A month ago, Amazon and Sling TV had a deal for $50 off an Amazon Fire TV box if you paid for 3 months of Sling in advance (the promo is still running). Since I was curious about Amazon’s box and Sling as well, I went for it. Luckily, Amazon was offering an extra $15 off the Fire TV box at the time, so I ended up paying only $35 for the box.
I’m quite enjoying the Fire TV. The PBS Video app was the main motivation for getting a Fire TV, and the convenience of being able to watch on my television without having to hold a laptop or tablet has been well worth the cost. It’s also convenient to have access to Netflix or my Prime Music library, but I haven’t used it much beyond those bits of functionality.
To balance things out, the FireTV is a bit rough in a few places:
- Sometimes it doesn’t sleep when it should. More of a nuisance, than anything.
- YouTube’s app is at least a year out of date. It’s not at all user-friendly when compared to the YouTube app on the PS3, which was updated in the past 6 months.
- It takes too many clicks to navigate around. I suppose that’s why they added voice search, which I keep forgetting about.
Now as for Sling, I’m just not finding it all that valuable. The programming isn’t quality enough to drag me through obnoxious commercial breaks. In Portland we were lucky enough to have plenty of broadcast DTV channels, supplying access to the three major networks and PBS, which is all we really need or want from TV. Honestly, if I had better DTV reception were I am now I probably wouldn’t have considered Sling at all. If they add more on-demand streaming, perhaps I’d continue paying so I could watch the Adult Swim shows that I can’t manage to stay awake for. Even better if they added access to local Fox, NBC ABC, and CBS stations. Otherwise, there simply isn’t much reason for me to stick around.