The new Sling TV update is so bad I want to cancel my subscription
The new Sling Boob tube update is and so bad I desire to cancel my subscription
Over the final few months Sling TV has been rolling out a redesigned app experience, which for the most role has been well-received by my Tom'due south Guide colleagues and other reviewers.
Unfortunately, I've found the latest Sling update to be packed with a few extremely poor user interface changes. Years of intuition in using the navigation thrown out the window, I'm now frustrated and squinting at the screen, lost at sea. I've never been legitimately depressed by an app update before, but here nosotros are. I'm almost ready to cancel my subscription.
I should first by mentioning that I've been a big Sling TV fan over the years. The combination of content, cost and app blueprint always made Sling a no-brainer for my cable replacement pick. No other streaming app has gotten as much employ in my household on a day to twenty-four hours basis. Cord cutting has been bang-up to me — I'd be fine with never touching a clunky cable box remote once again for the rest of my life.
And so it's with a heavy middle that I'1000 now pondering cancelling what was previously an excellent app. A quick look at Twitter shows that a number of aroused users appear to concur with me: Sling's latest update is a huge downgrade.
Coincidental channel surfing is now a pain
Swiping up (or clicking up) used to be an easy style to channel surf in Sling Tv set. It was a simple, powerful manner to bounce around alive television — like a meliorate, more responsive version of what cable boxes have offered for years. A single swipe upwardly summoned the 'mini guide' navigation bar, which took up a small sliver on the bottom of the screen.
Going left or right at that point would scroll through the All Channels view without ever leaving your current prove. Channel logos were clearly visible against the black groundwork. You could run into the commencement time, time remaining and show coming up side by side. The mini guide could even exist customized to show only your favorite channels in the My Channels section.
That minimalist interface has been totally bungled with the latest update. Y'all accept to swipe upwardly, then down, and so right, then downwardly again to go to the equivalent carte du jour — which for some chaotic reason is now ordered alphabetically, with smaller channel logos tucked inside giant thumbnail images (which often are a useless, bare default graphic).
Despite only displaying the aqueduct logos equally a tiny icon and showing far less information, this new carte du jour somehow eats up more than a third of the screen. It's taken ane of Sling's strengths — easy channel surfing while watching a live show — and rendered information technology utterly frustrating.
Sure, you could go over to the total-screen Guide page to surf around instead, but doing so takes y'all away from what you lot're currently watching. That's exactly what I hated well-nigh alive TV on Hulu, and now Sling has essentially copied it. Boo.
It's way harder to get quick info about what you're watching
Another massive downgrade in terms of ease-of-utilise comes with how yous view programme information. Swiping down on the Apple Television remote used to quickly testify the info for what you're currently watching: flavour and episode info, recording controls, etc.
Now you take to swipe all over the place to run across the same thing: Up, down, right, right again, then downwards once again. Information technology'southward turned a simple UX action that I'd previously performed dozens of times a day into an unpleasant and deadening Dance Dance Revolution combo move.
It's not all bad
To be off-white, at that place are some adept things about Sling's latest update. The overall design has benefitted from cleaner elements and improve search functionality.
The domicile screen now offers more logical menus for accessing DVR and on-demand content, which was previously subconscious away. And the addition of "Recent Channels" to the mini guide is useful for ping-ponging between a few alive shows — fifty-fifty if the current implementation leaves a lot to be desired.
What Sling needs to practice adjacent
Sling can still salvage this redesign; in fact, with a few central modifications it might even be improve than ever.
Beginning off, swiping (or clicking) up once when watching alive Tv should take you lot straight into the mini guide, similar it'd been earlier. And swiping down should once again have yous straight into the programme info. The process for channel surfing needs to lose all the unnecessary clicking around brought by the update.
Next, Sling needs to redesign the mini guide so it makes sense once more (and takes up less space). It should brand the aqueduct names more than clear, instead of using small, inscrutable icons. Y'all could hands borrow back some of the space now taken up by gigantic thumbnails; these thumbnails don't add together much, and aren't really necessary in a mini guide to begin with.
Finally, de-alphabetize the "All channels" view and make it the default in the mini guide — setting it dorsum to the one-time channel order, with local channels first. And bring back the customizable "My channels" or "Favorite channels" view as a mini guide pick, allowing users to reorder them however they please in that location.
Requite people the ability to build their ain experience. At a minimum, users should have the ability to make these kinds of menu changes in the settings, rather than being locked into one-half-broiled default options. Brand Sling Boob tube great again.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/the-new-sling-tv-update-is-so-bad-i-want-to-cancel-my-subscription
Posted by: thompsonroyshe.blogspot.com
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