Catching up on all of the CIA drama from Homeland just became a bit easier — if you’re a Sling subscriber. As of Wednesday, Sling TV, the over-the-top subscription streaming service, is offering Showtime as a premium channel add-on for $10 per month.
Along with Showtime, Sling TV gets seven more Showtime feeds including Showtime 2, Showtime Showcase, Showtime Extreme, Showtime Beyond, Showtime West, Showtime Next, and Showtime Women. Sling TV customers who add Showtime to their channel package will get access to nearly 2,000 on-demand titles from the premium cable service. Sling TV channel packages start at $20 per month for 30 channels.
Showtime joins a growing list of Sling TV premium channel offerings that includes Cinemax, Starz, and HBO. According to a report by Variety, parent company Dish says the addition of Showtime makes the two-year-old Sling TV the first over-the-top streaming service to offer content from all four of those premium channels. That is a major draw to new customers looking to choose between cord-cutting options.
Bringing Homeland, Billions, and thousands of other titles to Sling TV is only the CBS-owned cable network’s latest move outside the cable arena. When YouTube TV debuts later this year, Showtime will be the only premium channel offered as an add-on. In July 2015, Showtime completely cut the cord by offering a stand-alone streaming service of all of its content for a $10.99 monthly subscription price.
The future is starting to look brighter for services like Sling TV. By July 2016, 25 percent of U.S. households did not have a pay TV subscription, with six percent only using streaming services, such as Netflix and Hulu. The trend is expected to only get more widespread, with more than 33 million households anticipated to not be paying for a TV subscription by 2021, according to Statista.
Sling TV has an estimated 1.18 million subscribers, but adding Showtime comes at a time when it’s facing competitors offering attractive skinny bundles. Fellow over-the-top subscription service DirecTV Now garnered 200,000 subscribers in its first month, and its customers recently were able to get HBO for free for as long as they have an AT&T’s Unlimited Plus wireless plan.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.