Sling TV’s streaming packages don’t offer access to any major broadcast TV stations, but the over-the-top video provider has pushed ahead on projects that will help its subscribers get ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox over the air.
Last week, Sling TV brought a new twist to its device bundles by offering discounts for over-the-air TV antennas to new customers who agree to prepay for three months of the OTT TV service, which starts at $20 per month.
Adding to similar, existing bundles for three OTT devices — the Amazon Fire TV and the Roku 3 and Roku 2 — Sling TV is offering $50 off antennas from RCA and Terk. With the discount factored in, Sling TV subs can get the RCA ANT1750F for $29.99 or Terk’s Omnitvex model (including the mount) for $79.99.
That’s just one indication of how helping subscribers access OTA TV has become an increasingly important part of Sling TV’s strategy.
Earlier this month, Channel Master announced that it had integrated its DVR+ platform with Sling TV. DVR+ is a subscription-free DVR that supports OTT, over-the-air TV tuning and a program guide that blends what’s available on the device over-the-air and over-the-top.
Channel Master currently offers two DVR+ products — a 16-Gigabyte version for $249 (that requires an external USB hard drive to enable full DVR functionality) and a 1-Terabyte model for $399.
Dish Network does not break out Sling TV subsribers, but last week Goldman Sachs said it expects the OTT service to end 2016 with at least 2 million subs, estimating that the service had about 346,000 subs at the end of Q3 2015.
