Pluto TV: The Rise of Free TV in the Streaming Age
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chef k-dude
Smoking Fanatic
A bit off the OP's original topic but this has delved in to another "what service are you using" conversation. I think its all good info, to get people's experiences and feedback on the myriad of services out there. Pluto, Roku, etc. seem like great options for people on a tight budget that dont mind commercials and dont want to pay for TV.
Our Dish bill is going up about $22 next month to $117 (our last 2 year deal ended). Looks like YouTube TV (probably the closest service to Dish) doesn't have an ad free option except YouTube Premium viewing (another $14) and watching recorded programming, like Dish. About $34 difference between our current newer higher bill and YouTube TV (without YouTube premium). I haven't delved in to it but YouTube TV may have more channels...that we hardly watch any of!
The Dish Bill includes the locals, etc. pack, a Hopper 3 with 2TB DVR and two Joeys. We are accustomed to just picking up that familiar remote that fits the hand right (22 years of holding that remote, I can operate it in my sleep) AND you can add all the remotes you want! In our family/TV/Kitchen space I have a remote for me on the couch, wife has a remote at her chair and I have one in the kitchen! Talk about lazy! $20 ea. one time cost, not a budget killer.
I'm not a sports or TV news junky, so the base flex pack works for us. We both had to drop a few channels we cared about, and a bunch of other channels we never watched to drop down to the flex pack.
I will talk to the wife and observe our OTA reception and see if it is more stable than it used to be. They added a couple more towers up on the mountain, so it might be better. We used to only get 2 of 4 of the main networks really well. If their doubled/added transmitters to improve this are working, we could get rid of the locals pack on Dish because OTA will integrate with the Hopper DVR and guide, but I dont know if I can point those channels to the Prime Time Anytime system. My wife loves the auto-hop feature on that. I can live without it...you can still fast forward, but pray-tell, you have to actually operate the remote!
Anyway, dropping the locals pack would save $14 and usually a call to Dish will drop my bill $10 for locking in for another 2 years. Who knows if they will still exist in 2 years, but for now, it's probably what we are sticking with. If I worked both of those reductions out, it would only be a $10 difference between YouTubeTV and our current Dish setup. Not worth the switch for us (and Pluto/Roku aint happening for us unless we hit hard times).
We pop in and out of the other services when we run out of stuff to watch in the dead season for the networks. Either get a free deal for a month or two or a cheap price for a month or more, or like with Netflix, once a year we'll get it for a month and can usually watch anything we are interested in within a month. Same with, basically, all of the streamers. We let any show we are interested in fully drop (the days of them all dropping at once is gone with a lot of these services) then swoop in, hit it, and we're gone.
"Hell when the internet goes out I can barely get short text off."
I'm not promoting Dish, just discussing comparatives with other services, but thats why I like the Hopper DVR. It's onboard, not in the cloud. Dish will also piggyback with your internet on a lot of channels and actually switch to streaming the channel when they detect the satellite signal is lost. But when the actual internet goes out (rare these days with Firefly Gigabit), we can still watch our DVR content (we are usually watching DVR anyway because I hate live TV with commercials) and you can keep the recordings for as long as your DVR doesn't crash...which happened to me recently. If one really wants to geek out, you can get an additional Hard drive(s) to piggyback and load recordings on to your own hard drives. From what I understand YouTube TV's cloud recordings vaporize after 9 months.
If the power goes out, I can have my genny up and running and powering almost the entire house within 10 minutes if its not wildly stormy outside. Outside of a wild storm at the moment, I still get to watch TV...if I want.
Our Dish bill is going up about $22 next month to $117 (our last 2 year deal ended). Looks like YouTube TV (probably the closest service to Dish) doesn't have an ad free option except YouTube Premium viewing (another $14) and watching recorded programming, like Dish. About $34 difference between our current newer higher bill and YouTube TV (without YouTube premium). I haven't delved in to it but YouTube TV may have more channels...that we hardly watch any of!
The Dish Bill includes the locals, etc. pack, a Hopper 3 with 2TB DVR and two Joeys. We are accustomed to just picking up that familiar remote that fits the hand right (22 years of holding that remote, I can operate it in my sleep) AND you can add all the remotes you want! In our family/TV/Kitchen space I have a remote for me on the couch, wife has a remote at her chair and I have one in the kitchen! Talk about lazy! $20 ea. one time cost, not a budget killer.
I'm not a sports or TV news junky, so the base flex pack works for us. We both had to drop a few channels we cared about, and a bunch of other channels we never watched to drop down to the flex pack.
I will talk to the wife and observe our OTA reception and see if it is more stable than it used to be. They added a couple more towers up on the mountain, so it might be better. We used to only get 2 of 4 of the main networks really well. If their doubled/added transmitters to improve this are working, we could get rid of the locals pack on Dish because OTA will integrate with the Hopper DVR and guide, but I dont know if I can point those channels to the Prime Time Anytime system. My wife loves the auto-hop feature on that. I can live without it...you can still fast forward, but pray-tell, you have to actually operate the remote!
Anyway, dropping the locals pack would save $14 and usually a call to Dish will drop my bill $10 for locking in for another 2 years. Who knows if they will still exist in 2 years, but for now, it's probably what we are sticking with. If I worked both of those reductions out, it would only be a $10 difference between YouTubeTV and our current Dish setup. Not worth the switch for us (and Pluto/Roku aint happening for us unless we hit hard times).
We pop in and out of the other services when we run out of stuff to watch in the dead season for the networks. Either get a free deal for a month or two or a cheap price for a month or more, or like with Netflix, once a year we'll get it for a month and can usually watch anything we are interested in within a month. Same with, basically, all of the streamers. We let any show we are interested in fully drop (the days of them all dropping at once is gone with a lot of these services) then swoop in, hit it, and we're gone.
Reading about Pluto it looks like the "locals" are major cities only. Dish was like that 20 years ago. We had to get alphabet networks feed from Atlanta, NYC, Chicago, etc.. But now the $14 locals pack is actually, finally, our local market in the 45,000 population city we call "town". They serve many more people in the surrounding counties and provide news around the area. But if you live close enough, the actual OTA feeds are sharp, crisp digital and a lot of other minor local channels, PBS, etc. (which also come with the Dish pack for the most part).
"Hell when the internet goes out I can barely get short text off."
I'm not promoting Dish, just discussing comparatives with other services, but thats why I like the Hopper DVR. It's onboard, not in the cloud. Dish will also piggyback with your internet on a lot of channels and actually switch to streaming the channel when they detect the satellite signal is lost. But when the actual internet goes out (rare these days with Firefly Gigabit), we can still watch our DVR content (we are usually watching DVR anyway because I hate live TV with commercials) and you can keep the recordings for as long as your DVR doesn't crash...which happened to me recently. If one really wants to geek out, you can get an additional Hard drive(s) to piggyback and load recordings on to your own hard drives. From what I understand YouTube TV's cloud recordings vaporize after 9 months.
If the power goes out, I can have my genny up and running and powering almost the entire house within 10 minutes if its not wildly stormy outside. Outside of a wild storm at the moment, I still get to watch TV...if I want.
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Tubi is our go to for when we run out of shit to watch on our other 20 streaming services lol
Problem with that is two-fold. One, I've already seen almost those movies when they were released. And two, the R-rated ones I haven't seen before seem to have been "edited for tv".
We have a movie channel as part of our Spectrum package.
Watched Animal House last night. Fond memories of that movie. I lived in a housing co-op during college that resembled the Delta house when I moved in. 2 years of hard work and we got it pretty respectable.
Fubo has dropped their antitrust suit against Venu Sports. The path is now clear for Venue to launch. We might just get a stand alone sports streaming service.
Disney is merging their Hulu Live with Fubo. Will create a streaming service that can compete with YouTube TV. Disney gets 70% of new service, Fubo gets 30%.
cordcuttersnews.com
Disney is merging their Hulu Live with Fubo. Will create a streaming service that can compete with YouTube TV. Disney gets 70% of new service, Fubo gets 30%.
Disney's Hulu + live TV and Fubo to Reportedly Merge Live TV Businesses As Fubo Would Drop Its Lawsuit | Cord Cutters News
In a move that could reshape the landscape of online television, Walt Disney Co. and streaming provider FuboTV Inc. are reportedly nearing a deal to combine their live TV businesses. Sources close to the matter reveal that Disney plans to fold its Hulu + Live TV service into Fubo, creating a new...
cordcuttersnews.com
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