Sling TV Roku Express offer (screens, phone, HD, program)

[PacoMartin]

Sling TV is making an offer where you sign up for two months ($40 or $50 depending on option) and you get a Roku Express for free ($30 in stores). If you want a Roku anyway, this seems like a fairly painless way to try Sling TV for 8 weeks.

Roku Express works only with HDMI ports and it does not support wired ethernet. So you must have adequate WiFi where your TV is located. It also does not support 4K resolution. On the other hand, the Roku Express is very small, more of an adapter than a set top box.

But I was disappointed that that Roku Express did not support screen mirroring of your phone. I suspect that in a few years, many of us will be getting TV signals via cellular.

I noticed that Direct TV Now is offering an Apple TV free for three month prepaid subscribtion (minimum cost 3*$35=$105). Does anyone have any experience with Apple TV? Does it support the equivalent of ChromeCast, or do you have to have an iPhone?

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by PacoMartin

But I was disappointed that that Roku Express did not support screen mirroring of your phone. I suspect that in a few years, many of us will be getting TV signals via cellular.

Why would we do that?

[diyosa]

Originally Posted by PacoMartin

I suspect that in a few years, many of us will be getting TV signals via cellular.

But you can watch live TV on your phone via internet already. I don't think there's a need for that. I do know tmobile has that app though where you can watch live TV ages ago.

I watch live TV on my hack gps on 'massive' 3.5 in screen. LOOOOOL. Circa 2007.

[PacoMartin]

Originally Posted by diyosa

But you can watch live TV on your phone via internet already. I don't think there's a need for that. I do know tmobile has that app though where you can watch live TV ages ago.

I don't mean you are capable of doing it, I mean that it will be commonplace. A relatively small percentage of Americans now watch TV via an antenna, although it is much more common in Britain.

Right now only AT&T has zero rated television over cell phones if you buy Direct TV Now, but I expect other cell services to follow their lead. The expectation is the 5G will make HD Video streaming very commonplace.

Business will demand it. Right now multichannel video programming distributor sell cable to 53 million cable households, and satellite to 33 million households. They count on Nielsen to estimate how many people in those households and what type of person is watching their shows to sell advertising time.

It will be much more efficient to broadcast to 250-300 million people, all of whom have entered all their personal data into their phones for a chance to win prizes. That way you can tailor advertising to the actual person, and you don't really care what show they are watching. Obviously people don't want to stare at little screens all the time, but they are free to cast their video to a bigger screen.

I think statistically when you are watching another person's video probably won't add up to much time in the big scheme of things. Television was more of a communal experience when I was little, but video watching is pretty much a private function today.

The companies will stress to people how important it is to have a private device to keep track of what you are watching and precisely at what time in the show you tuned out, so you can go back to that exact point in time. When I was a kid you shared one household phone line, and you weren't allowed to hog it all night. Today most kids have their own line. People expect to have their own phone line, and soon video streaming will work that way.

I think it is a natural evolution of the industry. The problem has been that sending that amount of data over cell networks has been very expensive until the recent drops in cellular data prices.