BACKROUND :

SS was used the month prior to this one, as i wanted to wait until I had a bigger comparative sample size before making any final evaluations here. My sub was run by itself and without any other paid service for the entire duration. If it wasn't doing what I wanted/needed it to do free addons were the only fall back option. SS was run exclusively on the latest SPMC at the time (16.5.5), on wired 60mbps internet, and through either my Nvidia Shield or 4k FireTV2. While I don't consider myself Mr. Tech or anything, I have done enough research/tinkering that I'm confident that any trouble shooting done was both accurate and with every possibility exhausted to best isolate the issue.

My viewing times/habits are as follows: Wed - Sat I'd watch maybe an hour or 2 of ESPNs/FOXSPORTSs/MLB/WWE channels in the afternoon before work, then another 3-4 hours afterwards (usually 11pm est on) with random movie channel surfing mixed in. Sun - Tues I have completely off, so it would probably be used or running in the backround most of those days. I watch all the UFC and WWE PPVs, and at the time Celtic games. All in all I'd estimate that this review is based on roughly 200+ hours of testing.

SETUP :

Setup was mostly straight forward, although with a little more hoop jumping then you'll usually find elsewhere. They get points there for having an active live chat to fall back on though, which I ended up using for confirmation that I actually needed to sign up through a different website then the first one I had registered and paid through.

Where this fails miserably though is that after you do follow through with the provided setup instructions, you then have to turn around and delete * every trace of that install (which I found to be kind of a pita btw, and just choose to put it on a fresh start kodi instead) and then install it though a 3rd party repo like everybody else using SS does. More on that below.

EPG :

Initial installation from the official repo leaves most of the entertainment channel listings empty, and the only fix to that is a 3rd party installation version from a guy who should really be on SS's payroll if he isn't already. This goes on to fill in those active channel slots with mostly correct and updated information on what should officially be on.

While the above fix does serve to make SS's EPG at least somewhat competitive against the growing standard elsewhere, as a whole it is still...well quite a mess. For starters the time line that goes down the middle of the guide would only update on start ups, so I'd find myself having to exit out of the addon and re-enter anytime i wanted to do that. Not a huge deal or anything, but it certainly added an inconvenience factor over what I've used elsewhere.

Accuracy is all over the place, due to combination of limited channel slots and the need to overwrite channels in the name of fulfilling their promise to cover every single sporting event (they do). Click on USA during prime time thinking you are going to watch Goonies...random Soccer game. TNT might get you Hockey, MLB channel Horse racing, ect ect. Granted this wasn't too big a deal for me given that a large % of my viewing was late night, but for you more normal hour folks it's certainly a serious consideration factor. There is a sports-first trade off being made there that a simple look at their channel list isn't going to tell you.

Also of note was a direct recording option in the guide which I only got to work once out of 3 times, but didn't really make the serious effort to trouble shoot a solution since I just use Kodi for all my VOD needs anyway. It was pretty sweet that one time I did get it to tape Belletor in full though, but I obviously don't feel qualified to comment on whether it's a working selling point or not.

CHANNELS/QUALITY/RELIABILITY :

Channel offering are rather limited, as it mostly just focuses on US content. That said, I honestly didn't find this to be much on an issue as what they did offer in terms of entertainment offerings covered the bases enough for me. All of the most popular and major US stuff was present. I'm not a more is better type of guy, and never once during my sub did I find myself thinking "Gee, I wish I had 100 more UK channels I'd never watch anyway". The overwrite tendancy never effected what I made it a point to watch live either, such as WWE Raw/Smackdown, Walking Dead, ect.

Rarely mentioned anywhere but worthy of note is the load up time, which is the best I've seen on any service. Load SPMC/Kodi, click on SS, and boom...guide. Which i actually kind of preferred over the otherwise standard installs elsewhere that leaves you going through an activated LIVE TV menu and then waiting X amount of time for the service to fully load every time you open Kodi (long load times were deal breakers for me on 2 fairly popular services around here that I did a one day trial on). Picture quality was also solid, which was about par for the course in comparison to any of the better services out there. Lots of 720p feeds, ect. SS was also one of the best services I've used in terms of keeping their service up, and beyond those select versions of HBO/Cinemax/SHOWTIME that every single other service out there struggles with too, providing feeds that work when you click on them.

Of course the catch to that above, because there always has to be a catch, is that SS has a nasty little habit of routinely kicking you out of a channel and back to the guide. This was always remedied by simply clicking back in, but I can tell you now that i probably did this 1000 times during my one month sub. Which I'm hardly alone in claiming that either, as with a little searching around you'll find various threads here and there with people complaining about it. I experienced it, my mom's setup did it, and my 2 friends who bought their own SS account that month had it. It's definitely a thing, depending on one's patience level for that type of annoyance factor. I personally just got in the habit of doing it. My Mom gave up on it after a few days.

As far as high traffic PPVs go, all 3 of my experiences were a complete bust. THE UFC PPV feed was an utter mess, buffering and lagging to the point that at times it was skipping around to random points that had already happened 2 hours previously. WWE events were more of the same, minus the skipping around. This was all done while also frantically checking every feed and server option, which on that latter note never did anything even outside PPVs. US east, US west, Canada, Europe...never mattered. In the 1000 times I tried to trouble shoot using that feature (since that is the first thing they'll tell you to do btw) I never once found it to "fix" anything . If a channel was buffering or didn't load, it was going to buffer or not load regardless what you picked. In fact and to be perfectly blunt, to me that feature was/is nothing more then a paper sell of the service, which essentially only serves to provide that marketing guy a plausible reason to tell you why their PPV feed ran in perfect 1080p last night when your's" didn't.

CONCLUSION

As harsh as some of my criticism above may have come across, I did almost end up deciding to give SS that bad month benefit of the doubt on the PPV fails, and renewing the service for the MLB season since I never ran into much of a problem watching the NBA. Kind of a "stick with the devil you know" pass I guess, since I ultimately never really found myself having those moments where I regretted the purchase. Which is actually kinda rare in the IPTV world for that matter and imo, especially given the unstable nature of the business.

I didn't end up renewing though for the exact flip side of that coin though. It might not have the lows you find with other services, but it also never had that "I just spent 12 hours in front of the TV and it kicked ass today" high I've found elsewhere either. In the end that ceiling potential ends up outweighing the floor for me and what I'm looking for.

As a whole SS also just seemed....a service past it's "we aren't adding anymore subs" heyday and content with what it is I guess, instead of trying to be better and evolve forward like so many other services lately. Which probably works just fine for them, with what seems to be a fairly established and loyal customer base that don't really care about such change, what else might be out there, or whether they ever actually deliver on on those coming-soon-for-like-forever-now feature improvements that are casually advertised to be right around the corner. That just wasn't me though. I mean you've been around how many years, and you still don't care enough to finish developing your own fully working guide? That in itself speaks volumes about the commitment beyond a making money aspect that you can't just spin away imo.

So yeah, for $15 and in the end I'd grade it as a PASS . There is just other options out there that make more an effort, offer more, and do it as good or better from an overall standpoint then modern day Smoothstreams does.