Weekly Rewind
Sling TV’s tweaked bundles and redesign: Dish Network’s bundle of streaming TV channels is getting more competitive. A major redesign, which first arrived a couple weeks ago on the fourth-generation Apple TV, is now available on Roku devices, letting you bookmark favorite channels and more easily resume on-demand videos.
Sling TV is also adding NBC networks such as USA, SyFy, Bravo, and Comcast SportsNet to its “Sling Blue” bundle, which lets you stream on up to three devices at once. On the downside, it’s also raising the price, from $20 to $25 per month. The single-stream bundle, now called “Sling Orange,” still costs $20 per month, and both plans now include BBC Networks. If you want both bundles, it’ll cost $40 per month. (The main reason to get both? Only the Orange bundle has ESPN and Disney channels.)
I’ll probably do a deeper dive into these changes for my next column, but for now the main takeaway is that TV networks are becoming more agreeable to these streaming bundles, and Sling is getting more flexible as a result. Read more on the Sling news site.
Cord cutting naysayers still aren’t getting it: Not long ago, cable apologists complained that it was too hard to find the shows you wanted through streaming video. But as more TV networks have moved online to where their customers are, those pundits have come up with an even sillier complaint: Now there’s just too much stuff.
A recent piece by Joanna Robinson at Vanity Fair is the latest example, rehashing the tired argument that there are so many new streaming services, each with their own TV and movie lineups, that it’s hard to keep up. “Soon you’ll have to have a dozen subscriptions just to keep on top of things,” Robinson laments. “Wasn’t it easier when all your shows were bundled in one place?”
There’s an argument to be made for better search, browsing, and billing mechanisms that work across a variety of streaming services. But those issues are being solved as we speak on devices like Roku and Apple TV. The transition to streaming video won’t be perfectly smooth, but the end result will be more choice and diversity of programming. To pine for the way things were with cable TV is to completely miss the point.
More Catch-Up
|
