For this week’s column, we spent $65 on FuboTV, so you don’t exactly have to. With Hulu + Live TV set to raise prices from $55 per month to $65 on Friday, I wanted to revisit FuboTV as a potentially cheaper alternative. The service offers a similar mix of cable […]
cordcutters
How Roku can refresh its interface without ruining it for cord-cutters
Every time I review one of Roku’s streaming devices, I wish the company did more to make movies and shows easier to find. Roku has always preferred an app-centric approach, in which mashing the Home button takes you to a big grid of app icons. Its rival streaming platforms, meanwhile, […]
A cord-cutter’s guide to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo
With COVID 19 wreaking havoc in Japan, the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics—postponed from last year—will be like no other. There won’t be large live crowds of spectators to cheer the athletes on, making this the first remote-only Olympics. In other words, it won’t matter if you’re in Tokyo or Tacoma […]
Watching the Olympics has doubled in price for cord-cutters
A few years ago, watching the Olympics without cable was a relatively cheap and straightforward affair. While you still needed a pay TV subscription to watch every event, cord-cutters could choose from several inexpensive live TV services—even for just a month—and get complete coverage across all of NBC’s channels. The […]
What cord-cutters should do about Roku losing YouTube TV
It’s been just over a week since Roku and Google had a public falling out, culminating in Roku’s decision to remove YouTube TV from its Channel Store last Friday. Since then, a bunch of folks have asked me what to do about it, and for good reason: Some of Roku’s […]
The Fire TV home screen might look a lot different to cord-cutters next month
Amazon Fire TV users will start seeing a major change on their streaming players next month, as Amazon rolls out its biggest interface overhaul in more than four years. The new Fire TV experience has been available on Amazon’s third-generation Fire TV Stick and Fire TV Stick Lite since December, […]
For cord-cutters, Channels DVR is what Plex might have been
If you’d asked me a couple of years ago to pick the best way for cord-cutters to run their own media servers, I wouldn’t have hesitated to choose Plex. Plex lets users host their own media files—movies, TV shows, music, and pictures—on one computer, and then stream them to other […]
Netflix drags streaming TV backward, cord-cutters should take note
When I reviewed the new Chromecast with Google TV in October, I gave it a strong recommendation in large part because it played nicely with Netflix. In contrast to Roku players and Amazon Fire TV devices, the new Chromecast doesn’t make you jump through multiple apps just to see what […]
TV subscription bundles are back, and they’re better than ever for cord-cutters
On Monday, Apple instantly transformed its Apple TV+ streaming service from an also-ran into a compelling Netflix alternative. But it didn’t do so on its own. Instead, the company announced a new bundle for current Apple TV+ subscribers: For an extra $10 per month, customers can add both Showtime and […]
Hey, cord-cutter’s: Here’s how to prevent streaming TV services from selling your data
Cord-cutting offers a bounty of free and cheap content to stream, but it also has a hidden cost. Behind the ads you see on streaming services like Hulu, The Roku Channel, CBS All Access, and Tubi, there are sprawling data collection operations aimed at figuring out the kind of person […]