This week on PCWorld: Fubo and Hulu drop a bomb on pay TV

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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Two major competitors in the race to replace cable bundles have suddenly become partners.
This week, Fubo and Disney announced that they will combine their respective live TV businesses. That means Fubo and Hulu + Live TV will become a single entity, of which Disney will be the majority owner.
Neither service is going away. While Fubo and Hulu are merging their respective live TV businesses, the actual services will remain separate, offered through their own respective apps. If you’re already subscribed to either Fubo or Hulu + Live TV, don’t expect any sweeping overnight changes.
Still, the two companies have already signaled that Fubo will launch a new sports-centric TV package, presumably at lower prices than most live TV streaming services. That could lead to even bigger shake-ups in the pay TV landscape.
Read the full column on PCWorld →
Weekly rewind
Venu Sports is dead: The deal between Fubo and Disney also marks the end of Venu Sports, which was supposed to offer a skinny bundle of sports and broadcast channels for $43 per month. Fubo successfully sued to block Venu’s launch last year, and while that lawsuit is now settled, Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. discovery announced this morning that they won’t proceed with the joint venture. Instead, they’ll be “focusing on existing products and distribution channels.”
I don’t think this really changes the conclusions in my column, as we’ll certainly see other TV providers push for “Sports & Broadcast” packages akin to what Fubo is putting together. They’ll just have one less competitor.
An OTA Android TV box: While covering the CES trade show in Las Vegas this week, I came across the MyVelo TV Premiere, an Android TV streaming box with a bundled ATSC 3.0 tuner. It’s launching in the spring for $100, and will let you watch free over-the-air channels from an antenna on the same input as your streaming services. It supports 4K HDR with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos audio, both for streaming and ATSC 3.0 channels, and MyVelo plans to offer DVR for local channels as well.
It’s an idea that seems overdue to me, and I’m intrigued to see how it comes together. You can read more about MyVelo and its plans in my story over at PCWorld.
Discovery+ price hike: Discovery+ is raising prices by $1 per month, bringing the cost to $6 per month with ads and $10 per month without. The service offers back catalogs of content from Discovery, HGTV, and other Warner-owned reality TV channels, but doesn’t include the live channels themselves.
I don’t have any workarounds on hand, but keep in mind that the entire Discovery+ catalog is included with Max. If you’re paying for the latter, you don’t need the former.
More catch-up
- By me: Google hopes you’ll pay for an AI TV assistant someday.
- Also by me: This on-screen keyboard could theoretically make TV typing easier.
- Janko Roettgers has a nice overview of smart TV trends at CES.
- Are you paying for Sling TV’s expanded DVR? You may get unlimited storage.
- Disney+ adds HDR10+ support.
- TiVo’s smart TV operating system is coming to Sharp TVs in the U.S.
Save more money
If you haven’t subscribed to YouTube TV before, it’s currently offering a 21-day free trial, followed by a discounted price of $60 per month for the first three months. The offer ends on January 12.
Other notable savings:
- You can still get three free months of Peacock via this link or using promo code PEAGZ7LNYFN44OEJ6 when you sign up on the website.
- You can still get a month of Paramount+ for free using this link. See full instructions here.
- You can still see every streaming deal I’m tracking on the Cord Cutter Weekly website, updated every Friday.
Thanks for reading!
I appreciate your bearing with me on another later-than-usual newsletter. I got in extremely late last night after running around Vegas for CES all week, and am firmly lodged in some hazy space between Eastern and Pacific time.
Got cord cutting questions for me? I still have somewhat of an email backlog, but go ahead and send them anyway.
Until next week,
Jared