Best ways to cut cords, 2023 edition
July 12, 2023 5:58 PM Subscribe
Gonna turn off Spectrum tv. And replace it with...?
While our new house is the best house ever, it's in (for the moment) spectrum-only-land, and our 12 months of discounts is about to run out. So we'll be canceling that. The past year we've mostly watched Formula 1 and kinda-background-noise shows on foodtv/hgtv/etc. We already have netflix and prime and uh you know alternative means.
Hulu/ESPN/Disney for $20/mo looks like the cheapest way to keep access to a reasonable stable of tv shows and get live f1, but I thought I should check with the ol' hivemind for any alternatives, or any other winning strategies for cord-cutting newbies.
How is the video quality on hulu? Is it at least better than the ground-up-dogshit quality you get after Spectrum recompresses everything?
While our new house is the best house ever, it's in (for the moment) spectrum-only-land, and our 12 months of discounts is about to run out. So we'll be canceling that. The past year we've mostly watched Formula 1 and kinda-background-noise shows on foodtv/hgtv/etc. We already have netflix and prime and uh you know alternative means.
Hulu/ESPN/Disney for $20/mo looks like the cheapest way to keep access to a reasonable stable of tv shows and get live f1, but I thought I should check with the ol' hivemind for any alternatives, or any other winning strategies for cord-cutting newbies.
How is the video quality on hulu? Is it at least better than the ground-up-dogshit quality you get after Spectrum recompresses everything?
Gotta go FAST. All kinds of free streaming platforms out there now that are surprisingly not-shit, and the model of "hundreds of channels of kinda-sorta watchable TV reruns and nostalgic movies playing in real time for you to dip in and out of whenever" is weirdly nostalgic in this brave new world of on-demand streaming everything. I like Pluto TV myself, but there are many others to sample. Just need a smart TV or smart plug-in like Chromecast, Amazon Firestick, Roku, etc.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:59 PM on July 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Rhaomi at 6:59 PM on July 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I have the Hulu/ESPN/Disney package and I give it a thumbs up. But for the best cord-cutting experience:
1. Locate a friend whose parents still pay for cable
2. Trade your Hulu/ESPN/Disney login info for their parents’ cable login info
3. Log into other apps on your Apple TV (or whatever) with that cable login info
It’s a win-win!
(Make sure your friend makes their own profile on Hulu and Disney… I don’t know if ESPN has profiles)
posted by ejs at 7:01 PM on July 12, 2023
1. Locate a friend whose parents still pay for cable
2. Trade your Hulu/ESPN/Disney login info for their parents’ cable login info
3. Log into other apps on your Apple TV (or whatever) with that cable login info
It’s a win-win!
(Make sure your friend makes their own profile on Hulu and Disney… I don’t know if ESPN has profiles)
posted by ejs at 7:01 PM on July 12, 2023
Response by poster: (I should have said we use a shield tv pro)
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:10 PM on July 12, 2023
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:10 PM on July 12, 2023
Max (formerly HBO Max) probably has the deepest library of quality shows and movies, but Hulu is a close second. Non-kids content on Disney+ is pretty much Marvel, Star Wars, and The Simpsons. Most services have a 7-day free trial (either through Hulu or Prime, or on their own) so you can sample them or binge a series, but be sure to set a calendar reminder to cancel before the trial ends.
posted by staggernation at 11:09 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by staggernation at 11:09 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Gonna throw in a strong recommendation for trying to source everything you want to watch from uh you know alternative means for at least a month, and see how you feel about streaming services afterwards.
My own mass-media diet consists entirely of content obtained by uh you know alternative means and I find it 100% satisfactory. No commercials. No upsell. High availability of high quality video. Watch whatever I want whenever I want on whatever I want. It's lovely.
I don't mind a bit of delay in my sportsball or sportspollution coverage; honestly, why should I need to care when they put these things on? Pirate Bay seems to have plenty of non-live F1 coverage for those who enjoy that kind of thing.
Coincidentally, I just wrote a little bit about my preferred choice of uh you know alternative means over on the WGA strike thread.
posted by flabdablet at 5:07 AM on July 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
My own mass-media diet consists entirely of content obtained by uh you know alternative means and I find it 100% satisfactory. No commercials. No upsell. High availability of high quality video. Watch whatever I want whenever I want on whatever I want. It's lovely.
I don't mind a bit of delay in my sportsball or sportspollution coverage; honestly, why should I need to care when they put these things on? Pirate Bay seems to have plenty of non-live F1 coverage for those who enjoy that kind of thing.
Coincidentally, I just wrote a little bit about my preferred choice of uh you know alternative means over on the WGA strike thread.
posted by flabdablet at 5:07 AM on July 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Kanopy's lineup is kinda hit-or-miss, but if your local library offers it, it might have a place in your rotation (your library might also subscribe to Hoopla, which also has some video options).
posted by box at 5:55 AM on July 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by box at 5:55 AM on July 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
box, THANK YOU. I’ve been cord cutting assiduously and Kanopy is just the ticket.
posted by Peach at 12:28 PM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Peach at 12:28 PM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Roku and cycling through 1 month stints as seasons drop of various high-profile series. As others have said, FAST channels like Pluto, Crackle, Tubi, etc., for the mindless watching. It's been like 4 years since we ditched Spectrum cable and I haven't missed it. I wish MLB would make it easier to watch my local team, but that's almost entirely the fault of MLB's engaging blackout rules.
posted by aught at 4:55 PM on July 13, 2023
posted by aught at 4:55 PM on July 13, 2023
Oh and if you contribute regularly to a PBS station, you can get their Roku app. Tons of great stuff on that. I mention it because I occasionally come across someone who's been a member of their local station for years but has no idea.
posted by aught at 4:58 PM on July 13, 2023
posted by aught at 4:58 PM on July 13, 2023
My parents have a new Samsung and it comes with hundreds of channels.
https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/tvplus/
I was shocked how much it has. It's mostly reruns of existing shows like others have noted you can get with Pluto etc. But I was really amazed how much comes with it for no extra cost (but with commercials which weren't too bad)
posted by Jungo at 5:16 PM on July 13, 2023
https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/tvplus/
I was shocked how much it has. It's mostly reruns of existing shows like others have noted you can get with Pluto etc. But I was really amazed how much comes with it for no extra cost (but with commercials which weren't too bad)
posted by Jungo at 5:16 PM on July 13, 2023
Video quality on Hulu is pretty much on par with HD video on Netflix and Amazon, with all the usual caveats about the original source quality. If Hulu has any 4K content I haven't seen it, but Disney+ has 4K content on all its tentpole stuff like Marvel movies and series. We get the Disney Bundle through our cell phone provider (Verizon) and pay extra for the "no ads" experience on Hulu, which we mostly do because the Hulu app on our smart TV tends to crash every second or third commercial break. I haven't tried to use the ESPN+ features so I can't really say if they're good or bad.
Kanopy and Hoopla are both wildly variable. Kanopy tends to cycle through different movie distributors so we'll have stuff on our watchlist and it will go away before we get to it, but then it will pop up again months later when that distributor signs a new agreement. Hoopla is a weird mix of some of the content you'd get with Acorn (think British and Canadian series, but often limited seasons and not the entire runs), some popular movies, and a bunch of made-for-TV movies (think Hallmark or Lifetime). But they're also free with library membership, so we make use of both. The "HD" picture quality on Hoopla is definitely not as high as Hulu's HD standard. Kanopy's picture quality depends on what you're watching.
As for the other paid services (including, but not limited to, Acorn, Amazon Prime, AMC+, Apple TV+, BritBox, Criterion Channel, Max, MGM+, Netflix, Paramount Plus [now "with Showtime"], Peacock, Starz, and I'm sure I'm forgetting several) the best plan of attack seems to be to sign up for a service when you know there's something you want to watch, binge anything else you're interested in at that point, and then cancel it and move on. We canceled Netflix a few months ago, and we're going to cancel Amazon Prime at some point but we haven't figured out when. We've done Apple TV+ a couple times, usually aided with free promo subscriptions, and I think Max is the next one we're going to pay for. We got a deal on a year of ad-supported Peacock for $20, but I don't think we'd pay monthly for it otherwise.
With any of those services we add stuff to our watchlists pretty liberally, and if we reactivate a lapsed subscription with the same credentials that watchlist will still be there. It's helpful when we feel like a movie night just to have a couple lists of things we'd previously said we'd watch. It's also a bit of a sanity saver to have a limited number of active subscriptions at once, so we're only going through two or three lists and not five or six.
But also, there are too many streaming services now. Every studio and distributor wants to own its whole platform, but then they also realize they make more money if they license content to other platforms. Stuff appears and disappears all the time, even ignoring the David Zaslavs of the world. I fully expect the money to run out and for all those platforms to go through a wave of consolidation, but I don't know how long that will take before the growth phase hits again.
posted by fedward at 10:16 AM on July 14, 2023
Kanopy and Hoopla are both wildly variable. Kanopy tends to cycle through different movie distributors so we'll have stuff on our watchlist and it will go away before we get to it, but then it will pop up again months later when that distributor signs a new agreement. Hoopla is a weird mix of some of the content you'd get with Acorn (think British and Canadian series, but often limited seasons and not the entire runs), some popular movies, and a bunch of made-for-TV movies (think Hallmark or Lifetime). But they're also free with library membership, so we make use of both. The "HD" picture quality on Hoopla is definitely not as high as Hulu's HD standard. Kanopy's picture quality depends on what you're watching.
As for the other paid services (including, but not limited to, Acorn, Amazon Prime, AMC+, Apple TV+, BritBox, Criterion Channel, Max, MGM+, Netflix, Paramount Plus [now "with Showtime"], Peacock, Starz, and I'm sure I'm forgetting several) the best plan of attack seems to be to sign up for a service when you know there's something you want to watch, binge anything else you're interested in at that point, and then cancel it and move on. We canceled Netflix a few months ago, and we're going to cancel Amazon Prime at some point but we haven't figured out when. We've done Apple TV+ a couple times, usually aided with free promo subscriptions, and I think Max is the next one we're going to pay for. We got a deal on a year of ad-supported Peacock for $20, but I don't think we'd pay monthly for it otherwise.
With any of those services we add stuff to our watchlists pretty liberally, and if we reactivate a lapsed subscription with the same credentials that watchlist will still be there. It's helpful when we feel like a movie night just to have a couple lists of things we'd previously said we'd watch. It's also a bit of a sanity saver to have a limited number of active subscriptions at once, so we're only going through two or three lists and not five or six.
But also, there are too many streaming services now. Every studio and distributor wants to own its whole platform, but then they also realize they make more money if they license content to other platforms. Stuff appears and disappears all the time, even ignoring the David Zaslavs of the world. I fully expect the money to run out and for all those platforms to go through a wave of consolidation, but I don't know how long that will take before the growth phase hits again.
posted by fedward at 10:16 AM on July 14, 2023
Oh, two other things I somehow managed to leave out of my long comment:
1) If you want live sports (other than F1, which you seem to have figured out), you may more or less be forced into a cable-replacement streaming package (e.g. Hulu with Live TV, Sling, YouTube TV, whatever the DirecTV thing is called now, or whatever other services may still exist as the market adjusts to interest rates). Cable-replacement streaming can sometimes be cheaper than cable company packages, and they're usually more flexible about cancellation, but your cable company may offer some bundle discount that gets you within a few bucks of the cost of buying the services separately. Then it becomes a question of who's more trustworthy, in an age when everybody starts to raise prices seemingly the minute you sign up and when they sometimes hide the cancel button or your cable company tries to pin you to a commitment. Apple launched a new MLS thing and it may be the wave of the future, but we could also see leagues like the NFL and MLB (and their broadcast partners) fighting that sort of move both in the market and through congressional lobbying. If you do this, I like Suppose as a way to figure out which package(s) will be best for your own needs. (For us the answer is almost always "none" but we've activated Sling a couple times for a month or two each in specific circumstances).
2) Some of the major services will let you sign up for other services as a "channel." Amazon Prime does this with a bunch of them, Hulu has some of them, and I've even seen some of them in the Apple TV+ interface. The prices are often the same as if you sign up directly, but some of the limitations can be odd. Like, you can sign up for Max through Hulu, but only HBO TV content will be available in the Hulu app. If you want to watch "Max Originals" you will need the dedicated Max app, and then you have to use the "sign in with your provider" function to log in via Hulu within the Max app. On the bright side the billing is all in one place and the add-ons are pretty easy to turn on and off, and Amazon does channel deals on Prime Day; on the dark side the licensing fights mean things like when Warner pulled HBO from Amazon, a problem that seems only likely to get worse from now on (see: interest rates).
posted by fedward at 12:51 PM on July 14, 2023
1) If you want live sports (other than F1, which you seem to have figured out), you may more or less be forced into a cable-replacement streaming package (e.g. Hulu with Live TV, Sling, YouTube TV, whatever the DirecTV thing is called now, or whatever other services may still exist as the market adjusts to interest rates). Cable-replacement streaming can sometimes be cheaper than cable company packages, and they're usually more flexible about cancellation, but your cable company may offer some bundle discount that gets you within a few bucks of the cost of buying the services separately. Then it becomes a question of who's more trustworthy, in an age when everybody starts to raise prices seemingly the minute you sign up and when they sometimes hide the cancel button or your cable company tries to pin you to a commitment. Apple launched a new MLS thing and it may be the wave of the future, but we could also see leagues like the NFL and MLB (and their broadcast partners) fighting that sort of move both in the market and through congressional lobbying. If you do this, I like Suppose as a way to figure out which package(s) will be best for your own needs. (For us the answer is almost always "none" but we've activated Sling a couple times for a month or two each in specific circumstances).
2) Some of the major services will let you sign up for other services as a "channel." Amazon Prime does this with a bunch of them, Hulu has some of them, and I've even seen some of them in the Apple TV+ interface. The prices are often the same as if you sign up directly, but some of the limitations can be odd. Like, you can sign up for Max through Hulu, but only HBO TV content will be available in the Hulu app. If you want to watch "Max Originals" you will need the dedicated Max app, and then you have to use the "sign in with your provider" function to log in via Hulu within the Max app. On the bright side the billing is all in one place and the add-ons are pretty easy to turn on and off, and Amazon does channel deals on Prime Day; on the dark side the licensing fights mean things like when Warner pulled HBO from Amazon, a problem that seems only likely to get worse from now on (see: interest rates).
posted by fedward at 12:51 PM on July 14, 2023
One More Thing™: you do have a rooftop antenna, right? If not, get a rooftop antenna. We've been using various software-based DVR platforms with a hardware TV tuner connected to a rooftop antenna for more than a decade now (eek). Right now that means we pay $5/mo for Emby so we can get a program guide and schedule recordings, but you can probably do the equivalent on your Shield through at least a couple different providers. I don't know if 4K broadcast is enough of a thing to be worth an investment yet, but I've been happy with several generations of HDHomeRun just at standard HD resolution.
posted by fedward at 1:02 PM on July 14, 2023
posted by fedward at 1:02 PM on July 14, 2023
Get an antenna. Mine cost less than $20 and is just sitting next to my TV, no rooftop whatever, and I get more channels than cable got us in the 80s. YMMV depending on where you live; I'm near a small city.
posted by metasarah at 11:26 AM on July 31, 2023
posted by metasarah at 11:26 AM on July 31, 2023
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I’ve set a budget for myself for how much I’ll pay for media, then figure out what I want to watch, and cycle through different streaming services. I made this little chart, with colored glass magnets, that I use to keep track of what I’m currently paying for. It’s on the fridge.
Of course, if you already know what you like, this system is over kill.
posted by Silvery Fish at 6:49 PM on July 12, 2023 [18 favorites]