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Dish's New AirTV Set-Top Box Does Over-the-Air and 4K Streaming (techcrunch.com)
On Tuesday, Dish unveiled a new streaming device, the AirTV, which uses Android TV as its base operating system, and provides access to the wealth of Android media apps available. TechCrunch reports: But it's also able to grab over-the-air signals with an antenna for streaming live TV, and it works with Sling TV for a cable-free streaming subscription cord cutting experience. The AirTV also handles 4K, which is good news if you picked one of these up over the holiday shopping season. The 4K support will primarily grab content from Netflix and YouTube apps, but because the underlying platform is Android TV, there are other sources available, which is not necessarily true for other smart TV devices looking to bring more 4K into the living room. It's also not necessary for AirTV users to even use Sling TV, the subscription over-the-top streaming service Dish owns. Which is yet another sign of the changing world that TV and cable providers now find themselves in. The AirTV is also available in both OTA and streaming only hardware configurations, and retails for $129 for the antenna-compatible version, and $99 without.
What functionality will remain, or will it become another doorstop?
If I can at least use it as an OTA DVR without a programming guide for as long as the device holds up and the current format for TV-signals is still being used, then it may be worth buying. Otherwise, it's just another "rental disguised as a purchase" device.
The concept is nice but the thing looks like a children's toy. I have a feeling they're gonna lose out on a decent amount of sales simply because people won't want the thing in their entertainment center.
if it's getting a broadcast signal from an antenna, that's not streaming television. thats receiving a broadcast signal with an antenna, like tvs have done since the beginning
do I blame millenials here? someone must be blamed
I question whether there is sufficient bandwidth to stream 4K over the air in real time.
I'm not clear why Sling is even a part of anything offered by a satellite service, but avoid them.
I just canceled a Sling subscription. There were many reasons, including ignorant support people and awful quality. I would often watch the first half of a show just fine then have it lock up and get an error message telling me to check my Internet connection and fight with my Internet provider. When I would check my Internet connection it was working fine and at the full speed expected and that I had watched the first half of the show with. But the worst offense by Sling in my mind is that they really don't provide the channels that they claim. I had the $25 "Blue" package because there was really nothing that I would watch on the $20 Orange package. But as soon as I signed up I found that I couldn't watch the advertised FXX or National Geographic Wild packages. After much absurd hoop jumping with support I finally got an email telling me that the FXX channel did not provide a "live stream" but that there were a few archived programs that i could watch that might have been shown on FXX once. The same seems to be true for Nat Geo Wild, and it might be the case for other channels that I have not even checked. If you tried to tune into a sports channel that had a game you wanted to see, you wouldn't accept it if the streaming service told you that the game was not available but they had a small set of recorded games from 2014 that you could watch. Why should Sling customers accept this on FXX, Wild or any other advretised channel that is part of the paid package?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Nice Word Salad. Machine generated?
By law in the USA, there's not enough bandwidth for 1080p, much less acceptable quality 4K. You "could" shoot 4K, but it will be shitty quality.
If you already have a Nexus Player or another Android TV device that is getting Android TV 7.0 (Nouget) then it already has support for over the air tuners and you can install the Sling TV app from the Play Store.
So mythtv(backend) + kodi. *yawn*
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
Xiaomi mibox does all of this already. It also includes OTA tuner support, as should most AndroidTV* boxes. It does Netflix and youtube in 4k and comes with preloaded sling tv app.
What the heck does this get you for an extra $60?
* AndroidTV box, not "Android TV box" aka it is not your phone/tablet/etc android mucked with to work on a tv.
I can't speak specifically about NBC sports (I don't watch sportsball), but another disadvantage of Sling is that, at least for the websites that I have tried, Sling is not considered a "provider". So if you want to be able to log in to sites like Syfy and USA and watch on-line content, you have another reason to avoid Sling TV. The sites that I have tried simply do not accept Sling TV as a provider, even though you have paid to receive those same channel over Sling. Sling pretends to have some of the same content, but actually has much much less than you get on the channel's website if you can log in with a "real" service provider.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.