Who has the best streaming service and Roku’s new lineup of boxes and dongles. With special guest Nicole Lee.
CordKillers: Ep. 189 – Space Babies
Recorded: October 2 2017
Guest: Nicole Lee.
Intro Video
- None
Primary Target
- DirecTV Now, Sling TV, Hulu TV: Best Internet TV Channel Deal
– TiVo studied survey data of the most desirable TV channels among US and Canada viewers with the current offerings from major Internet-only services.
– The survey showed the 4 broadcast networks led the way followed by Discovery then History then FX.
– The survey determined 27 channels that most consumers wanted.
– TiVo’s analysis showed the best coverage per dollar spent
– DirecTV Now’s “Just Right” bundle $50/mo. covered 85%
– DirecTV Now “Live a little” bundle $35/mo. – 82%
– Sling TV combined $40/mo. 67%
– Hulu TV $40 63%
– PSVUe $39 59%
– Sling blue 56% Orange 44%
– YouTube TV $35 37% - TiVo’s Q2 2017 Video Trends Report
How to Watch
- Roku rolls out Roku OS 8, refreshes TV hardware with 4K and faster processors
– Roku just announced updates to five of its streaming devices. Roku’s $50 streaming stick gets a 50% faster processor and support for voice control. The $70 Roku Streaming Stick Plus has 4K and better wifi range with the wireless module built into the cable. The $30 Roku Express and $40 Roku Express Plus get faster processors and the Express Plus keeps its composite ports. The Roku Ultra isn’t being changed but the price did drop from $130 to $100. Roku OS 8 is also out for all supported boxes. It can integrate OTA programming and adds single sign-on.
What to Watch
What We’re Watching
- Brian: Firefly (war Stories), Rick and Morty, The Vietnam War (6 episodes), The Sting (1973), Voltron season 3
- Tom: Firefly (War Stories), Outlander, Orville, Star Trek Discovery (103), Rick and Morty (310)
- Nicole: Star Trek Discovery
- On the Lookout: Gerald’s Game
Front Lines
- On October 7, McDonald’s restaurants across the USA will have Szechuan sauce in “limited quantities” That is all.
- Amazon’s new Fire TV supports picture-in-picture and recording
– Amazon’s new $70 dongle with 4k, HDR and Dolby Atmos also has a couple other cool features. Because Fire TV OS 6 is based on Android Nougat, it can do picture-in-picture video. It also has a framework to allow pause, rewind and recording of video for apps that support it. The device has 8 GB of storage. The new Fire TV ships Octobner 25. Fire TV OS 6 will not be available for older Fire TV models. - Disney releases DisneyNow, a new app that combines live TV, on-demand, games and music
– Disney released a new combined app called Disney Now.,. that combines Disney Channel, Disney XD Disney Junior and Radio Disney into one app. This is similar to Fox Now which combines multiple networks like Fox, FX and NetGeo in one app. The app has settings to personalize it for the kids (or adults) using it. Some content is there for free but most will require the user to authenticate through a third-party service like YouTube TV, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now, or Hulu. - Amazon Is Developing a Bonanza of Genre Titles: Ringworld, Snow Crash, and Lazarus
– Amazon has put the following scifi titles into development for TV shows. Ringworld by Larry Niven, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, Lazarus by Greg Rucka. Rucka will be adapting the graphic novel himself. - Nearly two million people watched NFL livestream on Amazon.com
– Amazon’s stream of Thursday Night Football launched last week and about 1.9 million people watched. Twitter’s first stream of Thursday Night Football last year got 2.3 million streams. However people watched longer on Amazon with the average audience for any 30 seconds was 372,000 compared to Twitter’s 243,000. - Canada unveils vision for the arts; Netflix makes investment
– Canada announced a deal where Netflix will spend C$500 million to create programming in Canada and establish a permanent production presence there. The announcement was part of a review done by Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly. YouTube recently started a channel for Canadian content.
Dispatches from the Front
I was listening to you talk about the new Trek when I had the following thoughts: I enjoy Cordkillers. I enjoy it enough that I give money through Patreon for content I could get for free. I also enjoy Star Trek. I view CBS All Access as a racket though. I won’t be giving money to their success and will instead wait for Trek on some other platform. On the one hand I pay for free content and on the other hand I want paid content for free. I can’t explain it. Go figure. Anyhow, you guys are worth the dough. Keep up the good work.
– Roy
I couldn’t believe what I heard today. After listening to my favorite podcast my app automatically starting playing my 3rd favorite. While putting in a hard day’s work looking busy and trying not to get caught playing on my phone. It happened. I thought somehow Trump invaded my air waves but It didn’t sound like the person was holding his hand in the air when he talked. How could you hate the big bang theory. It’s my favorite show of all time. So I decided I will donate $1 an episode but you must confess your love for the show.
– Kevin
Dear Tom and Brian,
I have long felt 2 things are true about CBS:
They are the home of many of my favorite shows
They are very stingy about rebroadcast rights for their shows, to the point of being greedy. Examples:
I was a fan of The Mentalist but I had to watch it live because it wasn’t available On Demand on our cable system like most other shows.
Their new show, Seal Team, is not listed in my cable company’s On Demand library; I guess if you don’t catch it live you have to watch it on CBS All Access.
As Tom has said, they often only allow a few episodes of a season to be available On Demand at any given time.
Contrast that with these examples from NBC:
· The entire first season of This is Us is available On Demand.
· All 8 seasons of Will and Grace appear to be available on my cable system’s On Demand library.
· You’d think they actually want to give people the opportunity to get caught up on these shows if they missed them when they first aired!
I feel like CBS believes they have such great and popular content that people will put up with their shenanigans and pay whatever they ask in order to watch it. I guess it remains to be seen whether this is true.
I do intend to sign up for CBS All Access. I tried it before and didn’t have very good luck with it. I intend to quit the subscription as soon as the Star Trek show is over.
Did you know they’re going to have a break starting November 5, restarting sometime in January? I bet they’ll get a lot of people cancelling in between . . .
Your Boss,
– Beelissa
I am considering CBS all access. I watched Star Trek Discovery and liked it enough to start the consideration. I am going away for a large part of December and can foresee some DVR shortages creeping up and CBS All Access could help, that is if I can watch the past five episodes or more of some of there current shows. I did some searching to see if I could find a chart of what shows have Full access and which have partial access, like your Supergirl example. Do you know of any such chart or site with information like that.
Thanks for any help,
– Mike
Links
Google loosens up paywall restrictions, Roku announces new devices, Uber shakes up its personnel.
Google working on Echo Show competitor, Go Pro’s new camera, and Mr. Uber goes to London.