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

First cable cutter disclaimer I wish so much this product actually worked so my four stars may be a bit overpriced. Also, I don't really like writing reviews, but since AirTV has so much potential for us cord cutters, I wanted to share my recent experience with it. I use it in combination with Sling TV, two different types. Roku devices and the newer Netgear 56 wireless router. Setup. The product was very easy to set up and link to our existing Roku Sling account. I hooked it up to an antenna, did a quick setup in the Sling Android app and bam, I added local channels to my Sling account with the channel name, program info, etc. Then I ran some tests to get the best picture quality and network connection. Here are a few caveats to make setup and use easier: 1) Make sure you have good local reception, poor reception will only make matters worse. I'm on the subway in southeast Denver and by placing a passive antenna in the attic I can get strong reception even without line of sight or an amplifier. Before I had a permanent setup I did some initial testing with a cheaper omnidirectional antenna and found that poor reception caused issues with vapor. 2) You need to connect the AirTV to your network (wireless router) using an Ethernet connection. I connected it via Wi-Fi and no matter where it was placed I had trouble streaming. If it's on the other side of the house from your WiFi router, it simply won't deliver a stable stream, even with good TV reception. After connecting it to my router via Ethernet, 95% of my streaming problems were gone. Constant use is fine, as I mentioned earlier. I wish this was perfect as it offers so much value for cord cutters especially those using Sling but there are still constant quirks that are non-existential but show room for improvement. Here is the list after the first week of use, will update as I use it: 1) Every 15-20 minutes it freezes momentarily, this is a real pain when watching sports as it lasts up to 30-45 seconds can, although more often it is 5-10 seconds. I can't tell if this is channel dependent and I think the AirTV box just can't buffer for long. This is happening on two different Roku devices, so I believe it's an AirTV box. 2) Also, for no reason, it stops streaming and gives an error that the antenna has been disconnected. Since nothing has changed and the antenna is still in the attic, this is very annoying. To "reset" it, you need to restart the box, then rescan the channels in the Sling Android app, then wait a while for the channels to be back in Sling. The whole process can take 5 minutes or more. This has only happened a couple of times so far so I'm hoping that if I don't make any more changes to the setup it will stop, but I'll update this when I get better use of the system. 3) As for the DVR function, you can't stop or rewind the channel you just watched. I believe it's just not in the feature set. The good thing is that recorded programs that use a separate hard drive show up in Sling along with your other recordings, which is nice. In the future it would be nice to have features like DVR for live broadcasts. So all in all a decent device that plays an important role in cable cutting. From some of the previous reviews it appears that they have made improvements and I hope that in the future additional software updates will fix the current problems and provide enhanced functionality.###Update 1-6-18###I have a Netgear -Router replaced by a mesh DECO system from TP Link. It has a much faster quad-core processor and so far has eliminated any freezes we've experienced when using a slower router. Therefore, I strongly recommend that when purchasing an AirTV, you 1) have a router with a fast processor and 2) use an Ethernet connection between the AirTV and the router. Definitely a true 4 star rating and with DVR feature updates I may see 5 stars in the future.