May 18, 2016
Cutting the Cord
Cable subscriptions are becoming somewhat like video rental store memberships—a relic of the past. (RIP Blockbuster, Hollywood Video and Video World)
I've finally taken the plunge and cut my cable subscription. I was a cable subscriber, but after persistent price jumps it just didn't seem like a value.
I was a little apprehensive to give up cable, but with devices like Roku and Apple TV, and online options like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now, and Sling TV, it's a lot easier to cut the cord. All you need is a decent internet connection. TV is now more accessible than ever, leaving cable boxes and subscriptions in the dust. The key is getting the right set of apps to suit your needs.
For me, Netflix is the best entertainment app, having overall the best selection of shows. And there are no commercials. Netflix also offers a great selection of originals, with shows like Orange is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe television shows such as Jessica Jones and Daredevil. They keep coming out with new shows that look great, and they are not afraid to take risks on par with HBO. I'm really looking forward to the re-imagined Voltron, and the 80s supernatural mystery Stranger Things.
Speaking of HBO, the HBO Now service makes it much easier to give up the relationship with your high-maintenance cable provider.
Hulu seems to have the best selection of shows you'd find from networks, and also a decent library of films. Hulu also now offers a commercial free option similar to Netflix, but it is somewhat more expensive.
Sling TV offers live television for only $20 a month that includes some of the best channels you'd find on cable (TBS, AMC, Comedy Central, TNT, CNN, ESPN, etc). For me, this was what really made cutting my cable subscription seem like a no-brainer. Sling allows you to add on some extra channels a-la-carte style if you're intersted.
Comparing costs. At first cable will try to sweet talk you with a cheap monthly cost. But after a time they often raise their rates, and may not make it clear what the price will be after the promotional period. A full cable subscription can cost well over $100. Whereas with streaming apps (and a cheap antenna for local over-the-air broadcasts) you can spend a lot less, even cut your costs by half.
Typical cable subscription: $120ish/month (typical price after promo period)
Cutting the cord: Hulu $12 (no commercial plan) + Netflix $10 + HBO Now $15 + Sling $20 = $57/month
And since you're using technology like your smartphone, you can access your content pretty much anywhere. The best thing about these services is that you can turn them on and off whenever you want, so no need for uncertain contracts, or glitchy cable boxes.
I'm really excited that Google Fiber is coming to Charlotte, and for the competition this forces upon the internet providers. I've already noticed that local internet providers are offering big upgrades in internet speed for free. Competition is always a good thing.
There are a lot of cross overs between Hulu and Netflix, such as: every Star Trek series, Firefly, Parks and Rec, etc. But the excellent original content on Netflix, plus the amount of shows that are exclusive to Hulu make it easy to consider having both.
Amazon Prime exclusive shows: Catastrophe, The Man in the High Castle, Orphan Black, Mr Robot, older HBO shows, Downton Abbey
Hulu exclusive shows: Brooklyn Nine Nine, Seinfield, Party Down,
Netflix exclusive shows: Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Orange is the New Black, Master of None, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Stranger Things
Labels: hulu, Jessica Jones, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Netflix, SlingTV, technology
March 29, 2008
On demand
A really good friend told me I should check out Hulu. Like me, he gave up cable television and was looking for alternatives. I gave up cable television a couple years ago because I was tired of the expense compared with the lack of options. Really, there were only a few stations I would miss having, Comedy Central and SciFi for instance; and there were several channels that weren't included that I would have loved, such as Sundance and the IFC channel. At that time some subscription-based channels, such as HBO, were already offering On-Demand content, so I suspected that television content would eventually migrate to the internet, it was only a matter of time. It seems that process has begun...finally.
But its been slow: The Internet appeared to be more suited for user-created content, the likes of YouTube and such, and Studio/big-media driven content has remained mostly only available trough the traditional mediums of cable and satellite. And as great as user generated content can be, its mainly suited for a niche audience (although a growing one), and lacks the capabilities a studio with a lot of money behind it can provide. They compliment each other in the sense that they each offer something unique. Note: An interesting splice of a big-media concept with user-generated content is the web-based game show PlayCafe, which combines a host narrating players on the Internet playing live. Its more of a community than a game show.
But it seems that corporate media has seen the potential to profit by putting their content on the web, with the success of Internet video companies like YouTube. (This was one of the most important factors in the television writer's strike that ended only recently -- the money earned through online ads wasn't adequately reflected in the their contracts.) From what I've seen, the best stride to bring traditional big media programs to the Internet is what my friend showed me, the result of a partnership between NBC and Fox called Hulu. But there have been quite a few other endeavors to push television content onto the web along the way. Most of these video services require a fairly high bandwidth Internet connection.
I had been looking for a good alternative for awhile. About a year ago I signed up to beta-test Joost (pronounced “Juiced”) - startup company from the guys who created Skype (the VOIP telephone service) and Kazaa (the peer2peer file transfer program). They sold Skype to Ebay and began to develop a high-quality video service under the code-name The Venice Project. Since they were not affiliated with any major media companies who could foot the bill for the huge bandwidth requirements; their solution was to utilize peer-to-peer technology (similar to the way file-sharing applications like Kazza and BitTorrent work) that allows high-quality content to trickle across a network of users rather than from one constant source. It functioned like an on-demand service with short ads to bring in enough revenue to cover the expense of the content provided. Its a cool idea, and has nice user interface, but the content they've arranged has never lived up to the technology's potential. They did strike a deal with the major media company Viacom (parent company of CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and others, and who has been vehement in having its content pulled from unlicensed sources such as YouTube) and other some other corporate media sources, so some interesting content is available but dated. And most of Viacoms content is available on the net for free through its network websites (I wish this was the case for Comedy Central -- the Colbert Report had only just started airing when I terminated my cable service).
Having recently gotten addicted to the show LOST, which only happened as a curiosity after getting caught up in the hyper-viral campaign for JJ. Abrams' movie Cloverfield. I had to find a way to catch up on the episodes I'd missed to understand the story. ABC has many of its shows online, some in HD quality. You can watch all four seasons of LOST. You just have to install a simple plug-in to your web-browser for their video service to work.
The best I've seen so far is Hulu. Many shows are available in their entirety on Hulu from NBC, Fox, and many of their affiliated networks like Bravo, SciFi, FX, and quite a few others. You can watch all three seasons of Arrested Development, the most recent seasons of The Office, 30 Rock, and Heros, to name a few. There is a lot of great Science Fiction available such as Firefly, episodes from the new BattleStar Galactica as well as the original Battle Star Galactica, and a spin-off of the original called Galactica 1980. Hulu has shows I'd almost forgotten about like Sliders, and ExoSquad – a show I enjoyed when I was a kid. (ExoSquad had a plot similar to BattleStar Galactica--Humankind fighting for survival against a race it created, which is also like The Matrix, which has a character called Neo who “jacks in” to the virtual world, which I remembered, is so similar to the way the humans jack-in to their exo-suites in ExoSquad.)
Hulu is by far the sleekest, best organized version of big-media content on the Internet. For a complete list of television shows available by network click here.
Labels: hulu, joost, tech talk