- Why did you cut the cord?
Or why are you thinking about cutting the cord?
My guess, money. Specifically, saving it.
So, today we're gonna talk about
the Cheapskates Guide to Streaming.
I've got 15 of the best streaming services out there,
many of which are free.
So, if you wanna save some money
but still get some great TV, follow me, let's dive in.
(upbeat music)
All right, so, for this Cheapskates Guide to Streaming,
let's set some ground rules.
Like I said up top, I've got 15 streaming services,
six of them are free, nine of them are paid.
Now, on the free side
I ranked them from best to slightly less best.
I mean, they're all really good.
Honestly, you should get them all.
The other rule is that I kept this to entertainment only.
There are a lot of niche services out there,
whether you want something like The Weather Channel,
you know, a lot of sports, a lot of news,
and those are all great.
But they didn't make this list today.
Today, we're going with
sort of the broader, generic entertainment apps.
We start with Pluto TV followed by Tubi.
These are the two best free services out there.
And the Roku channel, honestly, very, very close third.
I do think that Pluto and Tubi have slightly better content,
but the Roku channel does a great job
of giving you kind of a one stop shop
for a lot of variety in streaming.
Freevee is owned by Amazon, so it's a bit like Amazon Prime
but it's commercial supported and has a different library.
Plex is very cool.
Plex is a combination of a lot of things.
It has live stuff, it has on demand stuff,
but it also lets you upload your own library to the Cloud.
So, if you have a bunch of DVDs, Blu-rays,
music, photos, whatever,
you can upload those to the Plex server on the Cloud
and access that on your own Plex app.
And Redbox. Redbox hanging in there.
Yeah, they've still got those kiosks all over the place,
but they also have their own streaming channel
that's really quite good.
I actually took a break from watching it right now
to make this video.
So, that's our free category.
Honestly, you should get all of those.
And you should get the next one.
The next one being Peacock.
Peacock is gonna kind of blur the lines
between the free stuff and the paid stuff.
It has a free tier that's gonna be commercial supported
just like the others that we've talked about already,
but it also has a $5 premium level
that unlocks its entire library.
And it has a $10 premium level
that is going to give you fewer commercials
than you would see on that $5 tier.
The rest of the apps we're gonna talk about
are all premium, paid, on demand services.
So, first let's get some of the pluses out the way.
We've got Discovery+, Apple TV+ and Paramount+,
all coming in at five bucks a month.
You should get Paramount+
if you love unscripted reality content.
You should get Apple TV+ if you love what HBO was,
you know, say 15, 20, 25 years ago.
A lot of really great premium dramas and comedies on there.
And you should get Paramount+
if you love Star Trek and other CBS and Paramount content.
Hulu clocks in at seven bucks a month
if you're willing to watch some commercials.
If you pay 13 bucks a month,
you can get rid of those commercials.
Hulu has some great originals
and it also concentrates a lot
on getting some network TV and cable TV shows.
Disney+, you probably don't need me to explain that.
That one comes in at eight bucks a month.
Yes, there is an annual plan,
but I'm leaving those outta here.
In my opinion,
Disney+ does have some worthwhile originals, of course,
but it's really all about that vault.
Getting that Disney vault, ah, it's great,
especially if you have kids.
Prime Video comes in at $9 a month
if you go with the video only service.
If you get Prime in its entirety,
the free shipping, and the music, and everything else,
that's only a little bit more $11.66 bucks a month.
And it's paid annually at 140 bucks.
And I actually recently did a video
where I called Prime Video the best value in streaming.
Agree or disagree, you should check that video out,
after you like and subscribe.
HBO Max is 10 bucks a month
If you're willing to do commercials,
15 if you don't want those commercials,
and they may have all around the best library
in all of streaming.
I really, really enjoy HBO Max's library,
from the classic stuff to the new stuff
that they put out on that service.
Really, fantastically well done.
The only problem, yeah, 10, 15 bucks a month,
now we're getting into pretty pricey territory.
But then there's the king of them all, Netflix.
Yeah, they've had some bad headlines,
but Netflix is still king
when it comes to both subscriber count and price.
10 bucks a month for a standard definition.
If you're watching it on a TV, if it's not a phone,
you don't want standard definition,
so you've gotta bump up to the $15.50 tier
that'll get you the HD stream.
But if you wanna stream in 4k, you're gonna fork out
a whopping 20 bucks a month for Netflix.
So, yeah, if you're a cheapskate
and you want a lot of great entertainment,
maybe sign up for Netflix for a month or two
to, you know, kind of binge a bunch of stuff.
But you're not gonna want this one
hitting your wallet every single month.
And speaking of cheapskates, this is the cheapskate guide,
so what would I do if I were you?
If I were the cheapskate?
Sometimes I am.
I would sign up for all of those free services
and I would go check out
some of the previous videos on this channel
where I talk about the best free services on each device,
Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, all of them.
That'll give you even more ideas.
And once you've got the free stuff
locked down and ready to go,
I would pick one or two of the premium services to keep,
kind of on an ongoing basis.
Find your favorites,
preferably a couple of the cheaper ones,
and then pop into the other ones every once in a while.
You know, do Netflix for a month
and watch a few of their originals.
Yeah, you should probably watch Stranger Things right now.
It's really good.
Or wait until an entire season of Obi-Wan Kenobi is done
and then you can get Disney+ for a month
and just watch all those episodes, cancel that service.
Now we don't wanna cheat the system,
but we do wanna use it to our advantage.
And if we're cheapskates, we really, really can.
So, get out there, enjoy some cheap streaming,
even some free streaming.
There's a lot of stuff out there for you to enjoy.
And I hope you do.
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
Come here every Friday at 2:00 PM Eastern on this channel
where I do my live streams.
Hope to see you there. Thanks for watching everybody.