As I wrote in the previous newsletter, YouTube TV announced its biggest price hike ever, from $50 per month to $65 per month. FuboTV followed suit, raising prices from $55 per month to $60 per month. Sling TV has also hinted at price hikes to come, saying it will lock in today’s rates until August 2021, but only for those who subscribe by August 1. (Sling says it currently has no plans to raise prices within 12 months, despite the offer.) Disney is rumored to be raising prices for ESPN+ as well, from $5 per month to $6 per month.

All this of course prompted the usual wave of hot takes about how the cord-cutting dream is dead. We were promised a la carte TV, a chorus of jaded pundits said, but instead we got a system that looks a lot like cable.

Me? I’m not feeling quite so glum. While there’s no sugarcoating the price hikes, cord-cutting only counts as a failed experiment if you ignore all of the good it’s done—and is still doing—for the state of television. In the interest of looking on the bright side, I thought of some ways cord-cutting has made TV meaningfully better. Read the full column on TechHive.

• If you subscribe to Sling TV, YouTube TV, and Hulu + Live TV, you can now see what’s on various channels straight from the “Live” tab on the Fire TV home screen. Channels from those services will also appear in the “Recents” row on the home screen and inside the Fire TV’s grid-based channel guide. (Here’s a video showing all of that in action, and here’s a handy how-to on customizing the grid to your liking.)
• YouTube Kids is now available on Fire TV devices. The app, which is separate from regular YouTube, offers separate profiles for kids with no adult content and no targeted ads.
• The Fire TV Cube is getting antenna support soon. With an antenna plugged into your TV, you can say “Alexa, tune to (channel name),” and the Cube will switch to the antenna input and select the appropriate channel. The option to set this up, once available, should appear under Settings > Equipment Control > Add Equipment once it’s available.
• Amazon Prime Video is getting profile support, so each user can have their own recommendations and watchlists. This is rolling out over the next several weeks.

Tablo’s new DVRs: Tablo has added a couple new over-the-air DVRs to its lineup, both of which have built-in storage so you don’t have to supply your own hard drive. The Tablo Dual is getting a 128 GB storage option for $170, which is $30 more than the storage-free Dual Lite, while the Tablo Quad is getting a 1 TB version for $240, which is $40 more than the storage-free model. You can still add storage to either one, but there is a catch for the Quad: You’ll have to open up its internal hard drive bay and pull out the built-in drive first, even if you’re just connecting an external USB drive instead.

Both models are otherwise identical to the existing Dual Lite and Quad DVRs, which I consider to be the best over-the-air DVRs for most people. Personally I’d skip the Dual 128 GB and use an external hard drive with the existing Dual Lite—you can get a 1 TB drive for $40 or $50 these days—but the new Quad seems like a fair deal and a fine way to make the setup process a bit simpler.

Peacock’s withering launch: NBC’s Peacock streaming service is arriving on July 15, but it probably won’t be available on Roku or Fire TV devices at launch. Citing anonymous sources, CNBC reports that Roku and NBC are squabbling over how to split up ad inventory (and therefore ad revenue), while the dispute between Amazon and NBC centers on who should get access to viewership data and whether Amazon can sell subscriptions through its Channels store. These are the same sorts of issues AT&T is having with Roku and Amazon over HBO Max, which still isn’t available on either platform (at least not officially).

Meanwhile, CNet reports that Peacock will be missing a bunch of features out of the gate, including 4K HDR video support, Dolby Atmos audio, individual user profiles, and the ability to download videos on mobile devices. With the summer Olympics also postponed until 2021, it’s safe to say this isn’t the ideal launch for NBC, but there is some good news: NBC’s moving all of its Premier League coverage over to Peacock, so soccer diehards won’t have to spend $65 per year just for NBC’s Sports Gold Premier League Pass anymore.

Keep in mind, though, that you may be able to get Peacock for free anyway. Comcast is giving away the ad-supported version to its cable customers and to cord-cutters who have one of its free Flex streaming boxes, and Cox cable customers can get the service for free as well. (The ad-free version will be a $5 per month upcharge, down from the usual $10 per month.) NBC has also said that it wants to give other TV providers the same discount, so you if you’re already paying for some kind of TV bundle, you may want to see how that shakes out instead of paying for a year of the service up-front.

NBC will also offer a completely free version of Peacock, but with fewer movies and shows than the paid versions. And you thought HBO Max’s launch was confusing.