Venu Sports on hold, Tablo’s next act

Jared Newman   |   August 23, 2024

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 Venu Sports isn’t happening (for now)

Venu Sports is unlikely to launch this fall after all.

The $43-per-month service is supposed to bring together broadcast and sports channels from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, while excluding the news and entertainment channels that make other pay TV packages more expensive. Venu was planning to launch in time for football season, but last Friday, U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett granted an injunction against the service, ruling that Fubo was likely to win its lawsuit against the venture on antitrust grounds. Venu’s backers will appeal, but they can’t launch the service in the meantime, and a trial could stall the service for years.

In the near term, the decision stings. While Venu Sports was not going to be for everyone, it would have been the cheapest path to streaming certain broadcast and sports channels, such as ESPN, ABC, and FS1. It would have also paired well with an over-the-air antenna for other broadcast channels, such as CBS and NBC.

But cord-cutters benefit from competition, and Venu’s backers were blessing the service with a slim channel package that no other live TV streaming provider could offer. While programmers should absolutely embrace smaller, more flexible channel bundles, they should grant that flexibility to any TV service that wants it.

Read the full column on TechHive →

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Weekly rewind

ZapperBox expands: ZapperBox is turning its over-the-air DVR into a whole-home system that works across multiple televisions, with a couple of new devices to make that possible. The ZapperBox M2 is a single-tuner DVR for $200, and the $130 M3 is a tunerless device that merely streams video from other boxes on the same Wi-Fi network. If you set up multiple ZapperBoxes throughout the home, they’ll all share from the same pool of tuners and recordings. (Like the existing ZapperBox M1, the new boxes have USB and MicroSD ports for storage.)

I’ve previously picked the M1 as the best over-the-air DVR for non-power users, owing to its simple plug-and-play operation, ATSC 3.0 channel support, and overall reliability, but it’s currently bound to a single TV. ZapperBox plans to start shipping the new devices in October or November, and is offering discounts ($20 off the M2, $10 off the M3) for folks who pre-order.

Tablo’s next act: In other DVR news, Scripps has been demoing a version of its fourth-gen Tablo DVR for cable companies. The idea is that small- and mid-sized operators could use Tablo to deliver over-the-air TV and free streaming channels along with a bundle of pay TV channels (which Tablo’s consumer hardware doesn’t offer). It’d be a way to deepen the relationship with home internet customers who’ve otherwise cut the cord on cable TV.

I’m all for it if it helps Tablo remain a viable business. Over-the-air DVR is a niche—albeit one that I feel strongly about—and I’ve always wondered how Tablo would fit long-term inside a mega-broadcaster like Scripps. An offering for cable companies could give Tablo the scale it needs to thrive, and that could benefit consumers if it means more investment in the product overall.

Don’t buy Sunday Ticket through Apple: By way of The Streamable, a friendly reminder not to sign up for streaming services through Apple’s App Store without checking prices elsewhere first. If you sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket with Apple billing, for instance, it costs $680 for the season, versus $479 if you sign up directly through YouTube’s website. The extra $201 covers the 30% cut Apple takes from in-app purchases.

Some streaming services eat the Apple tax themselves, but others, such as YouTube Premium and the music service Tidal, pass the cost onto you. The convenience of Apple billing is not worth a much higher streaming bill, so just sign up on the web instead.

Correction: Speaking of Sunday Ticket, last week I wrote that YouTube isn’t selling NFL Redzone an add-on for Sunday Ticket anymore. In fact, it’s still available with standalone Sunday Ticket subscriptions at $40 for the season, but the option is missing from the main landing page and only appears during checkout. If you’re bundling Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV, however, the $40 Redzone option is not available, and you’ll have to pay $11 per month for YouTube TV’s Sports Plus add-on to get Redzone instead. I’ll have some TechHive posts sorting through all this in the near future.

More catch-up

Save more money

Verizon has a new NFL-related deal to go along with its Sunday Ticket offers: Sign up for a year of NFL+ Premium at $100, and get a year of Netflix Premium for free. The deal is available through Verizon’s +play marketplace for postpaid mobile and home internet subscribers, just like the existing Netflix and Peacock offer.

Other notable deals:

  • Get half-off a year of Paramount+ via this link, works with both the ad-supported and ad-free with Showtime plans.
  • Don’t want to pay? You can still snag a free month of Paramount+ via this link, or with promo code OGGMPZR3YBW.
  • Active military and vets and get NFL Sunday Ticket for $199.
  • Get a free month of NFL+ via this link.
  • See more up-to-date deals on the Cord Cutter Weekly website, updated every Friday.

Thanks for reading!

Many thanks to those of you who picked up an Advisorator membership over the past week. I don’t run these sales often as I believe in the value of a subscription (just $5 per month or $50 per year—a price that’s never changed in more than six years), so if you want to get started for a little less, now’s the time.

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Until next week,
Jared