(Sorry folks, I mangled the column link in today’s email, so I’m re-sending with the correct link.)
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. Sign up here if someone shared this newsletter with you.
Note: Cord Cutter Weekly will be off next week, returning on August 15.
DirecTV quietly built the cheapest way to stream local channels
Jared Newman | 
Cord cutters have long wished for a way to stream local broadcast channels for less than the price of a full pay TV package. Now it’s finally happening.
DirecTV, which has leaned more into streaming than satellite TV of late, now offers a $40 per month bundle with all four major broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC—in five U.S. markets. It offers three of the big four networks in more than a dozen additional U.S. markets.
The local channels are part of DirecTV’s “MyNews” genre pack, which it launched in February. Despite the news focus in DirecTV’s marketing, MyNews is now the cheapest option for streaming local channels—including all their sports and entertainment programming—in certain markets.
Read about what to expect next →
Weekly rewind
Roku Streaming Stick review: It’s a bit overdue, but my review of Roku’s latest Streaming Stick is live over at PCWorld. For $30, it replaces the Roku Express at the low-end of Roku’s lineup, with a better remote (TV volume and power controls, finally) and a more portable design. It’s a bit slower than pricier models, though, and Wi-Fi was weaker at long range in my testing. Roku’s software, once hailed for its simplicity, is also moving in the wrong direction.
Read the full review for details. I’ll have a review of the $40 Streaming Stick Plus (which adds 4K HDR, better Wi-Fi, and faster performance) shortly.
Spectrum’s streaming perk portal: Over the past year, Spectrum has made a big push to bundle complimentary streaming services with its cable TV packages, including Disney+, Max, Peacock, Paramount+, and more. These services are all ad-supported by default, but now Spectrum’s adding a centralized way upgrade to their ad-free tiers by paying the difference in price. You can manage these subscriptions through the My Spectrum App or Spectrum’s website.
Spectrum’s TV packages start at $115 per month (not counting first-year promos). While the company says its streaming freebies can add up to $100 per month in value, that assumes you’d want every service year-round and doesn’t account for other bundle deals available elsewhere. I previously ran the numbers here.
Correction and follow-up: Last week, I wrote that A3SA, the broadcast group that certifies NextGen TV tuners, had declared SiliconDust’s HDHomeRun tuners ineligible to access encrypted ATSC 3.0- channels. In fact, that explanation came from Pearl TV, an industry consortium that is aligned with the A3SA on copy protection, not from A3SA itself.
SiliconDust doesn’t deny that it uses chips from a subsidiary of Huawei, a Chinese firm that the FCC has deemed a “national security threat.” Still, it has called Pearl TV’s statements “defamatory,” noting that broadcasters don’t have the authority to regulate TV tuners, and that the government’s prohibition of Huawei networking chips don’t apply to its tuners, which aren’t communication devices.
That’s a lot of jargon to take in, but the bigger point is this: After five years of ATSC 3.0 in the United States, we still don’t have any products that support whole-home DVR for encrypted channels, like the kind that are readily available for the current ATSC 1.0 standard. No matter what excuses broadcasters come up with, DRM continues to be an albatross for over-the-air TV.
More catch-up
- Remember those interactive ATSC 3.0 music channels I wrote about in January 2024? They’re finally launching now.
- Charter’s Spectrum TV business had its best quarter since 2021—but still lost 80,000 subscribers.
- Audacity pulls its app from Roku devices.
- Here’s a neat website that tells you how long it’ll take to binge-watch every episode of a show. (Thanks, Dwight!)
- Tablo DVRs were knocked offline by a third-party data center outage earlier this week. (A long-promised offline mode has been pushed from a summer launch to sometime this fall.)
Save more money
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Roku streaming players are back to Prime Day pricing. Get the aforementioned Roku Streaming Stick for $19, the Streaming Stick Plus for $29, the Streaming Stick 4K for $39, and the Ultra for $79. Consult my flowchart if you need help deciding.
Other notable deals:
- Better YouTube TV discount than usual: $50 per month for the first three months. New subscribers only.
- YouTube also extended its Sunday Ticket pre-order discount through August 31. Get the season for $276 (split into eight payments).
- With Peacock’s recent price hike, a $10 per month Instacart+ subscription (which includes Peacock) is actually cheaper than getting Peacock by itself.
I’ve got a full list of streaming deals—including a spruced-up bundle section—on the Cord Cutter Weekly website.
Thanks for reading!
Apologies for the late email this morning. I went down some streaming deal research rabbit holes when I probably should have just sent the newsletter first!
Remember, Cord Cutter Weekly will be off next week and back on August 15. Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime.
Until then,
Jared