DishSubLA,
Interesting. I've only ever used DA a few times on my laptop and tablet.
I just meant that I had been meaning to try it with a better display. I don't even have a cable to attach to a TV. Have an older phone but never used the cable and my son's new tablet (Christmas) but he's 200 miles away for school. (He says it works well for games)
Well, I have to say that I am overall "satisfied" with DA and use it often, and that is how I've come across the occasional bad day or sometimes just a few hours of refusal to load or it loads, but refuses to play live TV or refuses to play DVR or refuses to playback transfers. I got the Slingbox for my TiVo's as TiVo Stream is far, far worse than DA. So , I have both a TiVo and my Hopper connected to the Slingbox I use. I do like DA, but it does have a few limitations in comparison to using a Slingbox:
No Picture in Picture; no access to external HDD (on our wish list, but likely never to happen), and the UI is EXACTLY as at home; DA has its own UI that is not always as intuitive compared to the exactly at home experience of Slingbox.
For example, I prefer the Hopper EPG UI; I don't like the guide presented in DA. I prefer the DVR UI just as it is at home; DA's DVR UI is less intuitive and sometimes confusing and not always responsive. I admit to being a bit thrown off balance by having my dusty brain change to do things the DA UI way when I can do things EXACTLY the same way my brain is already used to using Slingbox. Also, the really big value of DA is that you can transfer recordings to mobile devices, so you can watch content without need of internet connections. That is something a Slingbox can not do.
The DA technology for streaming and the Slingbox technology for streaming are the SAME because Echostar, who own Sling Media, use it in Slingboxes and in their sister company Dish for DA. So, there is going to be the same robust high quality of PQ in even slow internet connections, and in most cases it is the slow upstream that is challenging not the fast downstream speed.
Of course, Dish and Echostar just finished a restructuring of the companies and patents it owns, so Sling may now be under Dish for all I know at this point.
Summary: DA is good and presents a single point from where one can watch live, DVR, or provides portholes to various content providers for which you have access related to your Dish package, but DA is a very complex site with a lot of enhancements that, IMHO, can sometimes cause a break down here and there. Sometimes, it is a bit OVERWHELMING, but I've gotten used to it.
Slingbox is the always seems to work option if one just wants to watch TV at a remote location EXACTLY the same experience as if at home controlling the Dish/cable box. You have ALL the same access to menus, content, VOD, etc just like sitting at home. Also, I believe DA is still limited to ONE stream to a device at a time as is Slingbox.
Hope that clears things up.
