meowmommy

Weirdest thing just happened when I went into Hulu. On my Continue Watching list, it had just four shows, all of which I've never seen, some of which I've never heard of, all of which I have no interest in, and none of the shows that are actually supposed to be on the list. Had to go in, mark each of the programs as Dislike, exit out of the app, and go back in. Voila, my regular shows came back. I'd rather they showed the old Night Court. I'm still dithering on whether to subscribe to Peacock. Virtually everything I would watch would be stuff I've already seen, like Top Chef.

Every transaction I ever put on a credit card shows up as "pending" for a couple of days, while they verify the charge. Then the pending drops off. I'm absolutely anal about checking my credit cards every day, so that's how I know this. One option, if you have a Roku TV, may be to subscribe to Peacock through the Roku channel. I wonder if that would sidestep any credit card issues if you're using a third party app.

Irks me that my late unlamented cable company used to give us Peacock Premium for free. They got rid of that, got rid of Usenet, got rid of email, got rid of personal web space, got rid of unlimited data, and of course, I finally got rid of them. If I get Peacock--and I'm still kicking it around--it will be ad-free or nothing. Asked DD if she likes the Summer Olympics, and she said, I just like gymnastics. Oh, and swimming, and diving, and skateboarding, and volleyball, and soccer... None of that will be ad-free, of course.

You could try it, as they've cloned a lot of Hulu content over to Disney, but every item (for me) shows the disclaimer, "Included with your Hulu subscription." There's a lot of Hulu material now on Disney that parents are going to have to put filters on for their kids, I'm thinking.

It really all depends on what channels you like. I know when I had cable that there were so many channels I was paying for, yet probably fewer than ten that I actually watched. Your primary cable alternatives are YouTubeTV, Fubo, HuluLive, Sling, and DirecTV Stream. I believe all of them except Hulu offer either a free trial or a first month discount. I spent a lot of time researching them earlier this year before I cut the cord. I had problems with YouTubeTV when I tried it last year, so didn't bother this time. Fubo irked me when I found out about their mandatory sports fees whether or not you watch sports. DirecTV is just as expensive as their satellite plan. Hulu Live does not offer any free trial so you're stuck paying the full month even if you don't like it. I did a trial of Sling Blue in February and discovered I still wasn't watching very much, so I cancelled when the month was up. Services like Philo and Frndly are dirt cheap but don't offer many channels. Again, depends on what you watch. I can get all the local channels and tons of subchannels using a Tablo wirelessly connected to my rooftop antenna. I have ad-free HBO, Paramount/Showtime, and Hulu/Disney, plus AP which I've stopped watching. I'm paying a fraction of what I paid with cable and finding a whole lot more that I want to see. Still holding out on getting Peacock. But YouTube TV does offer a free trial. When I did my free trial, it was so frustrating coordinating settings between my computer and my Roku app that I cancelled within about 20 minutes and deleted everything.

I think the only way he'd ever get into ToC would be to go through the qualifying rounds. He's not good enough, despite his self-love, to get an invite on his own record. I was definitely confused when I recognized that face attached to that name I did not recognize. But I think the poster was talking about Carlos Anthony, and he was just as annoying on ToC as he was on 24:24.

I dunno, at least about Ken. He didn't light up the screen in his Celebrity Wheel of Fortune gig. I guess trivia and fitting letters together are two separate skill sets. My goal for Spelling Bee is Genius every day and if that's as far as I get, I'm usually pretty happy. I've been wondering how Victoria, first, only managed one win in Jeopardy, and then went on to become a Chaser and one of the best on that team. Because of her Queen persona, I did not want her to win JIT (let's make it a thing after all), but watching her humble James has been fun. Anybody notice how his podium name kept getting smaller and smaller, as if he himself has been shrinking? Love Amy but she's going to be the odd woman out after the semifinals. I don't know if it's the harder questions on Masters or the level of competition, but I don't think she can keep up with these three.

Oh, yeah, I forgot effing AP, which I have but never watch any more since they started charging extra not to have ads. But nobody likes TNF anyway.

Is it our Giants, finally? Damn. The antitrust rules need to be rewritten. Putting games on ESPN and TNT was the first step down the slippery slope. Then NFLN, then Peacock, and now fucking Netflix.

I don't have Comcast, but having gone from almost $300 a month for cable TV + internet to $50/month for internet, plus ad-free Paramount-Showtime/HBO Max/Hulu-Disney that total less than $50 a month, and all the free streaming channels, plus Tablo, we don't miss cable. We have more programs now that we actually watch than we did with cable. Still debating whether to pick up Peacock. HBO carries a good portion of CNN broadcasting, and I've discovered that almost all the MSNBC shows run a little while after their airing as podcasts. I can live with that rather than paying for cable channels or Sling that I don't want, just to get MSNBC.

If FN can try to rehabilitate the actual assaulter, Cliff Crooks, this is the least Marcel deserved after all this time.

I never rooted for Marcel in any competition before this one, and it could be said, sadly, that what happened to him on Top Chef is what made him famous for all the wrong reasons, but damn if he hasn't grown up. Carlos should take a few lessons. And when it comes back for another season, as some have suggested, blind judging such as it was on ToC (although it's been credibly argued that chefs who cycle the TV circuit, like Maneet, all have recognizable cooking styles) is a must. Also, hyping the 24 in 24 but getting rid of 12 people in the very first challenge was a real letdown for the chefs and for the viewers. And they weren't the 12 worst, just the loser in a 1:1 challenge. Find another way if you don't want your judges eating 23 dishes. Put them in groups of eight with their own judge or something like that and then merge the groups as the field narrows.

Spoke too soon. Have to reset the captions with each episode. Grrr.

I've had problems before with HBO captions on Roku, but they seem to be working for me right now. Hope I don't jinx myself. And, in good news, Paramount+ has decided to add the ability to delete items from the watchlist and keep watching list just by using the asterisk on the Roku remote. Maybe they heard me whining and complaining.

I’ve been wondering why I keep getting likes and quotes on a show I stopped watching several years ago. Now I get it.

That's my favorite way to go to sleep. I put on something mindless, that I don't have to pay attention to, and set the timer on the Roku for 30 minutes. We have three Roku TVs and one Roku streaming device attached to the dumbest smart TV ever. I do worry that if we turn off the dumb TV without backing out of whatever Roku app we were streaming, it will continue to run, ad infinitum, eating up data.

Grrr. Just went onto Paramount+ website to delete a few of the programs I don't care to continue from Keep Watching, because they won't let me do it from the TV itself. It deleted every single show on the list as well as my entire watch history, so I now have to open my watch list and then guess what episode I was on or at what point of the movie I stopped, if I'd actually like to continue.

Yes. I am in Arizona, and almost — not all — every library in the state will allow me to get a card. Most of them — not all — let me apply online, but usually the nonresident card is only good for one year instead of three. YMMV. I have Hoopla also, and they also allow stacking. I don’t use it much, though.

If you get membership at other libraries (I belong to about ten) that participate in Kanopy, you can link your accounts together and stack your credits.

I considered getting PBS Passport but when I looked at their offerings, I was unpleasantly surprised at how little legacy programming they have. I want old Masterpiece Theatre and old American Experience and Ken Burns and Ric Burns documentaries, among others. Perhaps it's a licensing issue that prevents them from sharing their full catalog, but I'm not paying for another streaming service that doesn't have what I want to watch. There seems to be more classic TV on Kanopy, which is free through the library, than on PBS.

I went with the one week free trial and the annual plan for $120, which works out to $10/month plus tax for the ad-free version with Showtime. Also, DD taught me that the workaround when they try to show a promo ad in the beginning despite being ad-free is to back out and go right back in. I had Discovery+ as a add-on to Amazon Prime until most, although not all, its programming appeared on Max. Cancelled that. A few shows I used to like are not available on Max, but it's no big deal. Just also want to mention that watching Discovery as an add-on to AP was a misery. Their navigation system is horrendous. I would open up a season of, say, Beat Bobby Flay, and it would literally tell me that the first three episodes were episode 4, the next was episode one, the following two more were episode 3, etc. And they were all single episodes, not copies. Season 35 came after season 37. Fun stuff.

ABC is one of the OG of OTA, so I'm confused. It also says in their FAQ: What defines "additional content?" Whatever they say it is. I went to the ABC app on my Roku, signed out of my old cable account, and looked at what they have on the subject of the Oscars. It was all clips and shorts. Then, I looked at the live TV listings in my browser, and the live Oscar broadcast showed a locked symbol on my local ABC channel. So, my bad. I'm not planning to watch, but I have antenna, so I could. I'm just gobsmacked that regular OTA channels are locking down their content, and not just behind Peacock, Paramount, etc. Cable providers are getting desperate.

I think I read somewhere that if you have Hulu, it will not work with T-mobile internet, so I stayed with Cox for my internet. Hulu may not matter to you. But for a fraction of the $170 that was just the TV part of my massive cable bill, I have ad-free HBO Max, ad-free Hulu/Disney, and ad-free Paramount+/Showtime. Those three combined work out to less than $50/month. I really didn't think I'd find much on Paramount and as I dig through their listings, I'm finding more stuff to watch every day. Now I'm contemplating getting ad-free Peacock, if I can find enough content to justify the expense. Plus Tubi and Kanopy and Hoopla and Pluto for free, and all the local channels using Tablo. I wish Congress would decide to extend the Affordable Connectivity Plan. $30 a month helps. According to the Hulu app, you have to have their live TV plan to get the Oscars. But you should be able to watch via antenna, or on the ABC app, or on abc.com.

I'm a trained two-spacer, too, but when I type comments on the Washington Post comment board, the software automatically removes one of the spaces. I hate the way it looks. If Columbo could solve one murder with a minuscule bite mark on a piece of cheese and dozens of other gotchas that probably would never hold up in court, I guess Elsbeth can solve a murder over two spaces at the end of a sentence. I hope the Wendell Pierce character is not a bad guy; just the typical stubborn leadership character who exists to be proven wrong by the hero(ine) protagonist.

I've had AP for a number of years and have actually watched very little on their video side. Their interface has always been clunky and their search function is about as bad as it is on the product side. Since they added ads, I have watched none of it. My current pet named Peeve is my so-called ad-free Paramount+ that forces me to watch an annoying long ad for some Paramount show or movie at the start of a show or movie. I can't FF out of it. And that I have to go on the browser -- and Paramount doesn't work on either Firefox or Brave on my computer so I have to open Safari -- to delete something from Keep Watching.