did you have cbs all access or perhaps you already know what paramount plus is
and you're just interested in the user interface what you actually get
with this particular streaming service hello i am Wanderer001 and this is going to be my review
of paramount plus on the roku caveat i will be showing you the entire user interface for this
giving you my opinions along the way i will not change any of the load times for it just
so you get an idea of what you're looking at i am currently using the 2020 version of the roku ultra
so top tier that'll give you an idea of what you're looking at this is another one of those
streaming services where people are either going to love it hate it or feel indifferent about it
as we walk through it i'll give you my opinions and we can come to a conclusion together we
might come to different conclusions but i am here to give you the facts and information
so that you can make an informed decision for yourself so let's start paramount plus
once you log in you are greeted with this if you don't have any user profiles set up yet
you can go through the process here you can see i have several set up already you can have up to six
user profiles and you can have designated children or kid profiles keep in mind that even though you
can have six profiles you can only have three simultaneous streams of paramount plus going at
once we're gonna come over here and we're going to select add a new profile just so you can see
what the process is like selecting add you can create a profile we're going to come up to the
top because we're going to choose an avatar there is a okay selection of avatars it kind of reminds
me of discovery plus there are going to be a lot of things in here that are more related to
shows that they offer so you're not going to get a lot of choices that may change in the future
so right now we have one avatar we'll just have the other avatar we will put a profile name sadly
you have to kind of hunt and peck so we're just going to call this a b c d for the purposes of
this and then you have kids mode on or off this is the first service that i've i've tested that
offers several different types of kids mode what do i mean by that if we select on we can select
younger viewers so tvy or we can select an older child so that's tvy through tvpg i do enjoy the
fact that this is an option you can also turn kids mode off entirely and just have this as a regular
profile i will say one of the things that was added by paramount plus during my testing time
with it was actually parental controls where you can lock down the other profiles with a pin
granted you will need to do that from the website version of this but you can lock down your other
profiles and prevent small children from accessing material that might not be suitable for them
after you go through the initial setup process you do answer a few questions to kind of give the
algorithm an idea of what you're interested in and we're going to say since this is an adult profile
whatever that is whatever that is whatever that is and this and then we come up and select next
and there we go it has created a profile for us now i'm going to show you my main profile because
that's where i've been doing a lot of things but just based on the quick selection that i
did it's showing me some basic recommendations if i come back we're going to come back and select
my main profile so that i can actually show you what things look like when you're streaming and
at any time if you ever wanted to edit your profile you simply come down to the bottom
select the profile you wish to edit and you can edit it it looks just like you were doing before
we're going to hop into my main profile here
and this is our home screen for paramount plus you will see at the top a large rotating cascade of
shows most of them are paramount plus originals that they want you to check out coming down we
have r and when i say coming down notice it gets rid of that cascade at the top
and now we have our individual channel offering so here we have cbs bet comedy central mtv
nickelodeon and the smithsonian channel what this will do is allow you to select a particular
channel and go through all of their offering so here you see trending and a to z this is one of
the things that i'm not too happy about with the interface on the roku itself is that instead of a
tiled interface you have this old film strip which means you're going to have a lot of scrolling to
do but it's not bad per se we're going to select back on the roku remote and then you can do that
for each of the individual areas you have your keep watching area so here you can see i've got
one that i've finished and i'm on to episode seven i've got one that i almost finished and
left the credits and then i have one that i just started looking at and you can see each of them
has a runner on the bottom that lets you know how far into the episode you are and i'm glad
they have that i also appreciate for each of the descriptions they show season one episode whatever
and a release date's kind of cool to know too here we have my list now this is another edition that
was done while i was testing it when i originally started they did not have a my list area and
i don't know about you but in 2021 you can't launch a streaming service and not have a my lists
area you cannot be without streaming profiles in 2021 my list is kind of an important thing
and i'm glad they added that because that was a big ding that i had against them originally so
here you can see a couple of shows that i added to my list this is actually a movie so they do
offer both shows and movies we're gonna come down first row after that is originals and when i say
first row i appreciate the fact that it's hey here are the channels that you could go through
here's your keep watching here's your my list they don't bury your list or they keep watching
like some other services do even though they want you to watch their originals they're going to let
you watch what you have selected first so that is great coming down we have originals and if we
were to select on one of these just to show you what we're looking at you have a watch now you
have the my list which wasn't there originally you've got a lovely synopsis up there with a
big graphic in the background you can see the episodes you can see extra information about this
you can see related shows so hey if i like this what else will i like here you go if you like this
show you probably will like some of these other choices and then about so again about just going
to get rid of the little section down there and then just because i talked about it here's extras
all your clips for this particular show no spoilers haven't seen it coming back we have shows
recommended for you and i'm going to say based on the actual things that i have been watching
which are pretty much star trek and one show from the late 90s i would say this is probably
an apt recommendation like a lot of star trek is in here a lot of star trek and then things
that are kind of of a similar humor vein as the show from the 90s that i had listed there
movies recommended for you just like before it's gonna recommend some movies uh again it's the
film strip not sure how i feel about that but it does take up less real estate on the home
screen which i do appreciate i also appreciate that the background is black and you have a blue
indicator around what you're highlighting some other services make it a little harder to see
i'm looking at you discovery plus with that white that white square around what you're highlighting
coming down we have trending shows one more trending movies
black voices matter on now paramount plus is one of those services that's a little unique
in that not only is it a video on demand service it also offers a selection of live tv broadcasts
it also is located in another area so we're not going to click into one of these just yet
coming down reality shows recently added drama shows star trek lower deck because
i watched that it's recommending this documentaries and then drama movies
if i select the back button on the roku remote it brings me over to the side panel which would then
let me hit the home button which sadly does not bring me all the way back up to the top
you actually have to scroll all the way back and i wish they would allow me to either double tap
the back button on the roku remote to bring me back to the top or let me hit the back
button which brings me over to the home on the side and then select home and it would
bring me all the way to the top there's room for improvement here but it's not terrible
so that was our home screen let us go to the side panel where we can see home all the way
at the top we have the option for search sadly it is a hunt and peck so if we come down and select
so i want you to notice how long it took to auto populate that side panel
with possible things that i was looking for i wish that was a little faster
but it did get the idea that i was trying to look for star trek or something that started with star
we're going to say yes okay this is what i was looking for and it brings us
to the watch screen just like it did before we're going to come back because that was our search
feature and pass home we have shows this is going to break down everything that paramount plus has
to offer show wise right now we're on the popular so it's going to bring everything in that's
popular notice that they're not doing the film strip style on this page they're actually doing
a tiled interface now it looks like it goes on forever but it really doesn't because this is only
the popular if you select all shows then you can go through an a to z all the shows that they offer
you can break it down further on the side whether you want originals dramas comedy
so they help you to sort through this notice on this page there is no actual
search function so you cannot search within you have to kind of click and then scroll through to
find what you're looking for not sure how i feel about that but not terrible if we come again over
to the left we get a similar layout for movies popular tiled interface we can come action and
then you can scroll through this particular one if we come all the way down to the bottom there isn't
there is an a to z listing so you can take quite a bit of time going through paramount's backlog
because there are a lot of movies i will say this there are much more move there are many more
movies than there are in comparison to tv shows currently and we'll go back and come to live tv
live tv i'm going to roll in some footage from my other camera because well it does not appear that
paramount plus likes my capture card and obviously is blocking it because of copyright issues that's
fine just know that you have a small selection of live tv that you can actually access along with
the video on demand coming back to the side we have news news is just going to be a breakdown of
our individual news stations they will be live or recorded again rolling in some footage now because
problematic they don't like the fact that i'm using capture card for this but what are you gonna
do on the side last thing is brands and brands is a little weird because if you notice you'll
notice on the left hand side it looks pretty much like it's just the offerings that you had at the
top the hub so i feel that this is like an extra thing that they really didn't need to add in here
but i guess i understand why it's there we're going to come down to one of these items on my
watch list and we're going to go down to related shows because i want to see if they have no they
don't have the show i was looking for so we'll come up to comedy central and come down to
celebrity deathmatch and i do this because not all of the shows have all of the seasons
or episodes here we can see this particular one only has seasons five and six i know there's a lot
more than that because we're missing one through four at the very least they do not have access to
all their catalog yet and that's partially due because a lot of things are out other streaming
services at the moment so in time these will come back and you will be able to see everything in one
place another thing to consider and again i will throw in some footage from another camera is that
even though i pay for the ad free version i still get a pre-roll ad and the paramount plus local
logo granted this is less than 60 seconds but if i am paying for the ad free version i would
prefer that i not get even a pre-roll like that likewise unlike other services it does not allow
you to skip the intro i've become extraordinarily spoiled and once i've seen an intro a few times i
would just like to skip it especially if i'm binge watching can't do that here i will give
paramount plus kudos in that you can fast forward and actually get a depiction as to what you're
fast-forwarding through meaning you can kind of even though they don't let you skip the intro
guesstimate based on fast forwarding where the intro lies so that's a nice thing that they they
have as opposed to some things that you get with other streaming services so we're going to come
all the way down and select profiles because we're going to show you the difference between the adult
or main profile and a child's profile here you see featured and then it's just nickelodeon nick jr
kid rewind awesome adventures you can see it's it's not searching necessarily by channels it's
it's subject matter in a lot of cases and then you can come to shows and then you can see all shows
animation nick jr and family that's because this particular profile i made it a much much lower
profile even though i see or you're afraid of the dark which i'm not sure if that's a y7 or not
oh yeah why seven okay scared the beginnings of me when i was a kid i remember this show
and there you go that's that's a look at the child's profile just in case you were wondering
what the major difference between the two was you heard me mention that there is an ad free version
of this and again there are two payment models 4.99 a month gets you the ad supported model i
did not do the ad supported i went straight for the ad free which is 9.99 a month you can save
a little bit if you prepay a year in advance if you want to do that it's up to you for me i
am catching up on a lot of star trek thing that i have kind of been out of the loop with would
this be a streaming service that i continuously pay for realistically myself no however i can
see adding it into my streaming rotation meaning when something comes out and it's fully out
and i want to watch it i'll turn it on i'll come back i'll watch it for a month or two
i have family members who they live on cbs stuff and they just keep it all the time
is there enough in the cbs catalog that you personally find interesting to watch only you
can say for sure for me a lot of it is the older star trek stuff and some of the newer
again newer star trek stuff aside from that some of the originals do look interesting but
when i would turn it back on and binge watch whatever latest star trek i can watch one of
their originals or two of their originals that is the beauty of cord cutting you don't have to have
everything on all the time and the way things are going every other cable network is going to have
their service plus is this the right streaming service for you probably not if it's your only
streaming service this would definitely be a supplemental streaming service on top of a netflix
or a hulu is there a lot that you can watch right now there is hit or miss again remember
some of those some of these will not have all of the pat back catalog so until those contracts
run out and things come back you're not gonna get everything i will say that paramount plus has been
making strives to improve their streaming service again even within the month that i've been testing
it they added two different you know things that i wanted again a lot for the adult profiles and the
ability to create a watch list so i'm not going to fault them there they're definitely making strides
so i feel that this is a service that will only continue to get better going forward and again if
it has the stuff that you like to watch personally it doesn't hurt to give it a shot with that being
said i have been Wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave
them in the area below and as always thanks for watching if you found this video helpful consider
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