What are your streaming entertainment strategies these days?

Cafe Society
1

Mrs. lost and I cut our cable years ago, and have never looked back. Cable seemed to be getting more and more expensive for what we were getting, including many channels we seldom or never watched.

(This post got longer than I thought it would! Just the next two paragraphs can serve as the ‘TL;DR’ version)

We mainly subscribed to Netflix, Hulu and we also had Prime Video through having Amazon Prime for delivery. These options served us well for years at a fraction of what cable had cost. Occasionally we’ve subscribed short-term to services like HBO Max when they were showing first-run Warner Bros. movies, or Showtime last year for 3 months to watch the new Dexter season and S.1 of Yellowjackets.

Now, with the increasing balkanization of the streaming services, and price increases such as Hulu bumping up their monthly by $2 in Oct., we’re in the process of reevaluating. Wondering what y’all’s streaming habits are these days. Thoughts and recommendations welcomed!

[/TL;DR]

Status on what we currently have:

Netflix: this used to be a varied mix of movies and TV shows from various studios. But now that many studios are doing their own streaming, NF is concentrating on creating their own content, some of which is very good (Stranger Things), and buying / rebranding foreign shows, again some of which are very good (Dark, Squid Games). the miss vs. hit ratio seems to be getting higher, but still, I think we’ll keep NF.

Hulu: this used to be where we caught the network TV shows we were missing on some of the standard channels (ABC, NBC, Fox). We have on-air TV, but one, we are pretty much over appointment TV, and two, where we live our digital signal breaks up badly when there’s any kind of weather outside (and I installed a decent attic antenna). Now, NBC is pulling all their first-run content. Hulu is attempting to create their own content, but so far, less successfully than Netflix (Only Murders in the Building is the only Hulu-created show I can remember really enjoying). Now they’re bumping up their fees by $2/month. We’re debating: cut Hulu loose? Downgrade to the commercial option for the few shows we may still watch?

Prime Video: they have occasional good original content, and some offbeat older movies I enjoy, but for the most part it’s kind of “oh yeah, we have Prime Video”. Mrs. lost thinks we can cancel Prime for shipping since we don’t buy a ton of stuff from Amazon, and she doesn’t like paying for Bezo’s space rides. But I’m resisting; I like Prime Video more than she does.

So two of our 3 main full-time options are potentially on the chopping block. Some of the streaming options we’re considering, either permanent or termporary rotation:

Peacock: Hate to lose NBC, but its subscription options are confusing. A free, commercial level, but it only shows a limited selection. What does that selection include? First-run network shows, or just older stuff? Can we watch new SNLs on Sunday mornings with the free level, like we did with Hulu? I’m guessing no. Then a commercial ‘premium’ level for $5.99 and non -commercial ‘premium’ for $10.99.

HBO Max: Not long-term interested with the new CEO making all those dumb changes, but there are a few things I’d like to subscribe short-term and watch before the channel goes totally to crap.

AMC+: Mrs. lost and older lost boy have suggested this. Would like to see the last season of Better Call Saul without having to wait forever for it to show up on Netflix, but other than that, what does it offer that’s any good?

Disney+: Nah, not much of a Star Wars, Disney or Marvel fan.

Apple TV: Maybe? Been hearing about some good shows on here.

Paramount+: eh, no. We did a one-month free trial, watched everything we were interested in within the 30 days.

Starz: We did a 3-month deal because Mrs. lost wanted to watch the new season of Outlander. Other than that, S.1 of a horror-comedy called ‘Shining Vale’ was ok, and not much else.

2

I cancelled Disney+ a while back (after subscribing mostly to watch Hamilton). It seemed aimed at children more than Hulu, which I’ve kept, though the price increase bothers me. I also canceled Netflix after a year or so, with nothing much new of interest. I still have HBO MAX (as a longtime subscriber to HBO on cable, along with Showtime) and I get whatever free tier of Peacock provided by Comcast along with Apple TV+. I also had Paramount+ for a free trial month and Britbox for a couple of months.

3

What does the free tier offer? I understand it’s ‘limited’ compared to the pay tiers, but I’m not entirely sure what the limitation is. Can you watch the first-run NBC shows that that they’re pulling from Hulu on the free tier? New SNLs this Fall, for example?

4

I don’t know; I still have premium cable so I can still watch first-run NBC shows on their local station. (BTW, the New York Times recently reported that NBC was kicking around the idea of no longer programming content at 10pm, so that prime time programming would only be 8-10pm and the 10pm hour would be ceded to the local stations. It may not happen but it speaks to how broadcast television is, perhaps, dying.)

5

We have Netflix, Amazon and Disney, as well as Showmax, which is a local stream that has some HBO and other content. We don’t plan on dropping any of them in the foreseeable future, they’re cheaper than satellite TV (cable TV is not a thing here) and provide more than enough content to keep us very happy.

6

I’m my opinion, you are in a really good position to start rotating your subscriptions. Most offer month-at-a-time subscriptions, and if you get into the habit of cancelling on time, you won’t get stuck with that moment of “oh god - we’ve been paying for AMC+ for 3 months and haven’t watched anything!”

Apple+ is an amazing value for binging a month at a time. They don’t have a ton of content, but it’s all pretty well-curated. Foundation, Severance, The Morning Show and Ted Lasso are all worth it.

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And Apple TV+ is a relative bargain at only five bucks.

8

My family and I have quite a lot of streaming options, and a lot of them come for free with our T-Mobile subscription.

Disney+: Big Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel fan here, so this is a must.
Hulu: I don’t really watch much Hulu, and this is the ad-supported version that comes with the D+ bundle, so I don’t get a whole lot of use out of it.
ESPN+: I like it for the 30 on 30 series and a few live sporting events.
Peacock: Mom likes the Chicago shows, and I gotta have WWE.
MLB TV (free with T-Mobile): Love to watch as much baseball as I want.
Netflix (free with T-Mobile): Don’t really watch it very much.
Paramount+ (using my sister’s friend’s subscription as an authorized user): Gotta have Star Trek and The Last Airbender.
AppleTV+ (free with T-Mobile): Haven’t deep-dived into this yet.

For everything else, I use my landlady’s daughter’s Plex.

9

As far as I’m aware, it is trivially easy to subscribe and cancel to every streaming service. It’s not like cable where you sign a contract and they make you jump through an incredible amount of hoops if you want to cancel. If you’re worried you’re paying too much or something doesn’t have enough to hold your interest, just cancel it until it has new stuff, or you’ve watched everything you want on another service. You could subscribe to one at a time and not ever really run out of stuff to watch. It’s not like cable where you have to have a hundred channels because you have to catch stuff when it’s on. You control what you watch.

That said, I don’t rotate my services much. I have amazon prime anyway so I’ll always have amazon video, I watch netflix enough that I keep a constant subscription, I get hulu free through spotify, and discovery+ is really cheap. I’ve thought about trying some of the other services like hbo max or apple+ or whatever but I’m nowhere near exhausting stuff on the other services so I never get around to it.

10

Good to know, thanks! We have done some short-term or free trial subscriptions and canceled, but not very often, and Mrs. lost was asking just last night “I wonder if you get any pushback from any services by doing on-and off subs”.

No doubt-- when we cut our cable about 5ish years ago, we practically had to hire a lawyer to handle the negotiations :roll_eyes:

11

We keep Netlix (and Amazon Prime) active all the time; we don’t use Prime all that often for videos, but it’s included in the general “free shipping” thing, so… and Netflix gives us a pretty good variety.

We recently got Disney+ and Hulu (and ESPN, but we don’t watch sports) because I upgraded our cell phone plans - but there’s honestly not that much I want to watch on either, so I would not subscribe to either regularly. We caught up on all the Marvel stuff during an earlier time when I subscribed for a month or two.

I will activate Paramount+ periodically for a month - in fact I did so a few days ago, so we could catch up on all the Star Trek shows, but I’ll clobber that again at the end of the month once we’re caught up. Ditto HBO Max if there’s something we want.

It’s funny now: I get almost offended if there’s something I want to watch, and I would have to pay for yet ANOTHER service to see it. Or even a one-time rental from Amazon. Silly, really.

I do think the providers are realizing that people will do this kind of on/off thing routinely. Sure, they’re hoping you’ll forget to cancel, but they seem to have realized that people will do this, and it’s now part of the business model.

As far as other networks: we still have FIOS TV, which periodically gets “upgraded” and drops a channel or two that we’re used to watching. It still seem to routinely carry ones we do watch like Discovery, TBS etc. - and now we’re in the habit of pulling those up on the Roku if there’s something specific we want to see. I’m debating getting rid of the cable box entirely (if they’ll let us do so but still keep the TV subscription).

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Yeah, hopefully this is the ‘new normal’ and they don’t start cracking down and making it more difficult to do this. like the cable companies do.

13

I live alone, and TV is my main form of entertainment. In addition to cable (with HBO and Showtime), I pay a combined $75/month for:

  • Netflix - This has become the “oh yeah” service for me; I rarely watch it, except for some of their original shows, but somehow I feel like it’s worth keeping
  • Amazon Prime Video - I’ve been a Prime member since before there was streaming; I order from Amazon a lot, plus some of the originals are good (e.g., Reacher), so I don’t see ever cancelling this
  • Apple TV+ - As others have said, totally worth it for the original shows; plus, I use an Apple TV to access everything listed here so it felt like a no-brainer
  • Acorn and BritBox - I added these recently, but feel like I’ve watched everything that I wanted to; I’ll likely cancel at least one of them soon, but first I want to do a side-by-side with the titles in my queues
  • Hulu - Worth it for Only Murders in the Building, and The Patient sounds promising, but I also use it to re-watch older shows
  • Disney+ - I love Star Wars and Marvel stuff so I was excited about this for a while, and I enjoyed The Mandalorian, but I haven’t watched any of the other originals yet and I hardly ever look at it anymore; I thought about cancelling, but it’s less than $7/mo and I like the idea of having access to that content (and Hamilton on demand) in case I ever decide to get caught up on everything
  • PBS Passport - I signed up just to watch one particular program, but it’s only $5/mo and I like the idea of supporting PBS so I’ll keep it

I’m currently considering signing up for Paramount+, at least temporarily, so I can catch up on The Good Fight. And maybe watch The Offer.

14

I’d recommend waiting a bit before signing up for Paramount+, as the last season of The Good Fight is about to start. So perhaps wait until it’s over and the subscribe just for a month?

15

We’ve watched the first 3 episodes. It’s…ok. A bit of a grim slog, but kind of curious where it’s going. They’re pretty good with the end-of ep mini-cliffhanger, but not enough to the point I say “oh boy, a new episode of The Patient!” like I did with Only Murders.

16

We have Netflix, and Amazon Prime [for shipping and video, and kindle free library] and pay for Acorn and Britbox [we are addicted to the crime shows, they are so much better than the ubiquitous CSI - Everywhere, NCIS - Everywhere and Law and Order Everything. ]

Since it is an internet enabled TV, we also watch a lot of youtube. I can also cast to it from my laptop so we can watch DVDs. [I inherited something on the order of 3500 DVDs from my brother when he passed a few years back. Personally, I would love to just rip them all to hard drive and not worry - not sure how many TB of space that would take, wonder if we could fit that many HDDs in the desktop case we have =) ]

17

We’re beginning to rotate. Netflix usually has something interesting enough (and weird enough) for us to keep. We just finished the third season of Blown Away the glass blowing contest.
We were given three months of Broadway HD, and have used two. We check it every so often and we’ll use out third month if there is enough new material.
We subscribed to Britbox when I found that Sister Boniface was out. We’ve found good stuff there including a four part version of “The City and the City” which I never expected to see. But we’ll dump it when we’re done.
My wife watches a lot of local news so we keep our satellite.

18

What do I have? Well, I pay for Netflix and Paramount. I get Disney, Hulu and ESPN plus with my cellphone plan , I would have Amazon Prime for the shipping even if there was no streaming, and I get HBO Max and some other services because I still have FIOS TV. If I’m ever able to ditch the cable ( which I can’t now because of sports) , I’d probably pay for HBO Max and whatever my husband would need for sports.

19

Household of one. I have Amazon Prime, including AcornTV, Britbox, and PBS. I signed up years ago for the Prime 2-day shipping long before the video thing got included. I still have Netflix, but I could easily dump it, because I hardly ever find anything there I want to watch. I used to get Hulu but noticed that I wasn’t watching it, so I canceled it.

I don’t have “mainstream” tastes. When I see “trending,” I’m pretty sure nothing in that list will interest me. I try, really I do. I can’t take fast-paced action shows or gratuitous violence. A good cop show with violence is okay if there’s plot, character development, and some mental action, too. (One like that was the Canadian show “19-2.” That one was rough, but great.) I wind up watching the same TV show episodes and movies over and over again.

Besides Amazon Prime, the thing I watch most is YouTube-- not the multi-channel, souped-up YouTube, but just the original one. I do pay something like $14/month for the premium version. There’s some real garbage that is sloppy, loud, and irritating, but also some individual-produced programs that are great, like “Tasting History,” “Fabulessly Frugal,” “Oui in France,” “Recollection Road,” and TipTut (Adobe animation). Producers like James Hoffman (coffee), Lisa Eldridge (makeup), Adam Neely (mind-blowing programs on music theory) are entertaining and informative. I like that you can get computer-generated captions. They match what the person is actually saying about 92% of the time.

20

Household of two, just the wife and me. We haven’t cut the cable yet but we’re on our way there. We have Netflix, and I’ll be following here to see what else we should get.