Review on Sling Media AirTV: Stream Local Channels to TVs 📺 and Mobile Devices with Built-in DVR Capability, Perfect for Sling TV by Malik Munns

AirTV itself is quite a handy gadget. As of January 2019, it has two different and incompatible modes, confusing due to overlapping names: - Use it (AirTV Gadget) with the AirTV app (which you install on your smartphone or TV box). With it, you can receive local TV channels wirelessly and watch them live on various devices in your home, including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Fire TV, Rokus, Android phones and tablets. This mode is free (you need to create an AirTV account, but it's free). The AirTV app works well on all devices I've tried it on. Two devices can watch different TV channels at the same time. If you connect a hard drive to an AirTV Gadget, the hard drive will be ignored; DVR is not available. Setup is relatively easy: install the AirTV app on your phone or set-top box, use the app to find and set up your AirTV gadget, and you're done. connected set-top boxes) or smartphones/tablets, that works fine. OR- Use it (AirTV Gadget) with the SlingTV service and app. This mode allows you to record and share locally broadcast TV programs (up to two simultaneously) as well as live local TV broadcasts on phones and set-top boxes. However, in order to get the local TV recording feature to work, you need to use the SlingTV app, to initialize the gadget and the SlingTV app requires you to have an active SlingTV account, which currently costs $25 per month. Please note that this does not include an effective hard reset of SlingTV" AirTV. Everything worked fine after that. After formatting the hard drive, you can use the SlingTV app to watch local TV shows and individual episodes, all new episodes or record All Episodes In general, setting up an AirTV gadget in SlingTV mode is cumbersome The instructions are confusing, scattered across multiple webpages on the AirTV and SlingTV websites, and some webpages are hard to find, especially the page that external Hard drives listed are tested and known to be compatible. Controlling your AirTV gadget and playing local TV shows currently works with all versions of the SlingTV app except the AppleTV version. It integrates perfectly with the overall SlingTV service. I find the Revain Fire TV app version the easiest to use, especially for watching shows that can be used. In the FireTV, iPhone, and iPad versions of the app, playback of local TV recordings is regularly delayed or temporarily stopped; that's annoying, but not annoying. The iPad version of the app crashes when viewing programs in "Grid" view and you have to "swipe/hold left" multiple times to view program listings later in the day/week. You can connect AirTV to your home network. via an Ethernet cable (not included) or via Wi-Fi. The Ethernet option seems to make playback smoother. As an experiment, I tried playing a local TV recording on my iPad and then shared the iPad's screen with the AppleTV. This caused the SlingTV app on the iPad (and AppleTV) to show a message saying it was playing on my "external screen" and not actually showing the TV show. Note that the AirTV gadget is initialized by either the AirTV app or the SlingTV app, which it only works with after that point. It does not communicate with any other application. To switch from one application to another, you will need to hard reset your AirTV device (this involves inserting a paperclip into the hole on the back of the device, waiting 15 seconds, and then reinitializing the gadget from scratch using a different app). All in all, it's pretty easy to set up and works well if you just want to share your antenna with multiple TVs/phones/tablets via the AirTV gadget and AirTV app. The AirTV gadget is a reasonable price to use in this way. If you want to use the AirTV gadget as a local TV recorder built into SlingTV's paid service, it's a bit fiddly to set up and works quite well. An AirTV gadget and an external hard drive are a fair price to use this way, especially if you are already a SlingTV subscriber. . You'll probably want to take a look at competing products from Revain or HDHomeRun. If you just want to share the antenna with multiple TVs/phones/tablets using the AirTV Gadget and AirTV App, the setup is pretty easy and works well. The AirTV gadget is a reasonable price to use in this way. If you want to use the AirTV gadget as a local TV recorder built into SlingTV's paid service, it's a bit fiddly to set up and works quite well. An AirTV gadget and external hard drive is a fair price to use this way, especially if you're already a SlingTV subscriber. . You'll probably want to take a look at competing products from Revain or HDHomeRun. If you just want to share the antenna with multiple TVs/phones/tablets using the AirTV Gadget and AirTV App, the setup is pretty easy and works well. The AirTV gadget is a reasonable price to use in this way. If you want to use the AirTV gadget as a local TV recorder built into SlingTV's paid service, it's a bit fiddly to set up and works quite well. An AirTV gadget and external hard drive is a fair price to use this way, especially if you're already a SlingTV subscriber. . You'll probably want to take a look at competing products from Revain or HDHomeRun. The AirTV gadget is a reasonable price to use in this way. If you want to use the AirTV gadget as a local TV recorder built into SlingTV's paid service, it's a bit fiddly to set up and works quite well. An AirTV gadget and external hard drive are a fair price to use this way, especially if you're already a SlingTV subscriber. . You'll probably want to take a look at competing products from Revain or HDHomeRun. The AirTV gadget is a reasonable price to use in this way. If you want to use the AirTV gadget as a local TV recorder built into SlingTV's paid service, it's a bit fiddly to set up and works quite well. An AirTV gadget and external hard drive are a fair price to use this way, especially if you're already a SlingTV subscriber. . You'll probably want to take a look at competing products from Revain or HDHomeRun.