Author: Jared Newman

I hate to bear bad news, but using your phone as a hotspot remains impractical if you plan to watch any significant amount of video on your laptop, tablet, or television.

One might think that cable companies would respond to cord cutting with lower prices and more flexible TV options. Instead, the opposite is happening.

Why isn’t PBS available in live TV streaming services such as Sling TV, YouTube TV, DirecTV Now, and PlayStation Vue? It turns out bringing live PBS stations online involves a lot of challenges.

I’ve reviewed a lot of over-the-air DVR options over the past few years: from TiVo and Tablo to HDHomeRun and Fire TV Recast. But I personally have never relied on a single solution.

A funny thing’s happened in recent years: Smart TV software from LG and Samsung has actually gotten pretty good. Now, I’m wondering why those companies don’t take a page from Roku and Amazon, and put their software on external streaming players.

Cord Cutter Weekly is back after a week off, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Bear with me as the format for this week’s newsletter will be a bit different than usual.

For cord-cutters, this is the year in which everything changes.

Think of 2018 as the eye of the storm for cord-cutting. Although cable and satellite TV subscriptions continued their steady downward spiral, we didn’t see many drastic changes in cord-cutting hardware, software, or services.

Cutting cable TV is certainly a forward-thinking move, but controlling your streaming TV device by voice is even more futuristic.

Subscribers should now be more confident in the service than ever, even if the business itself remains on unsteady footing.