The TV app, which aggregates video from different providers into a unified TV guide, previously didn’t integrate with any live TV streaming bundles. If you wanted to watch cable channel programming through that guide, you had to download and log into individual apps from networks like NBC and FX. Those apps don’t support DVR the way PlayStation Vue does, they don’t always offer live TV feeds, and in some cases they require repeat logins because they don’t support Apple’s single sign-on feature. The whole thing was a hassle that made the TV app easy to ignore.

PlayStation Vue, which starts at $45 per month for more than 45 channels, appears to be the first live TV streaming service that integrates with the TV app. (Hulu says it will also add TV app integration to its $40-per-month live TV service soon.) That means you can access Vue’s on-demand shows, DVR content, and live sports straight from the Apple TV’s default home screen, alongside content from several other apps. With this one addition, Apple’s vision for the future of television seems a lot more complete. Read the full column on TechHive.

I do not, however, recommend buying the $40 Roku Premiere. Although the player itself has the same speed and features as the Premiere+, its remote is far inferior, with an infrared emitter that requires line-of-sight to the box and no built-in volume, power, or voice controls. This feels much clunkier to use and isn’t worth the $10 savings compared to the Premiere+.

If you can spare a few minutes, my colleague Martyn Williams made a nice video to complement the print review as well.

Sling TV’s big upsell: This week, Sling announced a “more content-centric” update to its Roku app. That sounds great, except focusing more on content is not what this update actually does.

While Sling’s Roku app generally looks the same as it did before, the home screen now displays programs from add-on packages that aren’t part of your current subscription. Select one of those programs, and you’ll be asked to pay up for more channels. While Sling presents this as a benefit, it strikes me as the kind of grubby pay TV sales tactic that cord-cutters are trying to escape.

The good news is that this feature is optional. To turn it off, head to settings on the Roku app, then uncheck “Display unsubscribed content” under the Account section.

Facebook TV hardware rumors: Would you put a Facebook-powered camera in your living room? Cheddar’s Alex Heath reports that the social networking giant is planning TV streaming device with a built-in camera. The idea is that you could video chat with friends on big screen, perhaps even while watching videos together. (Facebook’s recently-announced Portal will offer similar features, but on a countertop display instead of the TV.)

Facebook just suffered a major data breach that exposed millions of users’ personal information to hackers, recently allowed a political consulting firm to harvest data on a grand scale without permission, and has a history of misrepresenting its data collection policies. Just this week, for instance, Facebook acknowledged that it will use data from those aforementioned Portal devices for ad targeting, after previously telling reporters the opposite. While I like the idea of a TV device that enables big-screen video chat and remote viewing parties, Facebook is pretty much the last company I’d trust to deliver that experience.

The new Chromecast is just a minor upgrade over the one that’s on sale, with 15 percent faster loading times and 60 frames per second support for 1080p videos. (The latter will help for certain YouTube videos and Twitch streams, but not much else, since early every movie and TV show plays at 30 frames per second, and most live TV channels that stream at 60 frames per second top out at 720p resolution.)

While I’d personally recommend a Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, or Nvidia Shield TV over Chromecast as your primary streaming device, Chromecast is still a nice way to launch music or videos from your phone. And with multi-room audio support coming soon, you’ll be able to link your TV’s speakers or sound system to other Chromecast or Google Home devices around the house. It’s not a bad impulse buy at this price.