Preparing for Disney+ price hikes, Roku OS 12.5

Jared Newman
|
October 6, 2023

This week on TechHive: How to cope with Disney’s price hikes

As announced in August, Disney is raising prices on all its streaming services on October 12. That means Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ are about to get more expensive.

But even in this new era of cord cutting, in which streamers charge more for less, it’s still possible to defray the costs. In this week’s column, I’ve walked through the details on Disney’s price hikes, along with some ways to minimize the impact on your TV bill.

Read the full column on TechHive →

Weekly rewind

Netflix’s next price hike: Citing anonymous sources, Jessica Toonkel of the Wall Street Journal reports that Netflix plans to raise prices for its ad-free tier in a few months. The report doesn’t specify timing or what the new prices will be, and Netflix hasn’t made anything official.

Surely Netflix hasn’t forgotten about how its subscriber numbers dropped after its last round of hikes in early 2022, but maybe it doesn’t care anymore. These days, streamers are all about profits over growth, which means pushing people over to ad-supported tiers and making ad-free viewing more of a luxury. Netflix, in the end, is no different from the rest.

Roku’s next update: Roku OS 12.5 is launching soon, with some new features aimed at helping you find things to watch. A handful of standouts from Roku’s release notes:

  • The “What to Watch” section will let you browse by category and genre.
  • The “Sports” section will offer highlights and let you bookmark favorite teams.
  • If you subscribe to Sling TV, DirecTV Stream, or FuboTV, you’ll see channel recommendations from these services in the “Live TV” menu.
  • Google Photos users will be able to set albums as screensavers on Roku devices.
  • Roku 4K TVs will get an “Expert Picture Settings” menu for tweaking things like gamma correction and noise reduction.

Roku says to expect the new features in the “coming months.”

ZapperBox M1 review: Over at TechHive, I reviewed the ZapperBox M1, an over-the-air DVR that can also play back ATSC 3.0 channels. The main benefits of ATSC 3.0 right now are 1080p video and a nifty dialog enhancement feature, but it also allows for 4K HDR if broadcasters ever end up supporting it.

Much like ATSC 3.0 itself, the box is a work in progress, with some unreleased DVR features and no support yet for playing encrypted channels. I’d only recommend it for extreme early adopters at present, but it has potential as a simple, plug-and-play DVR next-gen broadcast channel support.

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More catch-up

Save more money

The NFL is running a half-price sale on its streaming services, so you can get a year of NFL+ for $25 or NFL+ Premium for $50.

Both plans let you watch live, in-market games on your phone or tablet only, but offer a live stream of the NFL Network on any device. The Premium tier gives you NFL Redzone on any device, along with replays of every game after the live airing is over. Note that you’ll have to select the “Yearly” toggle on the sign-up page to see the sale price.

Other notable deals:

This week in Advisorator, I wrote about an easy way to protect your privacy on social media sites. Plus: iPhone 15 complaints, offbeat streaming music options, and Amazon device deals. Read the latest issue →

Advisorator is my weekly newsletter for tech advice beyond the realm of cord cutting. Head to the sign-up page to get it every Tuesday.

Thanks for reading!

That was quite the action-packed week we had here. Still trying to make sense of it all? Send me your questions by replying to this email.

Until next week,
Jared

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