You may have already heard about over-the-top (OTT) content providers, but if you haven’t, just konw that OTT service providers simply deliver content via an Internet connection as opposed to traditional cable networks. But note that simply because content is delivered via the Internet, it isn’t necessarily free.
There are plenty of OTT content sources that cost money, and provide some of the highest quality video and multimedia content via fast and reliable Internet connections.
Examples include Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, HBO and other similar services – there seem to be about a million of them these days. But today we are going to compare two different OTT television content providers: YuppTV and Sling TV.
As a fair warning, note that you may, depending on your current location, have to use a VPN tunnel or poxy server to access either YuppTV or Sling TV.
I personally didn’t have any trouble accessing YuppTV through my standard VPN connection (which I always use), but Sling TV presented me with the following error: “The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country.”
I found that to be a little irritating, but I suppose it is expected since online streaming content almost always has some sort of geo-restrictions in place. Still, at least I was able to access it after I had disconnected my VPN tunnel.
As a side note, it wasn’t the use of a VPN that blocked me from the sight, but rather that I was simply connected to a VPN server in a region affected by the geo-restrictions.
At any rate, let’s take a closer look at these two popular streaming services.
Pricing Comparison
I was pretty surprised to see how simple and straightforward YuppTV’s pricing model was. There weren’t any frills, bells, or whistles. Instead, it was about as simple a pricing model as I’ve ever seen. And although I do wish the price were a tad cheaper, I didn’t find it to be exorbitant or unfairly priced.
Instead, I think it’s a pretty fair deal for what you’re getting, especially when considering how much all that content would have cost you if you were paying a pay-per-view service or signing up for a traditional cable package.
The following outlines the pricing model for YuppTV:
- $9.99 per month USD
- $54.99 per six months USD
- $99.99 per year USD
The following outlines the pricing model for Sling TV:
- Free seven-day trial (check here)
- Services starting at $20.00 per month, special promotion drops initial price to $10.00
- Extra add-on packages available a la carte
YuppTV Features
As you may have already known, YuppTV caters to a very specific market instead of casting a wide net and trying to appeal to everyone. More specifically, YuppTV appeals to the Indian segment of the global market, and hosts Indian television shows, movies, and video content almost exclusively.
And it hosts content to accommodate a wide variety of languages.
India is different from most other countries in that it has extremely diverse spoken languages, especially when considering all the varieties of local dialects. Furthermore, foreign languages like English are widely spoken.
To help satisfy the needs of its users, YuppTV supports the following languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bangala, Oriya, Sinhala, English, Urdu, and Nepali.
It’s also worth taking a moment to discuss the type of content that’s hosted on this popular Indian streaming site. It doesn’t only host live television, though that is certainly one of the biggest draws to the site.
It also hosts recordings of already-aired television shows, and catch-up TV channels as well. Additionally, it hosts mini-theatre content and movies. Still, I’d say that the main service offering is the ability to watch live television abroad.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see that it was available on a wide variety of platforms too. But naturally, since it’s basically an Internet channel, it can be streamed to just about any devices capable of streaming content from a server.
It’s available on Samsung Smart TVs, Roku devices, Apple TV, LG, Telstra TV (Australia), Tivo, Amazon Fire TV, Sony BRAVIA Smart TV, Nexus Player (Android TV), YuppTV Media Player, Vizio TV, Panasonic Smart TV, Hisense TV, Sharp TV, Opera TV Store, Xbox 360, PlayStation, and more.
That’s a pretty darn long list of supported devices, though I’m not sure the web documentation is fully up to date.
I say that because there were some media streamers that weren’t mentioned, yet YuppTV is still available on the unmentioned platforms. Perhaps they just forgot a few because there are so many these days.
In particular, I noticed that Kodi devices weren’t listed, though you can in fact stream YuppTV to a Kodi device. And I was moderately impressed with the wealth of online documentation, troubleshooting guides, and how-to type articles that aim to help users through the troubleshooting process.
There is 24/7 technical support as well, and a variety of ways to reach the support department. The easiest and fastest, in my opinion, is to simply visit the site and use the live chat feature.
I tested it out to see how fast the response would be, and the message in the live chat window said I would receive a response within three minutes of my inquiry. It only took two minutes, which is loads better than all the older ways customer service was setup.
I especially detest phone support queues with the crappy music playing on a loop and the inability to know how long before a customer service representative gets around to helping you. I’ve had wait times in queues that were several hours, and that’s not an exaggeration.
Still, if you prefer to call instead of using live chat to resolve your inquiry, there are 11 different call center scattered across the globe, and can accommodate different languages and timezones for convenience (support is 24/7, after all).
Sling TV Features
Sling TV is really pretty different from YuppTV because YuppTV focuses its content on Indian media.
True enough, Sling TV is also an over-the-top content provider that does host Indian content, but it’s so much more, and has a much more diverse and eclectic library of content. And Sling TV caters to more languages, too.
The following are all of the languages in which Sling TV accommodates: English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Urdu, Bangla, Arabic, Bengali, Brazilian, Cantonese, Italian, Marathi, French, German, Polish, Spanish, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and Madarin.
And even though it’s technically marketed as a live TV streaming service, it has tons of extra content that’s saved, such as old television content and movies. And one of the best things about Sling TV is your ability to mix and match services in an a la carte fashion.
Some of the genres you can add to your subscription a la carte include the following:
- Sports extra – a more expanded coverage of football, baseball, basketball, hockey and sports news package.
- News extra – a more expanded news package that covers both U.S. and international news.
- Comedy extra – includes shows that could be described as humorous, which includes reality favorites and shows with comedic intent.
- Lifestyle extra – if you’re into food, home and better living, this is the package for you.
- Kids extra – content package that was designed for kids, including cartoons.
- Hollywood extra – if you’re so much of a film buff that you feel like a genuine film critic, this cinematic package is right up your alley.
- Best of Spanish TV extra – curated Spanish TV content.
If all of these count as extra packages, by now you’re probably wondering which channels come standard.
There are currently 23 different channels that come standard, as follows: ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, AMC, Food Network, A&E, History Channel, TBS, Travel Channel, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, CNN, H2, TNT, ABC Family, El Rey, Lifetime, HGTV, Galavision, IFC, Bloomberg Television, Disney Channel, Polaris+, Comedy Central, BBC America, FreeForm, ViceLand, AxS TV, Newsy, Cheddar, Local Now, FlaMa, and Maker.
That’s quite a list, and gives access to more content (and the most popular channels, I might add) than most decent basic cable packages will allow.
And also consider that with Sling TV, you’re not tied down to your home. You can watch content from those channels live, no matter where you are in the world. The only constraint is that you must have a decent Internet connection.
Do note, however, that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There are several cons to this service as well, and the first seems to be non-uniform commercials. It appears that some content has commercials, and some content doesn’t.
What’s worse, it appears that the condition is so spotty that it isn’t communicated to the audience whether a particular film or channel contains commercials (yes, even web commercials). So roll the dice and see what you get, but I’d recommend using an ad blocker.
Furthermore, one area that is lacking with Sling TV is local channels. It seems to do a great job of covering all the bases with regards to big network channels.
But it seems that local channels, even with news packages, is still a gap to fill. Still, I suppose you can’t ask for everything, and I think that Sling TV does a great job of providing access to otherwise unavailable programming.
Final Thoughts on YuppTV vs Sling
I think the choice here is pretty obvious and binary:
- If you’re looking for Indian television and video content exclusively, opt for YuppTV.
- Otherwise, Sling TV is going to be the better option. Honestly, I think that Sling TV is more well-rounded and tries to appeal to the mass market.
I do have to commend Sling TV for supporting more languages than YuppTV, and it does have more channels.
For me, the only thing I didn’t like about Sling TV was its price. $20 bucks a month seems to be a little steep for an Internet subscription. However, when I think about how much a comparable cable package would cost a month, Sling TV seems more than reasonable.
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