CES could stand for “consumer Electronics convey,” however the most interesting launch eventually year’s event wasn’t a piece of consumer electronics. as an alternative, it was Sling television—a streaming carrier from Dish that appears quite a bit like cable tv, except for that it begins at $20 a month, permits you to add bundles of further channels in $5 increments, and is on hand on smartphones, capsules, Roku, Xbox, and different units quite than wedded to a specific television.

Sling hasn’t in an instant changed the whole lot, and it still has lots of limitations. but a yr after its debut, it is still the clearest first tough draft of what the way forward for pay television may look like. And at CES 2016, it is displaying off the primary main revision to its interface. (it is going to arrive on Roku later this quarter, then make its method to different gadgets.)

although the Sling lineup numbers in the low dozens of channels, it may be a challenge to find the presentations you need to observe among the entire programming you could not care much less about. So the new interface is less about sorting sports activities, films, and episodic television into channels, and extra about spotlighting explicit gadgets you might care about.

past The Channel Grid

What many Sling tv subscribers care about is sports activities—the fact that it contains ESPN is a big deal—and Sling puts are living and upcoming occasions onto one display which which you could filter down to indicate explicit activities, reminiscent of basketball games. A an identical view shows movies, irrespective of which channel they may be on. And “My tv” options your most-watched displays and on-demand gadgets which you started watching but haven’t but completed.

Sling can be bundling up explicit series, including new episodes, repeats, and whole seasons on hand within the provider’s 10,000 hours of on-demand programming. that is no longer handiest a boon for binge-watchers, but additionally helps work round some holes in its lineup. for example, the provider would not have CBS, because of this that new episodes of the enormous Bang concept are missing. however there are copious amounts of the convey available within the form of reruns, and now they may all be to be had in one situation.

In a few of these views, the carrier may also convey related items on hand in a $5 bonus percent you don’t seem to be at the moment subscribed to—akin to a film available in the “Hollywood additional” %—and let you improve prompt. That may well be to hand if it signals you to something you actually wish to watch. but Sling should ensure that it does not come off as pushy advertising and marketing moderately than useful data.

once the new interface rolls out, the company plans to use it as a framework for publications with the intention to get extra subtle over time. as an example, it intends to add recommendations of packages in response to its information of what you will have watched up to now, and to highlight objects which can be trending among all Sling subscribers.

more, but now not an excessive amount of

along with the interface tweaks, Sling television is announcing that it’s adding ESPN3 to its base $20 package. that’s a major technical and logistical achievement: ESPN3 is not a conventional channel, but rather a streaming provider unto itself that presentations up to 60 occasions at a time, from school soccer to tennis to cricket. they are going to all be built-in into the Sling programming guide in a way that hasn’t been done sooner than.

within the yr seeing that its debut, Sling has achieved a excellent job of establishing out its lineup with new channels, including ones corresponding to ESPN3 that it’s merely delivered to the $20 package deal. Sling tv CEO Roger Lynch advised me that the carrier is attending to the purpose where it is providing as so much tv as it will possibly in that basic bundle—and that elevating the fee to accommodate extra channels would violate the cheap-and-simple recipe that makes Sling progressive in the first location. “Our $20 price level is extra important than any channel partner shall we launch,” he says.