Since June of 2018 we’ve been customers of DirecTV Now. That ends today.
The live streaming aspect of the service was pretty good, but that’s if we averaged the excellent starting experience and the inconsistent quality over the past few months. Unfortunately, the “beta” DVR performed poorly, and its functionality and performance declined over time. Watching recorded programs often resulted in erroneous “your network is having trouble” messages and buffering delays. There were quality inconsistencies, and playback would sometimes just stop at specific points in a program without the ability to go on. The DVR was also limited to 20 hours of saved recordings, by far the least generous of all the streaming packages.
While the DVR component underperformed, we didn’t record many programs, and for $35 a month we were willing to put up with it. However, DirecTV Now has raised their prices twice since last summer—the most recent being a few weeks ago—and they are now charging $50 per month. New customers have it even worse. At the same time as the most recent price increase, DirecTV Now created new packages with fewer channels (but added HBO), so that $50 now gets you even less than before. And speaking of HBO, they also increased their fees for paid services, charging the standard $15 per month extra versus the previous $5 fee. (We didn’t have HBO, but the option to add it to our package for a month or two at $5 was a draw.)
Price increases in the streaming world have been common over the past year1. YouTube TV recently jumped from $40 to $50 per month, and both Hulu with Live TV and Playstation Vue had $5 increases a short time ago bringing their costs to $45 per month. They still tend to be better deals than traditional cable packages because they don’t carry charges for additional TVs or HD quality, and they don’t have all the fees associated with cable. Streaming services also provide a fairly unified experience across all of the devices one might use to watch TV. (One could argue that the lowest priced cables packages are promotional rates, with large increases common after 1-2 years, so comparing those rates to streaming costs isn’t really a fair comparison. But given the recent large increases from streaming services, we can’t say for sure that it’s not fair either.)
There is another option, and it’s the one I find myself moving toward—having less live TV options and more on demand ones. As I mentioned in my initial cord cutting post, live TV is most important to me for football (and sometimes college basketball), and I do enjoy some programming from channels like Discovery, HGTV, History, and Science, but I get my news online and don’t have any TV series I consider real-time “must watch” viewing2. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu (via their $1 per month promo) act as my primary viewing sources3, so for a good portion of the year there is little need for all the channels most packages offer. That’s where Philo comes in.
Philo is a low cost streaming service ($16 per month), with 45 channels including AMC, Discovery, DIY, Hallmark, HGTV, History, Lifetime, Science and many others. They do not offer local channels, sports or news, which is one way they keep prices low, but DVR service is included, and it supports unlimited recordings that are kept for about 30 days. I have been very impressed with the quality of their streams, excellent interface, and flawless DVR. It’s a great service that has been a joy to use, especially compared against our DirecTV Now experience.
For the next few months, Philo will be our live TV source, and then we’ll see which service I want to use when football season starts. If I was to make a choice right now, Hulu with Live TV would be my top pick—it’s what I would have selected had Philo not offered our favorite channels. Hulu provides a great interface, exceptional performance, and an excellent selection of channels and original content. Playstation Vue came in third, primarily due to its somewhat confusing interface, and YouTube TV was fourth.
Even with the changes and volatility tied to live streaming options, I’m still glad I made the switch. It has helped me be more deliberate about what I watch, and I enjoy the flexibility the services provide.
Will we ever see true a la carte pricing for channels that allow us to build our own packages? Given current subscription costs, I could see folks paying $.25 per month for “standard” channels" and perhaps up to a $1.00 for premium ones like ESPN. ↩︎
It’s amazing to me how little broadcast TV I watch when it’s something I grew up valuing. I wonder if this generation of kids and families still see broadcast TV as essential. ↩︎
The New Disney+ service launching in November is very intriguing. It is almost half the cost of Netflix and, because of all the properties owned by Disney, could end up being the content heavyweight. They also own a majority share in Hulu, so there may be bundle pricing. ↩︎