The “Spotify for TV” concept, testing MLB TV with a VPN
Jared Newman | Hey there! I’m Jared Newman, and this is Cord Cutter Weekly, my newsletter on how to save money on TV and make the most of streaming.
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This week on TechHive: Why a Spotify for TV probably won’t happen
A couple of weeks ago, former Hulu and WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar pitched a novel idea for solving the TV industry’s struggles.
In a New York Times story about the “future of streaming“—one that was mostly bereft of new thinking from Hollywood’s captains of industry—Kilar called for a model inspired by the music business. Instead of competing directly for subscribers, studios would contribute an ongoing catalog of movies and shows to a unified streaming service, getting a share of the revenue in exchange.
Kilar has a knack for ideas that consumers love and Hollywood hates—see, for instance, new movies on HBO Max at the same time as theaters—so the concept is at least worth entertaining on a slow news week. But after thinking through how such a service would work, I suspect that a concept is all it’ll ever be.
Read the full column on TechHive →
Weekly rewind
The MLB TV VPN experiment: Also on TechHive this week, I wrote about my efforts to watch local Cincinnati Reds games on MLB TV using a VPN. Although local games are supposed to be blacked out on MLB TV, a VPN theoretically provides a workaround by letting you pretend to be in another location.
Did it work? Sort of. While I couldn’t get the MLB TV app to play Reds games on my streaming devices, I was able to watch through a web browser on my computer, then use either Chromecast or AirPlay screen mirroring to send the video to my TV. See all the dirty details over on TechHive.
Booted from Netflix Basic: Netflix has started kicking people off its cheapest ad-free plan, which costs $12 per month for one stream at a time. We knew this was coming back in January, when Netflix said it would phase out the Basic tier for existing subscribers. Now, people in the U.K. and Canada are getting warnings of a July 13 cutoff date, with U.S. subscribers presumably next in line. (Netflix stopped offering Basic to new customers last year.)
Instead of automatically moving folks to another tier, Netflix is asking them to choose between the $7 per month ad-supported tier and the $15.49 per month Standard tier, which includes two simultaneous streams. Of course you can also just not choose anything and see whether Netflix is really a must-have anymore.
More catch-up
- Optimum drops Bally Sports channels. See my guide to baseball streaming options.
- The owner of Redbox files for bankruptcy.
- Pac-12 Network ceases operations as all but two universities leave the conference.
- A look at what could happen to Paramount+ as its parent company seeks a merger.
Save more money
While I’m not the biggest Fire TV fan, Amazon has a couple solid deals if you’re into its streaming devices (for Amazon Prime subscribers only):
- The Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for $30 refurbished, with a lack of screensaver ads as perhaps its most notable feature.
- You can also upgrade the remote on an existing Fire TV device with the Alexa Voice Remote Pro, on sale for $25. It includes backlighting, two programmable buttons, a remote finder function, and one-click access to a Bluetooth headphone pairing menu.
With Prime Day coming up on July 16, I suspect many other Fire TV devices will go on sale soon.
Other notable deals:
- Prefer Roku? The Express 4K+ drops back to $30.
- The latest Paramount+ code is still V5Z82W750Z. Learn how to get it for free.
- MLS Season Pass is now $49 for the remaining season, or $39 for Apple TV+ subscribers.
- See more up-to-date deals on the Cord Cutter Weekly website.
Thanks for reading!
Got cord cutting questions for me? Just reply to this email to get in touch.
Until next week,
Jared