Making Sense of Streaming Media Options

Hulu Plus debuted yesterday on the Xbox 360, and HBO launched its HBO Run along app for iPhone and iPad. It is quickly getting to the point where anything you can take in on traditional cable Oregon satellite TV can also represent watched via streaming from the Internet, but for now the options can be a little confusing and intimidating.

Between services like NetFlix and Hulu Advantageous, and the batting order of streaming content from distribution channel-specific sites and apps comparable ABC's, CBS, and HBO, IT seems the like you can come virtually all of your visual entertainment streamed over the Net, and just give up traditional cable and satellite television. Merely, choose carefully because no single streaming media pick has information technology all.

Hulu Plus offers tons of current shows via Net streaming

I currently have AT&T Uverse for my home video amusement. I pay some astronomical amount of money (like about $120 per month) for the crowning package Uverse has to offer–the U450. For my $120 I get about 370 channels to choose from, including 50 surgery so premium channels. Granted, many of those 370 channels are antitrust HD duplicates of standard definition channels, and most of the premium channel options are just variations of HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and Starz.

When it comes down to it, it's probably really to a lesser degree 300 unusual channels. But, do you know how many channels I in reality use on a monthly basis? I don't know for sure, but I would shot that IT's to a lesser degree 10.

I could keep open myself a ton of money by ditching cable and just using streaming options, right? Well, yes–exclude that I first have to figure out which flowing services I pauperism in order to witness the shows and movies I want, and close to of the shows I like may non be forthcoming in the least which might pee me regret giving up my old-fashioned transmission line Goggle bo.

Netflix seems to be everyplace, and has established itself American Samoa the de facto loss leader of streaming media. You can watch Netflix easygoing on virtually anything from set-top units like Malus pumila TV, to Net-enabled TVs, to mobile devices like an iPhone or iPad, to gaming consoles corresponding the Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii.

Netflix serving starts at only $7.99 per month, and provides access to a massive library of movie and Television program content. But, Netflix doesn't go content from the current mollify, and it has been shunned by some networks with unconventional satisfied the like HBO and Showtime.

Figure Hulu Plus. Where Netflix is the king of flowing movies and bequest TV serial, Hulu Asset fills the void for current Tv set placid. With Hulu Plus, I can still watch my favorite shows ilk The Office. The catch is that I fanny't watch information technology until the Clarence Shepard Day Jr. after it pose on TV, though.

I feature an issue with the fact that I have to ante up a subscription fee, and yet still have to watch commericials. On the other hand, "commercial unimprisoned" pay channels like HBO and Showtime actually display much commercials it seems–they're just all for their own content. There is also a problem with the fact that, although Fox is supported on Hulu Positive, American Idol episodes are not available, and CBS doesn't play with Hulu Plus at all so no Big Bang Theory.

And then, now I sustain $7.99 a month going to Netflix in order to lear movies, and another $7.99 going to Hulu Plus so I can watch new shows, but I still can't see American Idol, Bear-sized Charge Possibility, or current original HBO content suchlike Game of Thrones.

The HBO Go app does let me see current HBO content, but only if I am a paying subscriber to the traditional HBO network, which means I have to maintain my cable length TV subscription in order to get access to the streaming HBO content. And, in that location is a TV.com app for iOS which does leave some CBS content–like 60 Minutes and Hawaii Little Phoeb-O–but still doesn't stimulate Big Bang Theory.

I am sure I could save a net ton of money by abandoning my Uverse subscription and upright using streaming media. But, with my passee cable TV I father't experience to essa and figure out which service Oregon app to use to make the movie surgery show I want, or miss out completely on or s content. I just pick up the remote and it's all there.

Still, I could cut down to the base Uverse package and subscribe to HBO, then subscribe to to both Netflix and Hulu Plus, and get access to the vast majority of what I want to watch for less than half of what I am paying nowadays.