Mobile TV: Slingbox vs MobiTV FloTV Hulu



I have been a long time Slingbox user and a huge fan of being able to watch my Verizon FiOS DVR from my PC or my phone.  The Slingbox Pro cost me a one time store fee of $250 at BestBuy that I paid about 5 years ago. A Slingbox today sells for around $160 according to Amazon.com.  Slingbox PRO still works great and does not require a monthly subscription.  That is a depreciating monthly cost of $4 and only getting better as I continue to use the Slingbox for me content.  SlingMedia is now owned by Dish Network and it will be interesting to see how long the service will remain free or if advertising will soon be inserted into the application as an overlay.

The great thing about Slingbox is whether you have AT&T U-Verse, Comcast, Cox, Time Warner or Cablevision, you can watch your live TV or DVR from anywhere around the world on your PC or MAC computer.  If you want to watch TV on a mobile phone the $30 SlingPlayer mobile phone application is available on most phones including the iPad, Android, Blackberry and iPhone.  Slingbox allows you to fully control your DVR with a digital remote that looks exactly like your TV remote control.  The Slingbox sits on top of your DVR uses infrared to change the channels just like you would with your remote control if you were sitting in your living room.

Some alternatives would be to subscribe to a service like MobiTV for $9.95 and watch the content on your Android or iPhone.   Another alternative would be to buy a FLO TV device for $100 plus a monthly fee of around $10 per month.  Some other alternatives might soon be Hulu but there application is not widely used as of yet on the mobile phone. Hulu has a great library of scripted content but it lacks sports and live TV.  If you are willing to dump your cable TV service read here on how to cut your cable TV cord.

AT&T interested in Flo TV spectrum Per Bloomberg & Qualcomm and AT&T are engaged in discussions over the possible sale of Flo TV spectrum. Qualcomm which is exiting the Flo TV business had paid $638 million for the 700 MHz spectrum.

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