Hacker News Reader

Sling is a subscription service, like Netflix, but instead of a library of movies and shows, you subscribe to Live TV streams of channels normally only available from a cable TV subscription. It's all fully legal and above board, as they pay the same licensing fees that a Comcast would.

As the other poster mentioned, like Netflix, you need an internet connection. If you want to watch it on your TV screen, a set-top box like a Roku or AppleTV is worthwhile but you could always plug your laptop into the TV instead.

It does not. You just need internet access.

Their product used to be a box that encoded video off cable and sent it to your devices over the network. But now they have their own streaming service that carries cable TV content.

Slingbox and Sling TV have no relation: http://support.slingbox.com/en-US/KB/KB-8024.aspx

Ah wow, yeah I had thought sling _was_ slingbox.