It could also get around local broadcasting restrictions that might black out games in a team’s local area, or restrict them to local viewers after you’ve moved out of town. As you can probably guess, leagues like the NFL and MLB hated that, but the company kept on going anyway, despite a few lulls in between the introduction of new hardware and software that seemed to age in dog years.
All that is over now, as the Sling name is more prominently attached to a TV service, and Liliputing points out Sling Media informed users today that in two years its servers will shut down. Once that happens, all of the existing boxes will stop working. Dave Zatz mentioned the possibility of DNS workarounds that might let users connect directly, but in lieu of that, it’s time to get a streaming subscription or try something like Channels.
Even before that, the number of devices you can actually watch a Sling stream from will decrease since it’s no longer updating the apps — that kind of rot already claimed viewing apps for Android and Roku last year. SlingPlayer on Mac hasn’t worked since Catalina, and so on.