty dollars — you get access to a lineup of cable networks that includes TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, the Disney Channel, ESPN, and ESPN2. ESPN is obviously a huge get for Dish and could earn Sling TV plenty of customers all on its own. ESPN just ended another year as TV's leading cable network, and now you won't need a traditional cable package to watch it. For sports fanatics, that could prove enticing. But Dish has hinted that there may be limits on watching ESPN on mobile thanks to red tape from existing deals between the network and Verizon."

5 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And how much WITHOUT ESPN? by borcharc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I will sign up for any option that lets me not pay for sports. fuck the sports tax.

  2. ESPN by Maltheus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ESPN is the reason I cancelled Dish in the first place. It's the most costly channel in their lineup and I got sick of subsizing it. Had they chosen better, cheaper channels, I would have considered it.

  3. commercials = FAIL by markdavis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Total FAIL. It is streaming only, no DVR. That means you will happily be forced to watch commercials. I wouldn't even take the service if it were free.

    1. Re:commercials = FAIL by markdavis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oh, they are all already out of business because of DVR's on cable and satellite services? I think not. The cable and satellite companies DO pay for access to the channels (and quite a bit, at that). And even with ability to fast forward through commercials, many people (myself included) still see things and stop and play interesting/relevant commercials.

      I am neither clueless nor cheap. I know exactly how this stuff works and I will not pay any price for content which forces commercial viewing. And if that means I have to pay more for access to the channels... fine. So how is that clueless or cheap?

      I am certainly not alone in this feeling. The genie is out of the bag, and many of us will never go back. Next step- I want to pay for only the channels I want/watch. I am tired of subsidizing extremely expensive and totally uninteresting sports channels and other such nonsense.

  4. Re:And how much WITHOUT ESPN? by rahvin112 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Arguing that the contract requires they purchase unrelated channels to get a single channel is not contract related is a bunch of horseshit. It IS a contractual problem, because the content providers refuse to sell channels outside bundles which essentially forces bundling on the provider.

    Personally I believe this is a regulatory action the government should take, they should make it illegal to force bundle channels to providers and require that they sell channels to all providers on equal terms and without bias. There should be a cost to that government granted monopoly and one of them should be that they can't discriminate against delivery methods or require the purchase of entire channel catalogs to get a single channel. We've given these companies the ability to destroy competing delivery services which has resulted in monopoly collusion between content creators and distributors. This monopoly should be broken, and laws should be passed to prevent it from ever happening again.

    I personally don't believe distribution companies (ie cable & sat companies, netflix, etc) should be able to own content and that allowing that to happen has resulted in a significant portion of the last decades price increases for content.