Cordkillers 191 – Netflix Original Spaghetti (w/ Sarah Lane)

Cordkillers / October 17th, 2017

Movies Anywhere makes movies easier, Netflix beats expectations, and Sarah Lane needs movie recommendations. With special guest Sarah Lane.

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CordKillers: Ep. 191 – Netflix Original Spaghetti
Recorded: October 16 2017
Guest: Sarah Lane

Intro Video

Primary Target

  • Movies Anywhere: Watch all your Amazon, Google, and iTunes titles in one place
    – Disney has launched an expanded version of its Disney Movies Anywhere service called Movies Anywhere. The service allows users to access movies purchased from Amazon, Google, Apple or Vudu all in one place. Movies Anywhere uses the Keychest technology implemented by Disney Movies Anywhere. Studios involved included Disney, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner Brothers. Discussions are ongoing with Paramount and Lionsgate but movies from those studios will not be available at launch. Movies Anywhere is available on Android, Android TV, Amazon Fire, iOS, Apple TV, Roku, and Chromecast.

How to Watch

What to Watch

What We’re Watching

Front Lines

Dispatches from the Front
Hi Tom and Brian,

Long time listener and fan. The past two years I have been using cable for just local channels and Playstation Vue. I am about to close on my first house so because of the impending move I started to re evaluate how I cord cut.

First off I looked my antenna options because of the surrounding mountains. As of right now basic cable will be used but in a few weeks I will mount a large antenna off of the chimney of the house, hopefully it will work and I can cut basic out of my plan including a high $12 per month DTA cost.
Next I am looking to beef up my plex account, maybe to a lifetime plex pass. The service has been growing a lot in the last year and I have been impressed with the new additions. For services I am trying YouTube TV for CW live content. I am not sure if I will keep it due to the lack of DIY and HGTV and I do not want both YouTube TV and PS Vue.

I have been happy for the most part with PS Vue, but it has been several months since Sony and Viacom had their dispute. When I signed up I had all those channels and I felt like I was getting an amazing deal, now I feel like its an okay deal. I would pay another $5 with PS Vue if they added CW live, brought back Viacom channels, and added the History channel.
For the most part I have been very happy with my cord cutting experience.

Keep Up the Good Work

– Scott

 

 

 

Hey Tom & Brian!
As you know, Hulu recently dropped their price for new subscribers to only $5.99 per month for the first year. I had just signed up for Hulu about a few weeks ago to binge watch the Handmaid’s Tale, so I was pretty bummed to see them lower the price after I joined.

I decided to contact Hulu and see if I could get the new pricing even though I am now a current Hulu subscriber. I was pleased to find out that they would give me the lower rate, no questions asked!! This might not work for everyone, but you might want to pass this along to other Cordkillers as a new version of Brian’s Chicken challenge.

Love the show!
– Josh

 

 

 

Howdy,

We’ve been internet only with phone (pacemaker monitoring & 911 health reasons) on TWC’s fastest speed since Cordkillers premiered, and have been eagerly awaiting G-Fiber’s arrival. Every truck sighting elicits excitement. Our home is 12 miles from town center nestled in a valley, which, though within city limits, would necessitate an expensive roof-mounted antenna to get broadcast TV.

Since we have been streaming (Google WiFi mesh) using Chromecasts and Rokus all this time, a speed quadrupling at two-thirds or less the cost is eagerly anticipated. If G-Fiber is not offering phone services [?] there are other ISP services we can use.

Cheers, as Always!

– Stephen

Links

2017 Winter Movie Draft
patreon.com/cordkillers

Cordkillers 190 – The Sidekick: Bevin (w/ MikeTV)

Cordkillers / October 10th, 2017

Netflix is more expensive, the Stephen King visual universe expands, and less TV on Google Fiber. With special guest MikeTV.

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CordKillers: Ep. 190 – The Sidekick: Bevin
Recorded: October  9 2017
Guest: MikeTv

Intro Video

Primary Target

  • Netflix Raises Its Subscription Prices
    – Netflix raised prices of two of its three plans by $1 a month. The basic single screen plan stays at $7.99. The two screen “standard” plan goes from $9.999 to $10.99 and the 4-screen 4K “Premium” plan goes from $11.99 to $13.99. New customers get the new prices now. Existing customers will be informed by Netflix soon and see it on their bill in November.

How to Watch

  • Google Fiber Drops Cable TV Package For New Cities
    – Google Fiber announced that for its upcoming launch in Louisville and San Antonio markets, it will only offer internet service, with no TV package. Last year, Google announced that Fiber would halt future deployments, making these two markets the last confirmed committments to roll out the service.

What to Watch

What We’re Watching

Front Lines

Dispatches from the Front

Hi guys, just wanted to let you know that as an old guy, I enjoyed Blade Runner 2049, but apparently it is a failure because only old guys like it. But on a related note, why do the studios fail to promote the sequels that seem to be so endemic these days by pushing the previous films in a series on the streaming platforms. Blade Runner is a great example since, though I find it hard to imagine, so many have never seen the first film. Another example was the Kingsmen sequel; I saw the previews for the Golden Circle several months ago, and had never heard of the original. I had to use my Netflix DVD subscription to get a chance to see it.

Without a TV or cable, I can’t see whether I would want to spend money on seeing either show, but without seeing them, I won’t spend the money to buy them on Amazon. Shouldn’t there be a better way? Or should I just wait till they show up on Prime or Netflix?

Keep up the good work

– Dave

 

 

 

Hey Bri,

I signed up for Movie pass when they dropped the price to 10 dollars a month and loved it initially. I could use their “E-Ticket” feature at my local theater. Meaning I could pick my seat and buy the ticket from my house without ever using the MasterCard they shipped to me. It was great and I’ve seen more movies in the past 3 weeks then I did in the last 3 months.

Till… something change… They apparently lost the deal with Goodrich Theaters that allowed E-Tickets and now every theater in my area requires me to buy the ticket within 100 yards of the theater. The love is now gone… I like picking my seat and planning ahead of time and I’m willing to go to the theater less and get the best experience (picking my seat… etc) for the big movies than get some second class access to the smaller films while their in theaters.

So I cancelled my membership – which you can do directly from the app so no complaints there. But its just not worth it, even at 10 bucks a month. I mght start it back up again if they get the E-ticket feature back but until then… I’m out.

Thought you and Tom would like the input – thanks for the show(s)!

Sincerely,
– Norman

 

 

 

hey, I have no idea whether anyone else has been similarly affected, a google search turned up nothing, but while looking over my credit card bill I noticed that I had been charged 3 times in September for Filmstruck. Twice on the usual billing day, and then once again on the following day. I used the chat option from the Filmstruck help page and they immediately resolved the issue and refunded two of the charges. I don’t always go over my monthly transactions and very easily could have missed this, so I was thinking there’s probably a lot of other subscribers who (if this isn’t just something that just happened to me) might never know they’ d been overcharged.

Thanks! Love the show 🙂
–James
 

 

 

CBS All Access and Big Brother

One aspect of CBS All Access I think is missed often in discussions is the inclusion of Big Brother Live feeds. For years CBS has been selling access to the feeds and have a faithful audience for them. One Year ago they ran a Special Season of Big Brother over the top which was only available on CBS All Access. So for those customers everything else is Value add.

Still debating on if its worth it to watch the New Star Trek.

– Scott
 

 

Links

2017 Winter Movie Draft
patreon.com/cordkillers
 

Cordkillers 189 – Space Babies (w/ Nicole Lee)

Cordkillers / October 3rd, 2017

Who has the best streaming service and Roku’s new lineup of boxes and dongles. With special guest Nicole Lee.

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CordKillers: Ep. 189 – Space Babies
Recorded: October 2 2017
Guest: Nicole Lee.

Intro Video

  • None

Primary Target

  • DirecTV Now, Sling TV, Hulu TV: Best Internet TV Channel Deal
    – TiVo studied survey data of the most desirable TV channels among US and Canada viewers with the current offerings from major Internet-only services.
    – The survey showed the 4 broadcast networks led the way followed by Discovery then History then FX.
    – The survey determined 27 channels that most consumers wanted.
    – TiVo’s analysis showed the best coverage per dollar spent
    – DirecTV Now’s “Just Right” bundle $50/mo. covered 85%
    – DirecTV Now “Live a little” bundle $35/mo. – 82%
    – Sling TV combined $40/mo. 67%
    – Hulu TV $40 63%
    – PSVUe $39 59%
    – Sling blue 56% Orange 44%
    – YouTube TV $35 37%
  • TiVo’s Q2 2017 Video Trends Report

How to Watch

  • Roku rolls out Roku OS 8, refreshes TV hardware with 4K and faster processors
    – Roku just announced updates to five of its streaming devices. Roku’s $50 streaming stick gets a 50% faster processor and support for voice control. The $70 Roku Streaming Stick Plus has 4K and better wifi range with the wireless module built into the cable. The $30 Roku Express and $40 Roku Express Plus get faster processors and the Express Plus keeps its composite ports. The Roku Ultra isn’t being changed but the price did drop from $130 to $100. Roku OS 8 is also out for all supported boxes. It can integrate OTA programming and adds single sign-on.

What to Watch

What We’re Watching

Front Lines

Dispatches from the Front

I was listening to you talk about the new Trek when I had the following thoughts: I enjoy Cordkillers. I enjoy it enough that I give money through Patreon for content I could get for free. I also enjoy Star Trek. I view CBS All Access as a racket though. I won’t be giving money to their success and will instead wait for Trek on some other platform. On the one hand I pay for free content and on the other hand I want paid content for free. I can’t explain it. Go figure. Anyhow, you guys are worth the dough. Keep up the good work.

– Roy

 

 

 

I couldn’t believe what I heard today. After listening to my favorite podcast my app automatically starting playing my 3rd favorite. While putting in a hard day’s work looking busy and trying not to get caught playing on my phone. It happened. I thought somehow Trump invaded my air waves but It didn’t sound like the person was holding his hand in the air when he talked. How could you hate the big bang theory. It’s my favorite show of all time. So I decided I will donate $1 an episode but you must confess your love for the show.

– Kevin

 

 

 

Dear Tom and Brian,

I have long felt 2 things are true about CBS:
They are the home of many of my favorite shows
They are very stingy about rebroadcast rights for their shows, to the point of being greedy. Examples:
I was a fan of The Mentalist but I had to watch it live because it wasn’t available On Demand on our cable system like most other shows.
Their new show, Seal Team, is not listed in my cable company’s On Demand library; I guess if you don’t catch it live you have to watch it on CBS All Access.
As Tom has said, they often only allow a few episodes of a season to be available On Demand at any given time.
Contrast that with these examples from NBC:
· The entire first season of This is Us is available On Demand.
· All 8 seasons of Will and Grace appear to be available on my cable system’s On Demand library.
· You’d think they actually want to give people the opportunity to get caught up on these shows if they missed them when they first aired!

I feel like CBS believes they have such great and popular content that people will put up with their shenanigans and pay whatever they ask in order to watch it. I guess it remains to be seen whether this is true.

I do intend to sign up for CBS All Access. I tried it before and didn’t have very good luck with it. I intend to quit the subscription as soon as the Star Trek show is over.

Did you know they’re going to have a break starting November 5, restarting sometime in January? I bet they’ll get a lot of people cancelling in between . . .

Your Boss,
– Beelissa

 

 

 

I am considering CBS all access. I watched Star Trek Discovery and liked it enough to start the consideration. I am going away for a large part of December and can foresee some DVR shortages creeping up and CBS All Access could help, that is if I can watch the past five episodes or more of some of there current shows. I did some searching to see if I could find a chart of what shows have Full access and which have partial access, like your Supergirl example. Do you know of any such chart or site with information like that.

Thanks for any help,

– Mike

Links

2017 Winter Movie Draft
patreon.com/cordkillers
 

Cordkillers 187 – Embarrassment of Riches (w/ Scott Johnson)

Cordkillers / September 19th, 2017

Hulu wins the Emmys, JJ Abrams is back on Star Wars, and what we think of the Apple TV 4K. With special guest Scott Johnson.

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CordKillers: 187 – Embarrassment of Riches
Recorded:  September 18 2017
Guest: Scott Johnson

Intro Video

Primary Target

How to Watch

  • New Apple TV 4K announced, launches September 22nd for $179
    – Apple introduced the Apple TV 4K with support for HDR10 and DolbyVision. The new Apple TV runs on an A10X processor with a new tvOS. And Major studios, exclusing Disney, will make 4K movies available in iTunes for the same price as HD and Apple will upgrade previous purchases. The TV app is coming to seven new countries starting with Canada and Australia. Apple is also adding live news and sports to the TV app. The new Apple TV is available with 32GB for $179 and 64 GB for $199 for pre-order September 15 shipping September 22.

What to Watch

What We’re Watching

Front Lines

  • Emmy winners 2017: the complete list
    – Netflix: Jon Lithgow (Crown) Aziz Ansari and Lena Waithe (Master of None) Charlie Brooker writing (Black Mirror) San Junipero Television Movie (Black Mirror)
    Hulu: Bruce Miller writing (Handmaid’s Tale) Ann Dowd (Handmaid’s Tale) Reed Moranao directing (Handmaid’s Tale) Best Actress Elizabeth Moss (Handmaid’s Tale) Best series Handmaid’s Tale
  • WSJ: Discovery, AMC and Viacom try a sports-free streaming bundle
    – The Wall Street Journal reports that Discovery Communications, Viacom Inc., A+E Networks, AMC Networks, and Scripps Networks Interactive are teaming up to launch a sports-free streaming service. The expectation is it will cost $20 a month. College-oriented streaming service Philo will provide the technology for the platform.
  • Time’s streaming service gets rebranded as ‘PeopleTV,’ passes 100M views in year one
    – Time has rebranded the People/Entertainment Weekly Network free ad-supported streaming service PeopleTV. The network streamed from the Emmys red carpet and provided the stream on Twitter. Time says the service has received 100 million views since launching in September of last year.
  • YouTube TV is expanding to eight more cities
    – YouTube TV expanded to Albuquerque, Austin, Birmingham, Greenville, Norfolk, Portland, Raleigh, and Sacramento. YouTube TV now offers almost 50 networks and costs $35 a month.
  • Hulu reportedly plans to spend around $2.5 billion on programming this year
    – Variety reports that Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins told an audience in New York City that Hulu plans to spend $2.5 billion on content this year. That’s less than Netflix’s $6 billion and Amazon’s predicted $4.5 billion but more than Apple’s $1 billion. If you’re keeping track. Hulu has about 12 million subscribers next to Amazon’s 80 million and Netflix’s 100 million.
  • Sling TV is now giving away digital antennas to those who prepay for its service
    – Sling announced two new bundles. If you prepay for two months of service you get a free Winegard indoor antenna. Prepay for three months and pay an additional $70 and you get the antenna plus an adapter and Sling’s AirTV Player which integrates over-the-air channels into Sling TV. Sling will verify you live in an area that can get OTA channels.

Dispatches from the Front

Hi there, Brian, Tom and Bryce!

In May I recorded a show about film franchises and late sequels. …one of our guests who works doing PR for some film distribution companies mentioned that he already knows who is going to own the franchise for the upcoming sequels after Sony leaves.

This falls under the “people familiar with the matter” category. Long story short: the rights go to 20th Century Fox. They already have the distribution rights for home video (BD, DVD) since 2002 so that’s the main reason they are up front of everybody else in the race for The Bond, besides any extra deals that they have been negociating.

However (and this is very interesting) since both Amazon and Apple are apparently on the race for the rights of the franchise, I wonder if the original plans have changed with a better offering. Video Streaming and Digital Sales have a stronger arm with any of those companies. Way stronger than Fox. This makes me think that perhaps they could acquire the rights if they make the right proposal to Barbara Broccoli, but since they already have a stablished bond (pun intended) with Fox, I doubt it.

You can see the video with the interview here and the comment from Jaime is at the 1:42:00 timecode. It’s all in Spanish and unfortunatelly there are no subtitles available. That’s the video for our Patreons so if you want to link it, please use the Patreon Post instead.

– Dan

 

 

Howdy Brian, Tom, Bryce, and Roberto:
Enjoyed the discussion in Cordkillers #186 about the Multi-cultural approach of Netflix.

I am a big fan of Japanese Anime as I watch Crunchyroll and Funimation and more. Been a fan of Anime since the 70s. Unfortunately, Anime still suffers from prejudice which is not deserved because many people still associate Anime with sexy fanservice and violence. Many Anime contain parody and often reference other anime even with cross-overs with characters in other anime animation. So the new title “Neo Yokio” seems to be a typical style for Anime. Parody is very common in Japanese Anime.

…

I am very happy that Netflix is expanding it’s Anime offerings and even producing original Anime titles. It may not appeal to some people, but there are many Anime fans out there like me.

Love Cordkillers! Keep up the Great Work!

– Michael

 

 

 

Tom and Brian,
I think you’re underestimating the number of people who use Kodie on a Fire TV Stick. This topic comes up all the time on our neighborhood Facebook page and based on the number of people who brag about owning one I would say about 10% of my neighbors have one (so about 50 to 100 households).
I don’t think they realize it’s pirating or at least they have convinced themselves it’s not becuase they agure that since they bought it from a vendor it must be legal (with that agruement all the pot I bought and smoked in high school must have been legal too).
They talk about how nice it was to watch the fight or big game for free but I don’t think they realize it’s piracy since they are using an app and stream, like Popcorn Time, and not going to some shady site to download something.

You rock!

– Charles

 

 

Hey Tom and Brian,

I really do have a friend who has the Fire Stick with all the “free” stuff, and he’s actually made fun of me for being a cord cutter without one. He bought the Stick from Amazon and sent it to a guy who loaded Kody and all the extensions onto it. Bottom line, it’s crap. Live streams were incredibly low quality (like RealPlayer in 2002 low quality) and they kept buffering even over our other friend’s gigabit Comcast, and movies were mostly guerrilla-cam or Blu-Ray rips with GIANT Korean subtitles. I stated my “it’s crap” opinion to him, and his response was “Who cares? It’s free!” – which comes from a guy who makes six figures. Personally, I would rather spend my money on better quality legal versions of content, whether it’s a subscribing to a service or renting/buying a digital copy of a show or movie. Anyway, love the show.

– Joel

 

 

 

I know it’s not exactly related to the conversation, but I’ve found a fairly comfortable setup for over-the-air TV in my house.

-I have a cheap HTPC hooked up to my TV
-I have this USB TV dual-tuner ($70): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015IL0FIW/
-I use this antenna which picks up pretty every station in Seattle ($26): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FUB4ZG8/
-I use NextPVR for all my scheduling and TV viewing (Free): http://www.nextpvr.com/
-I subscribe to Schedules Direct for the TV listings that NextPVR uses ($25/year): http://www.schedulesdirect.org/

It wasn’t the most user friendly thing to set up initially, but after that initial setup it’s been working really well ever since.

– Jordan
 

Links

2017 Winter Movie Draft
patreon.com/cordkillers