Sling.com Roku (Piece of Shit)

I have Sling.com and Roku and am trying to decide if the combination is a piece of shit or not. Usually when you say the words “piece of shit” you are alluding to one item.  However, sometimes two companies unite forces to mesh together to form one gigantic, combined piece of shit.

That’s what we have here.

I had Sling for ages and then all of the sudden it quit working with Roku devices.  But not all of them.  At one time I had a Roku (Hisense) TV and two TV’s with Roku Ultra’s.   Some of them worked, some of them didn’t.  Spin, spin, spin goes the circle but Sling never loads.

Fuck Sling.  I ditched it and started using Philo.  Fuck Roku.  I ditched them and bought Fire TV’s and a Fire Stick.   Then I was able to get Sling back and watch it successfully.

All was well at Casa John’s Tech Blog until my wife threw an outdoor Ooni Pizza Oven Pizza Party.  I took an old TV out of the attic and put one of those dust collector Roku Ultra’s on it to watch a football game.

Before the party my wife said, “Can I watch the Food Channel on it?”.  “Fuck no”, sez I, “because Sling and Roku”.

Why Roku, Why?

I don’t really have this problem on any platform but Roku.  Sling works fine on other devices.  Just on the Roku’s is there a problem.

After almost a year of this being an on and off again problem I stumbled across the solution today in this Reddit post.

The Solution

If you run an Unbound DNS or something like Pi-Hole you have to whitelist the following domain:

dpm.demdex.net

Voila’. I run Unbound DNS on OPNSense and the “Steve Black List” is essentially the Pi-Hole list.

Whitelist

Once I hit apply, the Roku devices all came back to life.

I Should Be Happy, Right?

Fuck no, I’m pissed.  I’ve hit up Sling support and Roku support.  Roku says “we’ve never heard of such a thing”. Seriously.  That’s what they say.  Even though there are hundreds of posts on the internet that state otherwise.   Sling just says, “I dunno, ask Roku”.

So Fuck Sling and for sure double fuck Roku.  They know.   I literally bought 2 TV’s to work around their combined and conspiratorial shit show.  Somebody somewhere in Roku or Sling support……….write this down:

WHITELIST dpm.demdex.net

That’s it.  I wasted untold hours on this and spent hundreds of dollars because of this.   I blame Roku more than Sling because Sling works fine on every other platform.