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Weird ways to get streaming deals

Jared Newman   |   October 24, 2025

If you’re paying year-round for subscriptions to Peacock, HBO Max, Disney+, or Hulu, you’re probably wasting money.

While each of these services has raised prices this year, you can get them at a discount as part of various food delivery, grocery, and credit card services. The total cost will be less that what you’d pay for each service alone, plus you’ll get some extra perks on the side.

Read the full column →

Weekly rewind

HBO Max price hikes: HBO Max has raised prices on all of its streaming plans. Quick rundown:

  • Basic with ads: $10/mo. → $11/mo. | $100/yr. → $110/yr.
  • Standard (HD, two streams): $17/mo. → $18.50/mo. | $170/yr. → $185/yr.
  • Premium (4K, four streams): $21/mo. → $23/mo. | $210/yr. → $230/yr.

Meanwhile, HBO Max will drop its CNN Max livestream on November 17 as the news network readies its own $7 per month streaming service, and HBO Max will eventually cut TNT’s sports programming from the service as well. You’ll be getting less for more, which may explain why CEO David Zaslav has expressed some trepidation about cracking down on password sharing lately.

YouTube TV and Disney are fighting: YouTube TV has another potential carriage dispute brewing with Disney, which has warned that its channels—including ABC and ESPN—will go dark on the service without a new agreement by October 30.

As CNBC reports, Disney is willing to give YouTube TV a similar deal to that of Spectrum, which now includes Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN Unlimited in most of its cable packages. But YouTube TV also wants to “ingest” Disney’s streaming content directly in its own app so subscribers don’t have to click elsewhere. It made a similar demand in its last carriage dispute with NBC—an attempt to rewrite the future of TV bundling—but ultimately relented. We’ll know by next Friday how this dispute is panning out.

ATSC 3.0 gateways: A couple of ATSC 3.0 tuner makers are preparing to launch “gateway” support for encrypted channels, allowing users to stream local over-the-air channels to other devices around the home. ADTH’s tuners will get a software update for streaming to its connected TV apps, while Bitrouter has begun testing encrypted channel support for its ZapperBox Mini add-on boxes, which work with the ZapperBox M1 DVR.

Whole-home DVR has been problem for ATSC 3.0, thanks to digital rights management that requires extra certification hoops for device makers. No such restrictions exist with the existing ATSC 1.0 standard, which has always allowed for in-home (and out-of-home) streaming of local channels. While it’s nice to see some ATSC 3.0 gateway support get underway, it may be too late to save the standard’s reputation among tech enthusiasts, who’ve grown to view it as toxic.

More catch-up

Save more money

This section of the newsletter has some affiliate links, which earn me a commission if you wind up buying or subscribing to something.

Peacock and Apple TV: The $15 per month bundle of Apple TV and Peacock that I mentioned last week is now available. It’s one of the better bundles you can get right now, as it’s only $2 per month more than the cost of Apple TV alone, and you can upgrade to ad-free Peacock for $5 per month more. You can sign up through either Peacock or Apple.

Note that if you have an Apple One Family or Premier plan, you can add Peacock Premium Plus (with no ads) for $11 per month. There’s apparently no Apple One discount with ad-supported Peacock, and no bundle deal at all for individual Apple One plans.

Big deal list updates: Over at the Cord Cutter Weekly website, I just refreshed my big list of streaming deals with some new sections to make navigation easier. I also overhauled the section on wireless carrier deals with nice new tabbed layout:

Yup, that $15 per month Fox One deal for Verizon customers pictured above is new. See the details here.

I update the deal list every Friday with every streaming offer that I can find.

How I’m trying to de-Google

This week in my Advisorator newsletter, I put together a status report on my attempt to become less reliant on Google. A lot of folks have asked me about de-Googling over the years, and I’ve yet to provide a cohesive answer largely because I don’t have one. What I can offer instead is a status report on my own de-Googling process, in hopes that it’ll help others figure it out as well.

The Google piece is for Advisorator’s paying members, who also get a bunch of other neat perks, like a searchable archive of all my cord cutting columns. Join us for as little as $5 per month.

Thanks for reading!

Got questions? Let me know!

Until next week,
Jared