DirecTV NOW.....A full report! Currently I have Comcast /Xfinity Cable at my house. I'm always searching for a way to cut the cable and be able to bring the various news shows with me and reduce my costs for internet and content at home. Xfinity offers a free service called "TV GO" that is supposed to allow you to watch whatever channels you are subscribed to on your personal device. But you have a 50/50 chance that it will be working when you want to use it. It is FREE only if you subscribe to the cable service at home.
DirecTV just launched DirecTV NOW this past week. Currently they offer a 7 day free trial service. And a promotional offer of 100 channels for $35 a month.
I signed up to give it a try.........So, to cut to the chase....in a word....FANTASTIC!
I used my Sprint HotSpot with only one bar of LTE, My Verizon MiFi with three bars, the Xfinity WiFi service (thousands of Xfinity WiFi hot Spots all over the country) and my TechnoRV ALFA 36 WiFi booster to my home WiFi router...........In all cases the performance was phenomenal! Takes a couple SECONDS to log on and begin seeing broadcasts. VERY, VERY FAST! Picture quality is simply amazing. Much better than other streaming services I'm subscribed to.
I used AppleTV to "mirror" it from my Ipad mini to a 55" TV and video quality remained full HD.
To say I'm impressed would be an understatement!
But more importantly, I'm paying $69 a month for about 40 basic channels on my Comcast/Xfinity cable system. I would have cut the cable long ago, but we like Fox News, CNN and MSNBC and these were not available streaming reliably until now.
Now for the bad news. Using the "data used" screen on my Sprint MiFi unit, I used 86mB for 5 minutes of streaming.......That is about 1G an hour if my math is correct........You need an unlimited service or lots of Gigs if you are going to use this service remotely for any length of time. I'm not sure if AT&T, who how owns DTV, has a deal for this service? More research is needed.
Anyways...The future is now! Extreme high quality streaming with lots of selection for a reasonable price.