A sneaky Peacock trial, Roku’s NBA tie-ins

Jared Newman
|
April 5, 2024

This week on TechHive: The sneaky path to free Peacock

Officially, Peacock doesn’t offer a free trial, so the only way to watch its exclusive sporting events or movies such as Oppenheimer is to subscribe up front.

Unofficially, though, there’s a workaround: Peacock is currently included for free with an Instacart+ subscription, and Instacart+ does offer a free trial–with no credit card required. By signing up for the latter, you can also check out Peacock at no extra charge.

Read the full column on TechHive →

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Weekly rewind

Roku’s NBA tie-ins: Roku has just added an NBA hub page to its smart TVs and streaming players. You’ll find the “NBA Zone” through the Sports tab in Roku’s left-hand menu, with daily game recaps, on-demand content, and a list of live games that links to their corresponding streaming services. (Just one problem: Roku doesn’t actually list all the ways you can watch these games, so it’s not helpful if you subscribe to YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, or Fubo.) A similar hub for NFL games launched last fall.

The NBA has also launched its first free streaming channel inside the Roku Channel app. It doesn’t include any actual live NBA games, but it will carry more than 40 games from the developmental G League this season. Beyond that, the channel will stream a mix of highlights, classic games, and other NBA-related programming, similar to the free channels we’ve seen from the NFL and MLB.

Disney and password sharing: Disney has added a teeny bit more specificity to its plans for a password sharing crackdown, telling CNBC that its efforts will begin in June and will roll out more broadly in September. The company updated its terms of service to forbid out-of-home sharing on Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ earlier this year, but is not yet enforcing the rules.

It’s still unclear what that enforcement will look like. Netflix spent nearly a year testing and tweaking new password sharing rules in select markets before taking action in the United States, and it still doesn’t outright ban those who try to work around its restrictions. The light touch seems to have worked for Netflix; we’ll find out soon enough if Disney can replicate it.

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Save more money

It’s your last chance to lock in a year of Max for more than 40% off the monthly price. All customers should be eligible for the discount, which covers the ad-supported plan ($70 for one year), ad-free plan ($111 for one year), and Ultimate plan with 4K video ($140 for one year). The offer expires on Tuesday, April 9.

Other notable deals:

This week in Advisorator, I wrote about hidden password manager tips, AT&T’s leaked data dump, an awesome file transfer tool, and more.

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Until next time,
Jared

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