I’m really surprised by the number of top level comments that are confusing two different products: YouTube and YouTube TV.
YouTube TV is basically cable TV delivered via the internet with some on-demand content and an “unlimited” DVR system. There are multiple tiers via add-on packages (just like cable), and there is no ad-free offering.
YouTube is the video sharing website everyone uses. The ad-free version of which is called YouTube Premium.
These two services have very little in common besides the obvious branding and parent company. The contract/fee dispute is between Disney and YouTube TV, and the result is that YouTube TV is currently not broadcasting Disney-owned television channels. Disney content is still all over YouTube itself via their YouTube “Channels.”
YouTube TV is a separate $65/month subscription. Seems like an absurdly high price relative to Hulu or Netflix, but it’s meant to compete more with local cable packages.
Without the premium content, it’s hard to do that. I think the content providers know this and are trying to squeeze YouTube into giving more of their profits to the content providers. Either that, or to raise prices to be similar to cable.
YouTube TV is claiming Disney content added $15/month to the bill, so they’re dropping the price by $15/month as long as Disney is out:
> “We will be decreasing our monthly price by $15, from $64.99 to $49.99 while this content remains off of our platform,” YouTube TV said in its Friday night statement.
Hulu + LiveTV is $65 and Sling is about $50 and Youtube TV $65.
These aren’t really comparable to standard Hulu or Netflix or Amazon Prime etc. It’s for people that want to pretend they’re cord-cutting while buying the exact same thing from a streaming company.
There also seems to be confusion that ESPN+ is equivalent to ESPN, but ESPN+ does not carry the linear programming of ESPN. Using part of the $15 YouTube TV discount to purchase ESPN+ will not make you whole on the lose of ESPN - still no live ESPN content.
the youtube TV model (which is also the Sony Vue (they're gone! heh) / Sling model) is nothing like the cable TV model, because these companies do not provide any last mile physical infrastructure. therefore you can switch between any number of providers with no effort. Assuming the other providers can get their fucking act together techinically/user-experience-wise (YTV is like vastly better UX-wise, looks like PS VUE has already been shut down, sad), there's no way a single provider can gouge captive customers for $180 a month, because you can switch freely. meaning it becomes a market again! even liberal democrats like me like markets when they are appropriate.
my physical cable to my house is provided by Altice One, I have no option to switch that at all (no there's no FIOS or fiber option here). that's a monopoly.
I'm so frustrated by the state of things as I only subscribed to YoutubeTV because I wanted to watch Mets baseball and media blackouts prevent me from streaming despite my MLB.tv subscription.
The price has only risen over the years and it's been a pretty bitter pill to swallow.
I already pay for Disney+ but am also paying for their content through YoutubeTV, which I rarely consume (never watch the disney channel; sometimes I have to watch baseball on ESPN because of media rights).
ABC, which is really only used to record the Bachelor/ette programs in this house, is free with an antenna (but lacking the DVR). Not to mention you can watch it a day later using the Hulu subscription we also pay for.
I love the DVR feature of YoutubeTV, but I really only record content that's free over the airwaves. Including This Old House, which is now owned by Roku and has it's own for pay streaming service.
I'm paying eight ways to Sunday for this content, and increasingly of the opinion that it's not worth it.
EDIT: Anyone know of a DVR + digital antenna solution I could implement?
EDIT2: Just pulled the digital antenna out of the drawer and, as expected, the features of the surrounding landscape block all the channels.
If you're inclined to try (with shields up!), the user experience and video quality of pirate sports streams have improved dramatically in the last few years.
It's an interesting ethical quandary. I wouldn't mind chipping in financially but not with the current business model. Bundling TV channels I don't care about? No thanks. Local blackouts? Please. Paying the services that engage in these anti-consumer practices is only exacerbating the problem. I see pirate streams as doing my part to force the parties involved to find another way.
As another comment alluded, this is an industry on the precipice of a moment. Along the lines of the arrival of Spotify, or the iPod. We're not far away now.
I have been using an HD Homerun Extend bought used off eBay since 2015, with an HD antenna on a mast above the roof. For a few years, I used Windows Media Center's free electronic program guide as a DVR. That data feed became unstable, so I switched to program data from Schedules Direct[0], which costs $25/yr.
Yes, this is the thing that gets me. I'm paying a lot, for a bunch of separate services that have some but not complete overlap, because it's the only way to get all the stuff people in the family want. If it all worked well and wasn't a huge pain in the butt, I wouldn't even mind paying the amount we're paying. But it DOESN'T work well. Every app is different, things are constantly changing, now I have to explain to the rest of the family (who were skeptical about getting rid of cable in the first place) why they can't get ABC and ESPN on YouTube TV where they're used to getting it.
This is probably making all the rights-holders happy because they're making more money, but it's a short-term solution. In the long run, they're going to be driving viewers away and won't be able to win them back. Yes, TV-watching is a pretty ingrained habit for a lot of people, but it's not set in stone. Other forms of entertainment can and will replace it if it becomes too much of a pain, too expensive, or too confusing.
Habit is a good way of putting it. As you say, it's pretty ingrained for a lot of people to switch on Sunday football, the Food Network, CNN, etc. and watch fairly passively/sort of in the background. But there's some point where it all becomes too much of a pain or costs too much. Change does happen over time. I know in my case, it was the realization I was paying $100/month to record shows to my DVR I never got around to watching and maybe have one or two sports games a month on in the background.
Personally I'm delighted to trade ABC, ESPN, etc [1] for a $15 reduction in my YouTube TV bill. It just makes me wish Google would unbundle all their different providers so I could choose only the ones I want.
[1]
Your local ABC channel, ABC News Live, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3 (by authentication to the ESPN app), ESPNU, ESPNEWS SEC Network, ACC Network.
Thing is I would be delighted the the opposite. I'd love to only pay for ESPN and the other sports channels only for $15/mo. Maybe add in CNN/FOX/MSNBC/Etc. for the wife to have on in the background, but plenty of ways to get that otherwise cheaply. OTA works fine for local news, even if the apps are a bit buggy if you want anything DVR or digitally distributed.
As would likely most I believe. Thus sports propping up this ancient model and myself being part of the problem.
I'm surprised Disney/ESPN is only $15/mo of the bill to be honest, I think Youtube is taking a hit there as I'd bet it's more than half the total base subscription fee.
ESPN will be the last to offer their own subscription, because then people would know how much they are getting away with in broadcast programming. YouTube is almost certainly paying more. Decades of strongarming TV networks has allowed Disney/ESPN to soak up 40%-60% of traditional cable bills at the expense of all other content owners. YT is taking a gamble that backed by the weight of Alphabet they can end this corruption. Sadly, I'm not sure it's a smart bet.
I have no evidence to support this, but my assumption would be that if ESPN were offered separately they would need to charge substantially more to break even.
My thesis for this is that most people aren’t sports fans, but they pay for sports whether they want to or not due to all the bundling. In a way, non-fans are subsidizing the content for fans.
My sneaky suspicion is that unbundling sports would be a cataclysmic event for the sports television industry. I would pay $15/month for ESPN but I wouldn’t pay $25.
I don't have YouTube Tv but your comment almost made me dry heave a little realizing we are back at square one with cable tv and bundling channels users don't want and forcing them to pay for stuff. I haven't had cable tv in years but seldom don't miss a show I want to watch. It is mostly all online if you know where to search. Also Canadian so no one comes knocking on my door for downloading.
Sports is the anchor by which unbundling won’t happen for a long time, especially with linear TV.
This is partially because it benefits the conglomerates business models to have as many channels and content streams as possible to sell ad time on, and partially because for sports teams they can functionally name their price.
In seattle, the brand new hockey team is only available through Root Sports, a smallish production company owned by Warner media and the baseball team. You can only watch the new hockey team if you subscribe to a cable package or online cable package (YouTube tv etc).
Why would a brand new team with no established fan base want to not be in front of as many eyeballs as they can? Because they earn more money when someone pays them to put them behind a cable company.
At no point does this “competition”, which it isn’t, benefit consumers. We used to regulate things like this.
Right? I used to just turn on YouTube TV for hurricane season for local coverage in case of a power outage. It's far easier to keep a cell phone charged than deal with a digital antenna (which might have been lost to high winds anyway) and relatively power hungry TV just to see what's going on. Then my wife started using the app too so I can't easily turn it off.
Back when Big Ugly Dishes were a thing it was far cheaper to piecemeal subscribe to your desired packages. Then DirecTV came along and forced the cable tv model on their subscribers and lobbied hard for laws that killed BUDs. I remember doing the math at the time and DirecTV was about double the price of a BUD.
Now we're back to adhoc subscription if you want to use a bunch of disparate apps and websites, so in one way it could be cheaper. But each streaming site charges retail prices to consumers so in aggregate it ends up costing as much or more than in the cable model. Even so the forced subsidy of ESPN in particular has always been a deeply aggravating thing for me. Sort of like agreeing to split lunch evenly and then discovering after the fact everyone's having sandwiches except the one guy who ordered steak.
No, I only used it during football season and now I'm out Monday Night Football. They had already made it harder to set my location to my teams local market (still possible with vpn + location guard but not on TV without chromecasting). With the season nearly over and the Giants season completely over I will probably just cancel early.
There's also late night talk shows, reality TV, etc. I don't really watch any of this and, hence, don't get cable TV any longer but many do. I think just having something on in the background is appealing to some (although there are alternatives to that).
My sense is that there's very little really interesting scripted TV on non-premium streaming broadcast/cable at this point. I certainly haven't heard of any "must see TV" on any of the networks or even stations like AMC for ages.
Youtube TV would GLADLY unbundle ESPN. Disney will not allow it. Disney insists that every Youtube TV subscriber pays for ESPN or nobody gets it.
Google is fairly asking that whatever price they pay for ESPN, that no other streaming service (including Hulu which Disney owns) gets a better price. Disney said no. This is the fundamental reason Google does not now have an agreement with Disney for the channels.
> Personally I'm delighted to trade ABC, ESPN, etc [1] for a $15 reduction in my YouTube TV bill. It just makes me wish Google would unbundle all their different providers so I could choose only the ones I want.
They could make several tiers:
- Youtubers-only content: no big media included
- Tier 2: the same + ABC, ESPN, etc...
- Tier 3: same as 2 + exclusive content only available for Tier 3 subscribers
would be a good business model rather than just charging to remove ads.
This is another comment confusing YT with YT TV. www.youtube.com didn’t lose anything - tv.youtube.com did, which is cable TV over the internet, and it’s just like any other channel dispute that has happened in years past with traditional cable offerings.
This is just a small microcosm of what’s going on in the cable TV world. Many channels are raising their fees, but the cable providers are very reluctant to raise the price charged to end users. Instead, cable providers are opting to drop channels. This is leading to an increasingly fragmented cable TV market where it’s impossible to get all the channels you may want to watch. For instance, Comcast just dropped MSG, which is a channel for NY-based sports. The only alternative many people have is to use FuboTV, but Fubo has dropped Adult Swim for the same reason. So now it’s impossible to get both MSG and Adult Swim.
Gonna take 5 years for this market collapse to sort itself out, and by then they will realize the younger consumer has already moved on even from live sports, the last thing holding them to cable/broadcast television.
A few years back my cable provider got in a tiff with the local CBS affiliate about programming fees.
Each side blamed the other and neither side was willing to compromise. The cable provider dropped the channel in retaliation and for some 2 years we had no CBS. (Naturally there was no discount in the monthly cable bill as a result of this “principled stand”.)
If you just want TV on in the background and don't want to pay anything, checkout "Pluto TV" and "Tubi TV", both have apps and may cast to Chromecast or SmartTVs.
I suspect the appeal of YouTube TV is the built-in cloud DVR, mostly so you can skip commercials. I had YouTube TV for a while, mostly for local news. I switched to a local tuner/antenna with a DVR. I picked the Tablo product. The app could be better, but it does reliably record my local news and playback works fine. And it's quite a lot cheaper than YouTube TV, Sling, etc.
Though, of course, you have to be somewhere where an antenna can pick up what you want to watch.
And a lot of people forget, there is OTA TV too. In the days of streaming everything media, there are still OTA sources just in case. Especially during a power outage, where AM/FM and broadcast TV still work to receive info.
It's less about forgetfulness and more about convenience. The whole "setup an OTA antenna somewhere in/on your house/attic/roof, wire it up to your tuner, scan for channels, learn what direction to point the antenna for which stations, find a DVR that supports OTA", vs load an app, sign in and boom.
I'm a geek so, I'd LOVE to take this step. Unfortunately, I live in the part of the country that has too many mountains to make OTA reception an easy task. I personally live down between two ridges that make it so I'd have to have an antenna 150 feet in the air.
I was using Justwatch[0] for a 2017 series and saw I could stream it for free on the Roku Channel[1]. That was a surprise to me, and Roku Channel has some quality stuff, rotating through month by month. In addition, they show some commercials, but with a nice UI feature: a timer in the upper left that shows exactly how long the ads will play. That is a new feature to me. I wish all commercials came with a countdown timer like that.
I guess buying a TV antenna isn't completely free but it gives you the same benefit as these online channels, doesn't consume your data cap, and lets you watch sports and local news.
I bought a $10 antenna from channel master and it's been a great investment.
To be fair, there's plenty of places, even in suburbs, where you need a $100-$200 antenna, and maybe $200 worth of parts, labor and stuff to put it somewhere where it works.
How is this legal? Do Pluto and Tubitv have some contract with providers that allows this?
I remember a company named Aereo being sued out of existence because they were offering OTA TV to their subscribers by allocating an micro antenna to each user. The excuse did fly in court.
Pluto TV is owned by ViacomCBS and Tubi is owned by the Fox Corporation (the non-Disney one), and as others have pointed out, all their content is licensed. There's also Xumo, owned by Comcast. Pluto TV has partnership deals with Roku, Vizio and others to provide them with content for their branded apps. Amazon has a somewhat similar service with IMDb TV, although it has a crappy interface modeled off Amazon Prime's. And of course even Plex has now (sadly) entered the game with their "Live TV" section.
What annoys me about these free offerings is that they have cannibalized their content from paid streaming services. Before, services like Hulu and Amazon Prime would stock their catalog with tons of old "classic" TV shows that you could binge commercial free. Now, the only way to stream many of those shows is with commercials, they are no longer available as part of any paid commercial-free packages, unless you are willing to purchase the individual episodes.
Pluto operates a model called FAST (free ad supported television). Because the content is still aired in a linear fashion (as opposed to on demand) the licensing costs are lower than it would be for VOD and there’s no infrastructure costs to support like traditional cable tv, they can support it with ads easily enough.
They don’t have regular channels and instead do all their own programming. You get things like “The Bob Vila Channel” and other channels that focus on library/long tail content.
No kidding. My wife lamented that she couldn't see the original (modulo dubbing) Iron Chef... and poof, now there's a Pluto TV channel running nothing but that.
> We’re sorry, but Pluto TV is currently unavailable in your location. We’re working hard to bring Pluto TV to this area, so stay tuned to find out when.
Edit: One thing to double check that surprised me is that the channel number these days doesn't reliably tell you if the channel is VHF or UHF. That is, a low-numbered channel like "3" or "8" could really be a UHF channel. I guess they let them keep long-established channel numbers for marketing purposes. So check what you really need before buying an antenna. The website above does provide the needed detail under "RF Channel".
Yeah, OTA doesn't really work anywhere except cities. I used to sell "big screens" at Sears and I was asked that question so frequently, especially back when cable was switching from analog to digital. Years 2004-2006.
I resubscribed to YouTube TV a few months ago for two channels: CNBC and ESPN. The rest of my family doesn't watch anything on it which is why I had cancelled it a couple of years ago. CNBC isn't worth $50/month to me. I'll give them another week before changing anything as I imagine someone is going to bend with this being college bowl season.
Google has handled themselves better than the content providers in past disputes, and the providers typically fold. I think Google has garnered goodwill by proactively reducing their prices etc.
Readit News
YouTube TV is basically cable TV delivered via the internet with some on-demand content and an “unlimited” DVR system. There are multiple tiers via add-on packages (just like cable), and there is no ad-free offering.
YouTube is the video sharing website everyone uses. The ad-free version of which is called YouTube Premium.
These two services have very little in common besides the obvious branding and parent company. The contract/fee dispute is between Disney and YouTube TV, and the result is that YouTube TV is currently not broadcasting Disney-owned television channels. Disney content is still all over YouTube itself via their YouTube “Channels.”
Without the premium content, it’s hard to do that. I think the content providers know this and are trying to squeeze YouTube into giving more of their profits to the content providers. Either that, or to raise prices to be similar to cable.
YouTube TV is claiming Disney content added $15/month to the bill, so they’re dropping the price by $15/month as long as Disney is out:
> “We will be decreasing our monthly price by $15, from $64.99 to $49.99 while this content remains off of our platform,” YouTube TV said in its Friday night statement.
These aren’t really comparable to standard Hulu or Netflix or Amazon Prime etc. It’s for people that want to pretend they’re cord-cutting while buying the exact same thing from a streaming company.
FWIW, I can’t see any traditional cable TV provider doing this. They might even charge an extra fee as a cherry on top.
Thanks for the clarification. It probably adds to the confusion that the landing page for "YouTube TV" goes to the "youtube.com" domain:
https://tv.youtube.com/
https://www.espn.com/espnplus/schedule/_/type/upcoming/categ...
Technically YouTube Premium is a package designed to bolster their failing YouTube Music product that few want.
I'd gladly pay $7.50 a month for AD Free YouTube, but $15 is too much.
In some regions you can actually get this. It’s called “Premium Lite”.
https://www.youtube.com/premiumlite
I’m paying 69 NOK which given currency conversion is roughly $7.60, so it’s more or less literally what you ask for.
For those outside the offered regions (thus getting geoblocked) this is literally what the page says for me (copy & paste):
—————————————-
FAQ
What is included with Premium Lite?
YouTube
• Ad-free videos: Watch millions of videos uninterrupted by ads. Learn more
YouTube Kids
• Ad-free in the YouTube Kids app
Premium Lite doesn't include ad-free access to the YouTube Music app.
That was a pretty good deal for me. But without Play Music (YT Music was awful at the time), I couldn't justify the cost.
Are you that surprised? The branding is a complete mess. And Youtube TV is not available in most markets so many people have never heard of it.
And the sooner that dies, the better. Cable TV is crap and I don't want to see that model of media succeed into the internet era.
my physical cable to my house is provided by Altice One, I have no option to switch that at all (no there's no FIOS or fiber option here). that's a monopoly.
The price has only risen over the years and it's been a pretty bitter pill to swallow.
I already pay for Disney+ but am also paying for their content through YoutubeTV, which I rarely consume (never watch the disney channel; sometimes I have to watch baseball on ESPN because of media rights).
ABC, which is really only used to record the Bachelor/ette programs in this house, is free with an antenna (but lacking the DVR). Not to mention you can watch it a day later using the Hulu subscription we also pay for.
I love the DVR feature of YoutubeTV, but I really only record content that's free over the airwaves. Including This Old House, which is now owned by Roku and has it's own for pay streaming service.
I'm paying eight ways to Sunday for this content, and increasingly of the opinion that it's not worth it.
EDIT: Anyone know of a DVR + digital antenna solution I could implement?
EDIT2: Just pulled the digital antenna out of the drawer and, as expected, the features of the surrounding landscape block all the channels.
It's an interesting ethical quandary. I wouldn't mind chipping in financially but not with the current business model. Bundling TV channels I don't care about? No thanks. Local blackouts? Please. Paying the services that engage in these anti-consumer practices is only exacerbating the problem. I see pirate streams as doing my part to force the parties involved to find another way.
As another comment alluded, this is an industry on the precipice of a moment. Along the lines of the arrival of Spotify, or the iPod. We're not far away now.
Not sure about the current generation of devices but I had a HomeRun device [1] in the past and it was great.
More recently I think I heard of a FireTV product that had an antenna and DVR support.
[1] https://www.silicondust.com/
[0] https://www.schedulesdirect.org/
This is probably making all the rights-holders happy because they're making more money, but it's a short-term solution. In the long run, they're going to be driving viewers away and won't be able to win them back. Yes, TV-watching is a pretty ingrained habit for a lot of people, but it's not set in stone. Other forms of entertainment can and will replace it if it becomes too much of a pain, too expensive, or too confusing.
[1]
Your local ABC channel, ABC News Live, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3 (by authentication to the ESPN app), ESPNU, ESPNEWS SEC Network, ACC Network.
As would likely most I believe. Thus sports propping up this ancient model and myself being part of the problem.
I'm surprised Disney/ESPN is only $15/mo of the bill to be honest, I think Youtube is taking a hit there as I'd bet it's more than half the total base subscription fee.
My thesis for this is that most people aren’t sports fans, but they pay for sports whether they want to or not due to all the bundling. In a way, non-fans are subsidizing the content for fans.
My sneaky suspicion is that unbundling sports would be a cataclysmic event for the sports television industry. I would pay $15/month for ESPN but I wouldn’t pay $25.
What do you think?
It's probably more. They're just happy to keep your money.
This is partially because it benefits the conglomerates business models to have as many channels and content streams as possible to sell ad time on, and partially because for sports teams they can functionally name their price.
In seattle, the brand new hockey team is only available through Root Sports, a smallish production company owned by Warner media and the baseball team. You can only watch the new hockey team if you subscribe to a cable package or online cable package (YouTube tv etc).
Why would a brand new team with no established fan base want to not be in front of as many eyeballs as they can? Because they earn more money when someone pays them to put them behind a cable company.
At no point does this “competition”, which it isn’t, benefit consumers. We used to regulate things like this.
Back when Big Ugly Dishes were a thing it was far cheaper to piecemeal subscribe to your desired packages. Then DirecTV came along and forced the cable tv model on their subscribers and lobbied hard for laws that killed BUDs. I remember doing the math at the time and DirecTV was about double the price of a BUD.
Now we're back to adhoc subscription if you want to use a bunch of disparate apps and websites, so in one way it could be cheaper. But each streaming site charges retail prices to consumers so in aggregate it ends up costing as much or more than in the cable model. Even so the forced subsidy of ESPN in particular has always been a deeply aggravating thing for me. Sort of like agreeing to split lunch evenly and then discovering after the fact everyone's having sandwiches except the one guy who ordered steak.
How about we just pay for the things we use? Imagine if a restaurant put a bottle of wine on your bill even though you don't like wine.
Sure about that?
https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/12443/copyright-trol...
I hate it, but I really do pay that much per month to watch a single game a week plus have the convenience for guests having access to "regular TV".
My sense is that there's very little really interesting scripted TV on non-premium streaming broadcast/cable at this point. I certainly haven't heard of any "must see TV" on any of the networks or even stations like AMC for ages.
The content networks force an all or nothing contract. ESPN must be licensed for all subscribers or no ESPN option for anyone.
The same thing that forced me off of cable has forced me off of OTT.
Google is fairly asking that whatever price they pay for ESPN, that no other streaming service (including Hulu which Disney owns) gets a better price. Disney said no. This is the fundamental reason Google does not now have an agreement with Disney for the channels.
They could make several tiers:
- Youtubers-only content: no big media included
- Tier 2: the same + ABC, ESPN, etc...
- Tier 3: same as 2 + exclusive content only available for Tier 3 subscribers
would be a good business model rather than just charging to remove ads.
Deleted Comment
Each side blamed the other and neither side was willing to compromise. The cable provider dropped the channel in retaliation and for some 2 years we had no CBS. (Naturally there was no discount in the monthly cable bill as a result of this “principled stand”.)
https://pluto.tv/
https://tubitv.com/
Friends help friends cut cords.
Though, of course, you have to be somewhere where an antenna can pick up what you want to watch.
And a lot of people forget, there is OTA TV too. In the days of streaming everything media, there are still OTA sources just in case. Especially during a power outage, where AM/FM and broadcast TV still work to receive info.
I'm a geek so, I'd LOVE to take this step. Unfortunately, I live in the part of the country that has too many mountains to make OTA reception an easy task. I personally live down between two ridges that make it so I'd have to have an antenna 150 feet in the air.
[0] https://www.justwatch.com/us
[1] https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/the-roku-channel
I bought a $10 antenna from channel master and it's been a great investment.
I remember a company named Aereo being sued out of existence because they were offering OTA TV to their subscribers by allocating an micro antenna to each user. The excuse did fly in court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
BTW, thanks for sharing!
What annoys me about these free offerings is that they have cannibalized their content from paid streaming services. Before, services like Hulu and Amazon Prime would stock their catalog with tons of old "classic" TV shows that you could binge commercial free. Now, the only way to stream many of those shows is with commercials, they are no longer available as part of any paid commercial-free packages, unless you are willing to purchase the individual episodes.
They don’t have regular channels and instead do all their own programming. You get things like “The Bob Vila Channel” and other channels that focus on library/long tail content.
You won’t get live sports or networks, but you will get a lot of reruns shows, second run movies, and news coverage that is a few hours old.
[0]: https://kodi.tv/addons/matrix/plugin.video.plutotv
magistv
It offers everything that's on star/hbo/netflix/hulu/disney plus/amazon/etc plus live sports plus a lot of live hd channels for just 9 a month.
Dead Comment
Edit: One thing to double check that surprised me is that the channel number these days doesn't reliably tell you if the channel is VHF or UHF. That is, a low-numbered channel like "3" or "8" could really be a UHF channel. I guess they let them keep long-established channel numbers for marketing purposes. So check what you really need before buying an antenna. The website above does provide the needed detail under "RF Channel".
1. Cease broadcasting / licensing of content
2. Talk to media to patiently explain how your adversary is responsible for depriving you of your precious {sports team | Marvel hero}
3. Hope ensuing social media / support queue shit storm hurts your adversary more than you (by the looks of these comments, advantage Disney)
4. Sign a deal
5. Repeat at next contract!
Even if they make a deal tomorrow, we had so much recorded that just disappeared.
Going to be lots of crying kids in the morning
Though, quality of recordings is lower and we had some random losses over time.