Control your streaming spending, deals on Hulu and Disney+
This week on TechHive: A trick for keeping costs down
When a streaming service offers a deal on multiple months of service, they’re clearly hoping you won’t bother to cancel when prices rise back up.
So here’s a way to fight back: Instead of using your regular payment method, sign up with limited-use credit card through Privacy.com. With this free service, you can create virtual credit cards that each have their own spending limits, so you can sign up at promotional rates and prevent the card from working for anything higher.
With so many streaming service deals popping up now—more on that later in the newsletter—limited-use cards are a great way to avoid bill shock when those promo rates go away. For details on how to set this up, read the full column on TechHive.
Weekly rewind
Where to watch sports: JustWatch, a service that lets you look up where to stream movies and TV shows, has just added a sports section to its website. Click on a league or a sport, and you’ll see a list of all upcoming events alongside their viewing options. The big emphasis right now is on soccer, whose multinational nature makes streaming especially messy.
As a complement to JustWatch’s streaming search engine, it’s a fine first effort. But as of now, there’s no way to search for a specific team—or club, if you will—and see which matches are coming up. Hopefully JustWatch builds on the feature sooner than later.
Vidgo’s relaunch: After four years of toiling as an also-ran among live TV streaming services, Vidgo is attempting a comeback with new packages and updated apps. The company tells FierceVideo that it’s targeting rural America this time around, pointing to some channels that most other services lack, such as Longhorn Network.
But looking at the lineup, I think it’ll be a tough sell. Prices start at $60 per month, and a premium tier with NFL Redzone costs $80 per month, yet neither package includes CBS or any NBC-owned channels. That cuts a pretty big hole in Vidgo’s supposed emphasis on college sports. I always welcome more competition, but taking on the likes of YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV won’t be easy.
Streaming’s dark days: Over at The Washington Post, Travis Andrews has written a nice article about streaming services’ “existential crisis,” borne of a need to start turning a profit from all the subscribers they’ve racked up.
While the story retreads some familiar territory—more price hikes, crackdowns on password sharing, and so on—what really got my attention was a fear among creatives that the content itself may get worse as companies take fewer artistic risks. (This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this, either.) I doubt we’re returning to the reality show-driven wasteland of cable, but expect to see more obvious home runs (House of the Dragon, The Rings of Power) and fewer unexpected delights.
More catch-up
- YouTube TV brings surround sound to Apple TV and more Fire TV models.
- You can still subscribe to NFL Redzone by itself, but only on your phone.
- Here’s another helpful guide to college football for cord cutters.
Save more money
As I noted earlier, the streaming service deals are coming in at a rapid clip now. A quick rundown:
- Hulu + Live TV: New and returning subscribers get three months for $50 per month, down from $70.
- Disney+: New and returning subscribers get a month for $2, down from $8, if you sign up by September 19.
- HBO Max: New and returning subscribers get a year for $105 (no ads) or $70 (with ads), a 30% discount, through October 30.
- Peacock: New subscribers get a year for $20, or up to 12 months for $2 per month, a 60% discount, if you sign up in September.
- YouTube TV: New subscribers get three weeks free, then $50 off the first month, if you sign up today.
Note that “new and returning” subscribers refers to folks who don’t currently have an active subscription. Depending on when your billing cycle, you may have time to cancel and sign up again at the discounted rate.
And one device deal for good measure: Woot is selling Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K for $19 with the coupon code FIRE. It uses an older remote—with no app shortcut or live TV buttons—but is otherwise identical to the latest model.
Thanks for reading!
Like I mentioned last week, I’ve started to test T-Mobile’s 5G home internet service, and so far the results have been promising:
That’s 289 Mbps down, 15 Mbps up on a hard-wired connection here in the Cincinnati suburbs, and the wireless gateway has better range than I was expecting. I’ll keep you posted as I do more tests, but let me know if you have any questions in the meantime.
Until next week,
Jared