The established multichannel video programming distributor ecosystem is “most certainly going to lose a meaningful number of existing subscribers -- the only question is how many millions and how fast?” said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield in a research note Monday, after a weeklong review of Sling TV service. “After playing with Sling TV, it is hard not to love the ease-of-use, similar user interface across devices and quality of the experience,” Greenfield said of the $20-per-month plan that offers content from Disney (including ESPN), along with Turner, Scripps and A&E in the future. BTIG “remains confident that free, over-the-air broadcast television networks will not be part of the base Sling TV package,” Greenfield said, saying a “subset of broadcast stations may end up being offered as a premium add-on to Sling.” Among Greenfield’s highlighted callouts: Sling TV's linear channel navigation capability, which offers extra kids’ and news/info packages available as add-ons to the basic service. He said he was able to watch the Australian Open on Sling TV’s iPad version while simultaneously browsing channels. He cited free video-on-demand, which enables users to watch shows that already have started airing or aired earlier in the day. Transactional movies-on-demand allows users to rent movies in SD or HD for a 24-hour viewing period, which includes being able to start a movie on one device and finish on another that’s part of a universal watchlist. Users can pause, rewind and fast forward linear content on some channels, he said. He also said the quality of the video stream fluctuated, at one time delivering at a 3.7 Mbps bitrate and at another time a 4.7 Mbps data stream. On bandwidth consumption, Greenfield said a Sling TV subscriber who watches the industry average of five hours of streamed TV per day at a 4.7 Mbps bitrate would consume 320 GB of data per month. Streaming two hours per day at 3.7 Mbps would eat 100 GB per month, he said. A “significant portion of Sling TV subscribers" will pair their subscription with some combination of Amazon, Hulu and Netflix streaming, he said, resulting in monthly data consumption that will be “quite significant.”

Forty percent of U.S. Internet homes will have a streaming media player by Q1 2017, said an NPD report Monday. Some 16 percent of U.S. Internet homes had a streaming media player in Q1 2014, and that percentage is expected to grow to 24 percent this quarter, NPD said. While early on, Apple and Roku players drove the streaming media player market, Amazon and Google have made a significant impact over the past 18 months, NPD said. Factoring in connected TVs, Blu-ray players and video game consoles, the total projected count for devices delivering apps to TVs will reach 211 million by Q1 2017, it said. On the content provider side, the top five video apps used by streaming media player owners were Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus and HBO Go, said NPD. Amazon had the highest increase of the five, growing from 15 percent viewership to 23 percent from Q4 2013 to Q4 2014, it said. “Over the coming years we will continue to see a growing audience of TV viewers for streaming video services, authenticated network apps, and offerings such as CBS All Access that no longer require a pay TV subscription from a cable or satellite provider,” said John Buffone, executive director, NPD Connected Intelligence. The report was based on a survey conducted in Q4 with more than 5,000 U.S. consumers aged 18 years or older.