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Cable companies, after all, still provide the home internet service that’s necessary for streaming video. Mobile internet plans are still no substitute for cable-based internet, and much-hyped alternatives like 5G home internet and high-speed satellite internet are still years away from being widely available.

That doesn’t mean saving money on your cable bill is a lost cause. Whether you haven’t quit cable yet or remain tethered to cable internet service, you can still maximize your savings in several ways. For ideas, read the full column on TechHive.

I kind of liked the way Hulu’s interface put lots of recommendations in front of you, but trying to find specific things within its sea of menu items did get tiresome. The last big redesign, from when Hulu’s live TV service launched in 2017, seemed unpopular from the start. You may have to wait a while to get the new version, though; Hulu says it’s arriving on Apple TV and select Roku devices first, followed by other devices in the coming months. (I still don’t see it on my end.)

TiVo Stream 4K review: My impressions of TiVo’s first streaming dongle are now live over at TechHive. This is clearly a fork in the road for TiVo, which is trying to leave its DVR history behind and chart a fresh course in streaming, but it also represents a new direction for streaming devices. Unlike Roku players and Fire TV devices, the TiVo Stream 4K presents a single menu through which you can browse the catalogs of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and other popular apps. At its best, it feels like the way streaming should work.

The actual experience falls a little short of the promise, though. TiVo’s unified menu only indexes eight streaming sources. (Among the many omissions: CBS All Access, Showtime, Apple TV+, Epix, and all TV Everywhere apps.) And while there’s a live TV menu that integrates with Sling TV, it feels half-baked compared to TiVo’s on-demand guide. I also ran into a volume control issue on the remote—TiVo says it’s a bug—and the remote is cluttered with some unnecessary buttons. On the whole, though, I approve of TiVo’s vision, almost as much as I feel for the DVR diehards the company is now neglecting. You can get the Stream 4K for $50 (down from the regular $70) through May 27.

Apple TV+ adds bulk? A report this week from Bloomberg claims that Apple is buying up older TV shows to pad out the Apple TV+ catalog. Until now, Apple’s $5 per month streaming service has only included original programming, which has limited the service’s appeal, but the report says TV+ has fallen short of Apple’s expectations with 10 million sign-ups, only half of which are active users. (Unclear from the report is how many of those sign-ups claimed a year of free service with Apple hardware.)

The notion that a successful streaming service requires both quality and quantity should have been obvious to Apple from the start, but then the entire Apple TV+ venture has always felt naïve. Ostensibly the purpose is to boost Apple’s subscription revenue, but the company is spending a lot of money—reportedly $6 billion as of August 2019— to do so, and since TV+ doesn’t require Apple hardware, the broader ecosystem hooks are so far nonexistent. I’m usually not one to complain about too many streaming services, because I like choice and competition, but it’s been hard to tell exactly what Apple is bringing to the table here. I’m not sure a random back catalog of shows will add clarity.

Meanwhile, Best Buy has the Roku Ultra on sale for $80, which is $20 off the regular price, and select Walmart stores are selling a Chromecast and Google Home Mini bundle for $30. Plug your zip code into this website to see if the deal is available near you.