You may remember earlier this year, when Dish announced Sling TV at CES in Las Vegas. It has since come out and been available for a few months across the whole country. You get all kinds of channels like ESPN, ESPN2, History, TBS, TNT, and many others. You can also add more for an additional price per month. Since Sling TV launched, we’ve seen a number of companies developing competitors, even Sony and now Comcast.
However it appears that Sony and Comcast are looking to bring local channels to you via your smartphone or laptop. Which is something interesting, seeing as you don’t get your local sports channels with Sling TV, yet. For instance, for me, I don’t get Fox Sports Detroit, which is where the majority of the Tigers, Pistons and Red Wings games are shown. Having local channels and content would definitely put Comcast’s Stream over Sling TV.
Comcast is also planning to launch this service to their WiFi customers for just $15 per month. Right now, it appears that Comcast’s Stream won’t be making it to TV’s or set-top boxes, just yet. Which could be a mistake for Comcast. More people would be willing to use Stream if they could use it on their PlayStation 4 or Xbox One or even a Roku. Also, it appears that ESPN and AMC are absent, at least for now. Which is going to make it a bit tougher for Comcast to get users to use their service.
Unlike Sling TV, though, Comcast Stream is launching in just one city right now. And that’s Boston. So if you’re in Boston, you can sign up and use Comcast Stream – as long as you subscribe to their WiFi service – and get it for $15 per month. Which isn’t a bad price at all. Comcast is looking to have Chicago and Seattle added to available markets by the end of the summer, with all markets online by early 2016. So they are definitely looking to roll this out pretty quickly, which is going to be important when looking to compete with the likes of Sony and Dish.