(sentimental music)
- Well I guess this is what a funeral
for a streaming service feels like.
Kind of depressing really.
Well, farewell PlayStation Vue.
Let's dive in.
(deep electronic music)
Yes PlayStation Vue does seem to be in trouble.
But honestly this is probably a little premature.
It's not so much that this is
a funeral as it is kind of
putting a streaming service in hospice care.
'Cause frankly the competition is running away.
Hulu Live and Sling TV, they both now have
northwards of two million subscribers.
PlayStation Vue meanwhile has shrunk.
They're now, reports put them at about
a half million subscribers.
So industry analysts have been calling on Sony
to shut down PlayStation Vue for a while.
But they're not doing that,
in fact they're making plans for the future
which is a little odd for something
that seems to have one foot in the grave.
So maybe it doesn't?
The question now is whether it's worth your money.
And that's what we're gonna talk about today.
But before we do that I'll just remind you
to subscribe and hit that bell icon
so that you can be reminded when we're back here
every Wednesday and every Friday with a new video
just like this one, now PlayStation Vue.
Let's talk a little more about it.
So let's start out by talking about
the base package and its channel count,
which is actually pretty okay.
45 channels including the ones that you guys ask about
most often in the comments below.
Discovery, AMC, HGTV, so it has a lot of those basics.
Now it is going to be missing any Viacom channels
across the entirety of PlayStation Vue,
so Viacom channels would be,
well anything owned by Viacom.
BET, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon,
all those channels are missing.
But that's also missing from YouTube TV and Hulu Live,
which are some of our favorites,
so it's kind of hard to ding PS Vue too much for that.
Now if you want to bump yourself up
to the next package up, the Core Package,
yes it's $5 a month more but what you're getting
is more sports content so if you are a sportsperson,
this is gonna be valuable to you.
With the Basic Package, you're getting ESPN and FOX Sports,
those kind of sports standbys.
But when you bump up to that Core Package,
you do get MLB Network, NFL Network, NBA TV,
so if you're craving more sports content,
that five bucks a month extra might be worth it to you.
Local channels are a little bit different beast
and it's really hard for me to review those
because frankly it's gonna be different
in every metro area so you're just gonna have to
go check with PlayStation Vue what they offer in your area.
The good news is, they're pretty good about it.
Also on the good news side of things is the DVR.
Which, it does have its quirks.
Like for instance you can't record
any premium channels but that's usually okay,
if you wanna watch something on HBO,
it's probably gonna be available on demand anyway.
You also can't fast forward Fox FX or FXX programs,
which is annoying but that's the way it is.
Every DVR has its quirks, but aside from those things,
it is a good DVR.
It's high capacity, they measure a little bit differently,
it's 500 episodes that you can record on that DVR.
So doing the math, that usually comes out
to about 100 to 250 hours of content that you can record.
Once you've got that on the DVR,
you can keep that for up to 28 days.
Now picture quality is another bright spot.
But this is something they've been famous about for a while.
Now the official literature says
that if you want optimal picture quality,
you need to have a connection of at least 10 megabits
per second for a single stream,
and add five megabits per second per simultaneous stream.
So knowing what we know about how unreliable
some internet service providers can be
in providing the speed that they advertise,
I would go for a plan that's at least 25 to 50 megabits
per second reliably in order to get
the best picture quality for you.
So those are the pros but none of those
exactly explain why PlayStation Vue
is having such problems, obviously.
So we're gonna have to look at the cons.
And the first one is name confusion.
PlayStation Vue implies that you have to
watch it on a PlayStation.
Now that's not true, you can watch it
on any major advice like Roku or Apple TV,
Amazon Fire TV, these all have PlayStation Vue apps
that you can use, that's great.
But if you're just starting out
on your cord-cutting experience
and you're just starting your preliminary research,
I can see how that might be pretty confusing.
Also confusing is the simultaneous streams issue.
Now this is gonna be important to you
if you have roommates or family members
and you guys want to stream shows simultaneously
in separate rooms or something.
You can do that, now the PlayStation Vue
official literature says you can have
up to 5 streams at once, and I guess that's true
but here's how it works, I think.
You get three simultaneous streams in your home,
on your home network on any device you want.
And in your home area, we're talking geographically
close to your home, you can have three simultaneous streams
including that one in your home.
So that makes up to five, but anything outside your home
can't be done on a streaming box,
like a Roku or an Apple TV,
it has to be on a mobile device.
And if you are outside your home area,
say you're traveling and you wanna use PlayStation Vue,
you can only do that for 60 days before it shuts down
'cause it thinks you moved and you have to
call customer service and reactivate it.
And I think that's it, I think this is how it works.
Here's what I'm gonna do:
In a future video, I'll be digging into this in more detail.
So I want you to hit the comments below
if you have any specific questions
about how the simultaneous streams work
for PlayStation Vue let me know.
I want to know your questions so that I can make sure
I answer them in that future video.
Now I'm gonna go hurl.
- If you're gonna spew, spew into this.
(sighs)
- And then there's price.
Okay $45 for the base package, and you get 45 channels
plus some local ones depending on your area.
So you think, $45 for 45 channels,
a dollar a channel, that's not too bad.
That's true I guess until you compare it
to the other $45 competitor on the market
and that's Hulu Live.
They've got 67 nationwide channels plus the local ones,
again depending on your area,
and you can see how the value over there
is quite a bit greater than what you're getting
on PlayStation Vue.
Over there on Hulu, you're not just
getting the 67 channels, you're getting Hulu itself
including Hulu Live TV.
So a lot of value over there,
it's easy to see why people would jump ship
to the other $45 base package at Hulu Live.
To get that sort of channel count on PlayStation Vue,
you'd have to go to the Elite Package,
60 bucks a month, quite a jump from there.
You know what though, ultimately I could come up
with a list of cons for any of these streaming services.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're not worth it.
It doesn't mean that PlayStation Vue
has one foot in the grave.
What it does mean though is that it's not quite as vibrant
or exciting as Hulu Live or YouTube TV.
And those are the two services
that I would probably direct a new cord-cutter toward.
If you're already with PlayStation Vue,
I kind of think of it the same way as DIRECTV NOW.
If you already have it, you like it,
that's fine, stick with it.
And don't forget we only have two more days left
in the giveaway for the TCL Roku TV.
So check out the description, there's a link there
where if you subscribe to the channel
and like and share and all these things,
you can get entered to win that TV.
So subscribe for future giveaways as well.
Thanks for watching guys, we'll see you on the next video.
(deep electronic music)