There is a great deal of gnashing of teeth whenever a streaming service increases its prices. There is a rush among media outlets to update SEO-friendly posts and offer instant alternatives, as if it were all a zero-sum game and you are able to see the same things on all services. Or maybe it’s time to go back to cable altogether because video streaming is too expensive and it’s too hard to find what you want to watch. We’re in one of those times where it feels like all the services are all raising prices, to the point where Engadget asked outright “Is streaming still worth it?”
This is all missing the point. Horribly.
As far as the cost of video streaming is concerned, no one likes to see prices go up (except, of course, the hikers). No one wants to be told they have to pay more than before – especially if you’re not getting more for your money next month than you did last month. No one wants to be told they have to pay instead of getting free access to their parent’s Netflix account. I understood. This is basic human nature.
But streaming video services aren’t making widgets. And it’s not as easy to say, “Yes, we’re going to be more expensive, but we’re also going to give you 100 more shows and movies to choose from.” Because numbers don’t matter. Heck, the quality of the shows and movies doesn’t even matter. It’s whether the service has what you want to see. And they don’t have to have everything you want to see – just enough to keep you around, Or, if you’re smart and visit a couple of times a year, they’re able to schedule things in a way that they you keep coming back,
This isn’t even about the first-world problem of having too many streaming services – both live and on-demand – that make it difficult to figure out where to watch things. Sure, it’s annoying to have to find out if a game is on ESPN, or FS1, or FS2, or ESPN+, or TBS, or TNT, or Max, or Paramount+. It’s annoying to find out if a new movie is streaming on Hulu, or Netflix, or wherever. But you also can’t go without seeing thousands of search results on how to watch a new movie or live sporting event. All you have to do is ask.
And different streaming platforms are trying to integrate things so you can just ask them instead of a search engine in a web browser. Google TV does this. Amazon Fire TV does this. Roku does this. Apple TV does this.
No, for my money, here’s why video streaming — with all its faults, and with all its price increases — will keep me from ever going back to cable: It’s all about flexibility.
If you don’t live in a major metro area, chances are you’ll only have one option for cable (this logic works the same for satellite). This means a single point of failure. This means you are stuck with their plans, their channels, and their hardware. This means that if you want to change things, you have to step out of their box. If you’re lucky, you can change things online. But you may still have hardware left that needs to be returned.
Taking things into your own hands with streaming means you have to do more work. You need to find out which live service has the channels you want. At least YouTube TV – which is still growing – and Hulu with live TV and all the rest still have some real honest people competing with channel lineups, add-ons and other incentives. This is where differentiators like NFL Sunday Ticket can really matter.
You’ll need to look at which services – and how much – will fit into your monthly budget. And you’ll need to audit those expenses twice a year, lest you end up paying more for services than you thought, which shows you weren’t really paying that much attention. Yes, it’s a bit of work. But when it comes to your expenses, you also have to do your due diligence.
And you also have to figure out what hardware you want to do all this on. This is probably the easiest part of this whole equation. We’ve got our list of the best streaming hardware, but really it’s all about the ecosystem. If you’re fully committed to Apple, you’ll get the most out of Apple TV 4K. If you’re one of the Android faithful, a Chromecast with Google TV will do just fine (albeit a bit of a stretch). Or you can go with Amazon Fire TV or Roku. Or if you don’t really care and you have a relatively new television, use whatever is built-in. However, they are all one-time costs, and most don’t even top $100.
And You Own that hardware – not the company that is incentivized to make sure you’re tied to it.
Hey, you don’t have to do any of this if you don’t want to. FAST services (that’s “free, advertising-supported television”) are blurring the lines between linear TV – that is, channels that have everyone watching the same thing at the same time – and on-demand viewing. . Add over-the-air TV into the equation – broadcast channels available through an antenna – and a little video source called YouTube and you can still find plenty to watch without spending anything monthly. (And that’s before we even get close to pronouncing the word TikTok.)
so. Streaming video is still worth it. It’s not as simple as the old days, when we paid one bill for a set of channels and we didn’t have anywhere near the same options for what we watched – and when and how we watched it. And you can control how little – or how much – you spend on it. No one said the future wouldn’t be a mess.
But I will never go back to the way it was.
