so it turns out you were all correct you've been saying it in the comments
for months now streaming TV just ain't what it used to be the channel counts
are growing along with the cost and with all of this new big bundle they're
supposed to be skinny bundles before but with all of this it's starting to look
and smell and act and feel and cost just like our old cable subscriptions and so
this is probably why sling TVs growth has slowed to a trickle and DirecTV now
forget about growth they are shrinking at an alarming rate but these are the
former kings of streaming TV right what gives are they really not worth it
anymore well that's what we're going to talk about today we're also gonna pit
them against each other we'll look at the state of both sling TV and DirecTV
now so that you can decide hey if I am choosing between one of the two who's it
gonna be so let's dive in so first things first go ahead and hit that
subscribe button and the bell icon next to it so you're notified when we were
back here every Wednesday and Friday with the new video much like this one
now let's start this video off with a nice juicy kind of boring quote from
Richard Greenfield of BTIG research legacy media's forced bundling tactics
continued to put business models and profits ahead of the consumer which is
always a long-term losing proposition indeed translation here is that these
streaming companies are not giving you what you want and so you are not giving
them your money at the rate that they were hoping for anyway and that really
bears out in the numbers in quarter one the first three months of this year
sling only gains 7,000 subscribers now it is a game but that's a far cry from
what they were doing a couple of years ago and DirecTV now like I said they are
losing subscribers hand-over-fist eighty-three thousand subscribers lost
in that same time period now this isn't as much as what they lost
in quarter four of last year that was over a quarter million subscribers but
still eighty-three thousand that's nothing to sneeze at they're losing a
lot of subscribers so do the numbers really tell the right story though we
should probably look at the fact sheet for each one and then decide now first
up is DirecTV now we're at the lower tier you can get that for 50 bucks for
about 40 channels you can up that too seventy dollars for about fifty channels
in either case you're gonna get HBO built in because AT&T is the parent
company of both so they can kind of mix those two together so that's nice at
least and they've now got a bunch of Viacom channels in there as well so
you've got MTV vh1 Nickelodeon these are some good channels that they fit into
their package as well so that's nice simultaneous streams you get to at no
extra charge you can get a third simultaneous stream if you need that for
an extra five bucks a month and then there's the DVR the DVR is maybe the
funniest thing about DirecTV now because after about two years of DVR service
cloud DVR it's still in beta ladies and gentlemen still in beta what you get at
no extra charge is about 20 hours of recorded footage and you only get to
keep those recordings for up to 30 days frankly I would expect a lot more at
this point from DirecTV now than a beta testing still in beta DVR but whatever
the other funding thing that I ran into as I was doing my research was on the
front page of their website it was a nice chart that shows you how DirecTV
now stacks up against the competition and for today's purposes we're
especially looking at the sling TV column here and frankly I thought that
undirected oz website sling TV came out looking pretty good and DirecTV now even
messed up the numbers in there so the simultaneous stream for the sling sling
blue package they list at four even though it's only three so they're
actually making their competition look better well what do you do but that
brings us to sling TV which you can still get for 25 bucks a month if you
get either the orange or the blue package if you get the combo then it's
gonna be 40 bucks a month and yes I'm ignoring promotional pricing
for the moment now like I said earlier you can get three simultaneous streams
with the blue package it's one on the orange package for if you get the combo
now slings DVR you do have to pay for an additional five bucks a month but in
this case you're gonna get 50 hours of recording which I still think is pretty
low but certainly a lot more than 20 and in a recent change you're now going to
be able to keep those recordings indefinitely you can keep them as long
as you want and also and this is kind of cool I thought if you can
little sling TV which of course you can do anytime with any of these streaming
TV providers if you cancel sling TV you can still keep your DVR recordings for
up to 30 extra days I thought that was pretty neat now on the channel side of
things there is no HBO not just is it not built-in but there's no option to
get HBO because AT&T owns HBO and DirecTV now and they want to keep it
over there they don't even give you that option on sling anymore unfortunately
and sling does have a few Viacom channels like Comedy Central and BT and
Nick jr. but it doesn't have some of those big-name ones like I was talking
about over on DirecTV now so to me it's kind of easy to see that sling has a
pretty good value compared to DirecTV now I think they kind of went out on the
objective measures but if your subjective measure is HBO or some of
those Viacom channels then it might be a different outcome for you so ultimately
head-to-head it's easy for me to give the nod to sling on this one yeah it's
not quite what we were looking for when we all cut the cord a few years ago but
at least they still give us the option of a $25 package so we can still save
money with them now on the DirecTV now side if you are a die-hard DirecTV now
subscriber I would love to hear why I don't say that with any judgment I'm
actually really interested so hit the comments below and let me know why you
stick with DirecTV now is it the free HBO is it simple inertia that you've
been with them for a couple years and it's hard to switch over to somebody
else hit the comments below let me know on your way down guys make sure you give
this video a like and subscribe if you really enjoyed it so that you can be
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like this one thanks for watching we'll see you next time
you