Who selects the highlights for the highlight packages they have for each CL match? Someone absolutely clueless about soccer, clearly. Some of the things included in the 8- minute highlights: A nice step-over in midfield that leads to nothing A 92nd minute first yellow card A scoring chance that was offside anyway, plus the replays of it.
AppleTV has that same "start from the beginning" feature for MLS. I like how Peacock has the "catch up via key plays" feature.
In a semi-related note, I just turned on the NFL game that's streaming on Amazon Prime, and it had an option to view a "Rapid Recap" in addition to watching live or starting from the beginning. Hopefully these kinds of options start becoming ubiquitous as more and more content moves to streaming only.
I dream of a universal GUI for streaming. That would be one big step toward making streaming almost as easy as my old DVR. Even if fragmented streaming is naturally slower to get to the game/show you wanna watch, whatever they can do to maximize it’s user-friendly universality will go a long towards providing a high quality experience. Ps. Note that I said dream not expect
What I think we're gonna get...and maybe already have is a system where you use your device's home screen to type in the name of a show or movie and then it goes into that app (which you have to download, of course) and then it automatically opens it. If the appropriate app isn't subscribed to, then a message will appear saying: "Subscribe to app for $X." Unfortunately, the algorithms will try their hardest to sell unwanted/unnecessary subscriptions. "You already saw this actor. Watch his new/other show on an app you don't subscribe to." We're probably never going to get the same interface for similar reasons as to why MacOS and Windows are two different GUIs.
@TheJoeGreene I just used Peacock's chat program. Of course they couldn't find anything. You're saying I have to actually go through with the cancel and then check my email for the "we miss you" promos? I'm obviously assuming you're talking about Paramount+, but if it works for Peacock too...win!
We no longer have Peacock because it used to be "free" for us as Xfinity/Comcast subscribers. Then, they started to charge for it and we decided it's not worth it to pay $ 6-7 a month when it's exclusively used for EPL only. (I can see highlights of Peacock-only EPL games elsewhere so if I miss a game that was on Peacock...that's the tradeoff I can live with). If Peacock offers 50% off annual sub like what P+ did, then I'd sign up. At that price point, it's worth it to me.
I have Peacock during IndyCar season only, and that's because the secondary races and recordings of the regular races (that mostly air on NBC) are there.
For Paramount+ I didn't even have to wait for an email to offer the new deal. My subscription ended, they emailed me that it did, and within an hour I had signed up with the exact same login info and credit card with the 50% off deal for the annual contract. I'm not sure if Peacock is that cut and dry, but Paramount+ was literally the minute my old subscription ended I was eligible for any "returning" subscriber deal.
Right now if you have a Roku device or TV, anything that's in the "What to Watch" section can be clicked on and take you directly into the corresponding app. You don't even have to search for it most of the time. Netflix is the big holdout on that, but the sports section of it is pretty well organized and very accurate.
Unless... there could be third party, aggregating service(s) which offer a single, unified GUI and controls. Obviously all the root streamers would have to provide some sort of API streaming access to such an aggregator, and probably allow billing to flow through the aggregator as well. I guess it would somewhat emulate the old cable/satellite business model, allowing the customer to reap the ease-of-use benefits of such a model. I use Roku and it does make the process slightly easier, BUT every app still has a different interface, which becomes abundantly clear when you do something like RWD/FFD... they all have different approaches, different sensitivities/speeds, etc. There are of course many other functional differences, like MyStuff/List, which each streamer probably thinks is a key differentiator, but in fact just makes for a more frustrating, fragmented experience for the customer. Compared to the unified simplicity of a DVR.
I have no idea what the hell a Plex server is, although I have an idea. I do use the regular Plex app when I can't find something. It tells me where to find it.
That's a hilariously contradictory sentence! But it's a very good point. Plex has been around for a long time. I've never used it, and kind a forgot it was still alive. I guess if the planets aligned something like Plex could be developed to be a universal client for most/all of the major streaming services. But from what little I know about Plex ( which may be less than you ) I don't think that's possible now or likely anytime soon. But I bet this solution/idea is more limited by politics than technology.
Someone I know has all sorts of movies and shows saved on his server. Anywhere he can connect to the internet, the movies can be accessed. That's a hell of a thing he has.
My boss has the same setup. He's got something close to 70 TB of digital content stored. He also uses Plex to organize the shows he watching on the various streamers, but I think he just did it there because he was already using Plex and didn't want to move to another option.
Xfinity/Comcast is dumb. If they had immediately offered 50% off (or some other too good to be true) deal right when we cancelled Peacock - which is owned by Xfinity/Comcast!!! - we would have signed up, thus, they wouldn’t have lost one more sub on a streaming app I’ve heard is struggling. In fact, I think the only streamer who’s not struggling too much is Netflix. All others have sub issues. And not to go too far off topic, but I think streamers might go to this business model: they know people sign up for a certain show/period of time then cancel and re-subscribe when the show/particular sport returns. I think they’re going to force people into 1 year minimum subscriptions to get around that. Streaming is turning into cable/satellite!
The only real positive right now is they're so starved for people that don't churn subscriptions every month or so that they're giving those deep discounts on annual subscriptions. Peacock's annual deals are essentially the equivalent of 10 months at the monthly price, but that's not really a discount. Chop off another 25% and you're looking at something worth considering. Otherwise, why wouldn't people just sign up for 1-3 months during the year when the content they want most is available. Maybe the weirdest part is Peacock seems to reserve their best deals for students. They just offered a $1.99/mo for the year deal but only for college students. The companies aren't doing a good job of figuring out the market.
I've been certain this is coming. Even if they keep monthly subs, they'll make the price prohibitively high so as to force people onto annual subs.
A big part of it is the existing contracts for sports. Cable and satellite were giving national and regional sports channels more money than their actual viewership and hardcore fanbase will without that model. They haven't figured out advertising well enough to make up the difference and now they're in a situation where something has to give because they initially priced the streaming services well below what they needed to even come close to breaking even. The real kicker is going to be what happens with the upcoming TV contracts. The NBA will probably be fine since they're renewing after the 24-25 season but after that is going to be very interesting. We just saw the Pac 12 disintegrate because the networks did valuations on every single college football program and they didn't have enough value to justify another big contract. The NFL is locked in because they're the actual ratings driver and they've got a finger in basically every pie through 2033. The 4 major college conferences are all locked up through at least 2029. MLB is too complicated to figure out. The NHL's next deal comes up around 2029 or 2030. CBS/Paramount+ is pretty smartly situated right now. They've got weekly NFL games for another decade. They've got Big 10 sports, including 2 championship games, through 2029. They've got the two biggest golf tournaments along with about 20 others. They've got March Madness. They have an exclusive weekend for the Army-Navy game each year and feature the service academies quite a bit on CBSSN. They've made strategic pickups for soccer with proven entities like the big 3 UEFA club competitions and Serie A while also adding a few potentially high upside options like the NWSL and both the Argentine and Brazilian leagues. They've also dipped their toes into areas like WNBA and Formula E racing. There's enough value there to actually demand a bit of money if it all went to either OTA or streaming only. The trick for the streamers is going to be figuring out what actually has value vs what was filling mindless TV watching time. The trick for the pro leagues is figuring out how to not implode if their revenue suddenly takes a step back and they've got a bunch of player contracts they can no longer afford.
This is partly what killed Setanta Sports USA. They were fine during the EPL season, but once that final weekend was played, the cancelations were through the roof. If they had a deal "pay for 10 months up front and get a whole year" then people might have been tempted into that.
Linear streaming services (YTTV, DirecTV Stream, Hulu) have a few major advantages when it comes to pricing. 1) They're not paying to send techs...partially because 2) They're not using their own infrastructure to send the signal to the customer. 3) As said, their prices are deliberately low. Hulu or whoever can afford a price increase because it's "still better than cable." When those channel owners demand more, those providers are less likely to play hardball.