Unlike cable, there's no equipment rental, contracts or other "hidden" monthly fees. That means your multi-TV household can all watch something different at once, provided you have a fast enough Internet connection.
Currently the limit is one PS3 and one PS4 in the same house, with additional simultaneous streams using Fire TV or iOS devices, up to five total streams at once. Unlike Sling TV, which is limited to just one stream, Vue lets you stream to more than one device at the same time. You can watch on up to five TVs simultaneously from one account. You can also watch on an iPad or iPhone or Chromecast connected to a TV, but you must also have a PlayStation or Fire TV to do so. Instead of a cable box, Vue feeds your TV through a PlayStation console, or an Amazon Fire TV box or Amazon Fire TV stick. You'll need a PlayStation 3 or 4 console, or an Amazon Fire TV, to use it. Just like Netflix, these shows are stored in the cloud, not on your device. You can easily set up shows to watch after they air live, and you can fast-forward, pause and rewind, just like regular hardware DVR from the cable company. Its DVR lets you "record" your shows to the cloud, watch them anytime, and skip commercials. In other places across the country, shows from those networks are only available on-demand the next day on Vue, and you won't get stuff like local news. That's because you can watch live versions of the local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC stations. If you live in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco or Miami, Vue starts at $40. It's available nationwide in the US, but costs more (and offers live local channels) in seven major cities. Its new nationwide "Slim" packages start at $30 for 50-odd channels, including next-day video-on-demand of programming from ABC, Fox and NBC, with CBS "coming soon." Thanks to price drops, new channels and additional device support, as well as a nationwide rollout, Vue is now superior to Sling TV in most ways and accessible to a good chunk of the US population. Vue has always had fewer restrictions and more channels and features than Sling, including an innovative "cloud DVR," but at first it cost too much, was only available in a handful of US cities and only worked with PlayStation consoles. When the service first debuted, it ran second banana to Sling TV, the pioneering cord-cutter TV service that delivers a base package of 20-odd live TV channels, including ESPN, AMC and CNN, for $20 per month. Meanwhile, little old Sony has been serving up PlayStation Vue for the last year, offering just about everything Apple is rumored to be planning. Customers that prepay for three months of DirecTV Now get an Apple TV, while those who prepay one month get an Amazon FireTV Stick.Īpple has gone back and forth for years in an effort, now evidently stalled again, to offer an Internet-delivered TV service to compete against cable. Significantly, subscribers can add HBO for $5 per month - a steal compared to the $15 the network charges for its standalone app, HBO Now. Launched in November 2016, it features more than 100 channels at the very competitive introductory price of $35 per month, after which it increases to $60. Still, though PlayStation Vue has the edge on Sling in a few critical categories - superior interface, DVR capabilities, simultaneous viewing on multiple devices - Sling remains the least expensive, most flexible offering.īut the landscape continues to evolve: The most recent addition is AT&T's new online TV service, DirecTV Now. And, in June, Sling TV finally came to Apple TV. Sling also added Comedy Central to the base package and made other Viacom channels available as $5 add-on packages. In April 2016, the company began offering an alternate multi-stream service, with some Fox channels but no ESPN, and the ABC broadcast channel in some markets for an extra $5 per month. However, as of November 8, Sony has also dropped all Viacom channels, including Comedy Central, Spike and MTV.Īt the same time, Sling has been fiddling with its own pricing and channel lineups. The Vue's device support is much more limited, however, and there are many restrictions on mobile use, too: the DVR is inactive, for example, and certain channels aren't available. And it will soon come to web browsers, too, according to the company.
Since then, Sony has dropped its pricing, and further beefed up the Vue offering, adding new channels such as HBO, Cinemax, NFL Network, and NFL RedZone, as well as support for Android TV devices.