Cord Cutter Weekly
If you’re going to share passwords for streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, or Hulu with friends or family, you should at least be smarter about it.

That’s the pitch, in a sense, for a forthcoming service called Jam, which acts like a social network for password sharing. Users can display a list of subscriptions they’re paying for—streaming video or otherwise—so their friends can request access, and if the user approves, Jam sends an encrypted version of the login info that’s only visible to the recipient. The idea is to provide a safer and more convenient environment for the kind of password sharing that’s already widespread for subscription services.

Jam isn’t available just yet, though it’ll soon start opening up to people who’ve joined the service’s launch waitlist. Read the full column on TechHive.

Dish, Sling TV, and Fox Sports regionals: Since I’ve received some questions about this topic in the past, I thought this story in Multichannel News about Dish Network and Fox Sports regionals is worth sharing. Dish and its Sling TV streaming service have both been without those regional sports networks since last summer, and with baseball season approaching, you might think Dish is under more pressure to make a deal with Sinclair, which now owns those networks.

Dish doesn’t seem to be sweating it though, telling analysts that the costs to carry regional Fox Sports channels just haven’t added up. As one analyst has estimated, Dish could be saving $400 million per year by forgoing those channels, but has only lost about $40 million on subscribers who’ve left since last July.

It certainly looks like Dish is in the stronger position here, and while that’s of little comfort to Dish and Sling subscribers who are holding out for baseball, it ultimately benefits other subscribers who don’t care for those channels and don’t want to be forced to pay more for them. I’m all for more TV providers digging in and saying no to extreme price hikes, so I’m looking forward to seeing how this continues to play out.

CBS’s super-sized streaming service: The rumors from a couple weeks ago were correct, as ViacomCBS has confirmed that it will build on its current CBS All Access service with more content from Viacom channels such as MTV and Comedy Central. Still, the company isn’t saying when the service will launch, what exactly it’ll include, or what it’ll cost. The announcement this week was presumably more about placating investors as new services from NBCUniversal (Peacock) and WarnerMedia (HBO Max) launch in the coming months. It didn’t work, though; shares crashed after the company’s latest earnings report.

Tough times for FitzyTV: Back in July of last year, I wrote about an interesting but unusual app called FitzyTV, which pulled various cable channels’ TV Everywhere streams into a single grid guide. For cable subscribers (or those sharing their passwords), it was a way to access lots of live streams without having to jump between different apps, and it also offered cloud DVR service for a monthly fee.

Anyway, it seems that Adobe, which handles the authentication for those live streams, didn’t take too kindly to FitzyTV’s approach, and got its apps booted from the Amazon Appstore and Google Play Store last year. Now, the apps are back, but without the ability to access cable channel streams. FitzyTV still offers a grid guide for certain web-based channels and for the free over-the-air TV service Locast in select markets, but it’s no longer a full-blown interface for cable channels.

Does this spell danger for other services that tap into TV Everywhere streams without permission, like Channels DVR or PlayOn? Unclear, but keep in mind those services use a media server on your home network to load and rip the live streams from cable channels. In practice, they may not look all that different from how a web browser functions, which may allow them to fly under the radar, at least for now. (Thanks for the tip on this, Bill!)

Reelgood’s Android app beta: Reelgood is a free service that lets you search for movies and shows across many different streaming sources and get recommendations on what to watch next. After launching an iOS app way back in 2016, the company’s finally getting ready to release an Android version. If you want to sign up to be a beta tester, you can do so through this link.

Reelgood isn’t the only universal search and guide app out there. JustWatch and TV Time offer similar services, and you can download their Android apps right now, though I think Reelgood’s interface is a bit slicker. If you have a Chromecast, using an app like Reelgood as your main gateway into various streaming apps could be pretty compelling.

How far cable has fallen: With quarter after quarter of stories about cable and satellite TV companies losing subscribers, I wanted to visualize those losses and see if live TV streaming services like YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV were filling the void. For a while it seemed like they might, but as my collection of charts over at Fast Company shows, this year was a turning point. As prices have gone up on both the traditional and streaming sides, more people than ever are opting out of channel bundles entirely and sticking with cheaper services like Netflix and Disney+. That trend is only going to intensify in 2020 as new services like HBO Max and NBC’s Peacock join the fray.

As Cord Cutters News notes, Amazon has extended its offer that allows select Prime subscribers to get a Fire TV Stick 4K for just $25, which is half off the regular price. To see if you’re eligible, add the device to your cart and use the code 4KFIRETV at checkout. At this price, it’s the best streaming device you can buy.
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Out of all the emails I get from you all each week, troubleshooting requests are probably the most common. That’s understandable, given the number of potential things that can go wrong in a streaming setup, and it’s why I put together this guide to solving streaming problems last year.

Last week, however, I received an email with an issue I hadn’t considered: Faulty ethernet cables. We usually spend so much time focusing on Wi-Fi problems, but in this case, the issue was a bad connection between the Wi-Fi router and the reader’s HDHomeRun tuner, and it was actually affecting his reception of over-the-air channels. Sometimes the most vexing problems have simple solutions in hindsight. (Thanks for the tip, John.)

Want to message me about your cord-cutting problems (or successes)? Just reply to this email.

Until next week,
Jared