Kevin P.

I'm a recent cable cutter. I dropped my satellite TV subscription after completing the contract. One of the things that frustrated me about cable packages is the number of channel in the 150 or 200 channel super mega package that we never ever watch yet pay have to subscribe. You can choose them a la carte.

I put up an antenna and decided to stream everything else. Many, many cable TV stations like ESPN offer the ability to stream their live content over the internet. BUT you can only do this if you subscribe to a cable or satellite provider. Well... if I have cable, why would I want to stream this? (rain fade, away from home with only my phone, etc.) But really! This whole TV thing is quite a racket.

Sling.tv provided a way for me to subscribe to ESPN and a few other channels without buying an expensive programming bundle or a two year contract. For $20/month, I got a few stations I would normally watch without being burdened by a contract. It seemed a pretty good deal. Their app works with a few devices including Roku and ChromeCast. A complete listing of stations and devices can be found on their web site.

It doesn't work on my Apple TV (go figure). It seems if Apple doesn't offer it on iTunes, you can't play it on your Apple TV (partly true but mostly sarcasm). I find this Apple exclusionary practice frustrating. I like the $20/month with no contract terms.

The catch, if you have several TVs and several devices, you can only watch on one device at a time. So, if I'm watching ESPN and the missus wants to watch HGTV on another device. ESPN goes bye-bye. If I watch CNN on my iPhone and she's at home watching A&E, her program is interrupted. If you want viewing on more than one devices simultaneously, you need multiple subscriptions at $20 each.

Watching NFL games via ESPN/Sling.tv stream was frustrating and sometimes unbearable. I have a 60MB internet connection yet buffering, pixelation and hiccups occur on various devices. I am not going back to cable or satellite so I find somewhere to watch the big game if it isn't available over the air.

This is a good start but still needs work.

I used Teen Safe on my kids' iPhones. It works by backing up the phone to iCloud and restoring it to TeenSafe's web site so you can view it via their portal. It doesn't update data automatically and is only as current as the most recent backup.

The advertised GPS functionality is something I was never able to get working. It doesn't show location history nor was I able to reliably look at their current location. I am able to track their location through other means. (Find My Friends on Apple iPhone does this outside of TeenSafe.)

It does not show you any photo or video content. If you're hoping to ensure your child is not engaging in sexting, etc, this product is useless.

It doesn't monitor SnapChat. It does monitor Kik but the messages are not threaded and photos are not shown. Text messages are not organized into conversations.

Instagram is no longer supported.

Facebook monitoring is done by linking the account to into the TeenSafe dashboard. Frankly, since you need all of the passwords for each of these accounts anyway, you'd be better off simply logging into the various accounts as them to see what they're up to.

The bottom line: This product is more or less useless and delivers far less than is promised by the company.