Skip ads while steaming, Sling TV price hikes
This week on TechHive: Weird Al without ads
Roku has just debuted Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, its splashiest original film yet. The openly exaggerated biopic will stream exclusively on the Roku Channel, and you can tell it’s a big deal for Roku, which has even added a new home screen section on its streaming players and smart TVs to promote the film.
But like everything else on Roku’s streaming service, the free content comes at a cost: The Roku Channel is ad-supported, with no option for ad-free viewing. If you want to watch Daniel Radcliffe’s interpretation of Weird Al, you’ll have to sit through commercials.
There is, however, a workaround: By using a little-known service called PlayOn, you can record any movie or show from The Roku Channel, then use that recording to skip through the ads. (I’m doing this as we speak.)
This little trick is worth keeping in mind whether you’re interested in a Weird Al biopic or not. As more companies introduce ad-supported options as an excuse to raise prices on their ad-free tiers, rolling your own recordings might help defray the costs. Read the full column on TechHive.
Weekly rewind
Sling TV price hikes: On December 3, Sling will raise the price of both its base packages to $40 per month, up from $35 per month currently. The combination of Sling Orange and Blue is also increasing by $5, to $55 per month. As expected, Sling blamed the price hikes on TV networks, which continue to demand more money for their cable channels to offset their shrinking audiences.
Sling tried to sugarcoat the news, noting that it will add more than 150 channels (most of which I’m guessing are the freebies you find on services like Pluto TV) along with support for multiple user profiles next year.
But as even the cheapest live TV services get more expensive, the case for abandoning big bundles outright gets even stronger. Can you give up that one cable channel, TV show, or sporting event you love? The TV networks are just daring you to do so.
Netflix’s ad-supported issues: As announced last month, Netflix launched its $7 per month “Basic with Ads” plan on Thursday, but with a caveat: The cheaper tier doesn’t work with Apple TV devices, PlayStation 3 consoles, or Chromecasts that aren’t running the latest Google TV software. While Apple TV support is coming, it’s unclear if that’s true for the other devices.
The Basic with Ads plan allows for streaming on one screen at a time at 720p resolution, but be aware that it’s missing about 5% to 10% of the ad-free catalog due to licensing issues. The next step up is Netflix’s Basic ad-free plan, which costs $10 per month and now streams at 720p as well.
Peacock’s Hallmark tie-in: In a spot of good news, Peacock is adding Hallmark’s live channels and on-demand movies at no extra charge. They do, however, require a $5 per month Peacock Premium subscription to access.
The deal suggests that NBCUniversal could fashion Peacock into a kind of aggregator, with both live and on-demand components from outside the Comcast empire. The service already has a long-standing deal with WWE, and one could imagine Peacock finding other brands to work with in the future. Hopefully all this doesn’t foreshadow yet another price hike.
More catch-up
- Warner bumps the HBO Max-Discovery+ merger up to spring 2023.
- YouTube launches a marketplace for streaming subscriptions. (Because we really need yet another way to pay for TV.)
- Comcast and Charter will use the Xumo name for their joint streaming platform—an scintillating sentence if I’ve ever read one.
- Ugh: Apple TV might make its handy “Up Next” row harder to reach.
- Goodbye, computerized Weather Channel. (Try this website for a nostalgia trip.)
Save more money
Google is holding its first sale on the new Chromecast with Google TV HD, bringing the price to $20 instead of the usual $30. This is a great deal if you don’t need 4K video and appreciate Google’s attempts to make sense of streaming, which you can read more about in my review. The 4K model is also back to its typical $40 sale price.
Other notable deals:
- The Roku Streaming Stick 4K is half off, at $25.
- The Roku Ultra, with a better remote and ethernet, $30 off, at $70.
- You can still get the 2021 Apple TV 4K for $100.
As always, you can check my big list of streaming deals for more ways to save, including wireless carrier freebies and the latest free Paramount+ codes.
Thanks for reading!
Because I am not on the anointed list of tech journalists who receive loaner hardware from Apple to review, I’ve just bought the brand-new Apple TV box with my own money for the sake of writing a TechHive review (and will likely return it soon after to reclaim said money).
So, if you have any questions about the new Apple TV—or any other cord cutting topic—let me know!
Until next week,
Jared