CBS All Access Coming to Apple TV Channels on July 29

I never thought I would sign up for this but they got me with Picard.

I feel like we reached the pinnacle with early streaming Netflix as an aggregator. Sure, there’s an overwhelming amount of good content now, but it’s segmented into madness.

Yeah. The “free” ride is almost over. I remember when all I paid was $7 bucks a month for Netflix which covered almost all of my TV needs. I always had a show to watch and could always find an interesting movie, if not a specific one I wanted to watch on demand.

Soon, we’ll be paying between $20-$50 bucks for a half dozen streaming services. Better than what we paid for cable at its monopolistic peak and with better control of subscriptions, but the cheap TV days are over if there are shows you want to watch that are spread over multiple services.

I’ll probably get AppleTV+, Disney+, Crave and Netflix during Stranger Things and Black Mirror binges.

Forced commercials. Yay.

I had CBS All Access on Amazon's Fire TV and it has two tiers. $7/mo includes commercials, $10/mo is commercial-free. Choose yer poison…

So basically every company will have some service that allows you to subscribe to other services lol?

So on Amazon Prime, I can add HBO, CBS, etc, but not Apple, I have to use a separate app.

On Apple, I can add HBO, CBS, etc, but not Amazon. I have to install a separate app.

Yes. Note, though, that the Apple TV app is aware of Amazon Prime content. So while Amazon is not fully integrated, you can search for Amazon content in the TV app, add it to your watchlist, and then play it in the Amazon app with one click.

I prefer the old model of having separate apps for each service, and having the OS parse/recommend. Ala Roku.

The TV app is far from perfect at the moment, but it's slowly getting to the point where you can have most streaming content easily accessible from one app, which helps dealing with the increasing fragmentation of streaming services.

In some cases the TV app also has added value compared to the individual apps (e.g. you can download up to 5 movies for offline viewing from HBO on iOS devices for long flights etc., which is not possible using the HBO Now/Go apps).

So far the subscription prices for channels are the same as subscribing to the services indivicually. Hopefully that'll be the case for CBS All Access too, and hopefully it'll be the commercial-free version.

Yeah. The “free” ride is almost over. I remember when all I paid was $7 bucks a month for Netflix which covered almost all of my TV needs. I always had a show to watch and could always find an interesting movie, if not a specific one I wanted to watch on demand.

Soon, we’ll be paying between $20-$50 bucks for a half dozen streaming services. Better than what we paid for cable at its monopolistic peak and with better control of subscriptions, but the cheap TV days are over if there are shows you want to watch that are spread over multiple services.

I’ll probably get AppleTV+, Disney+, Crave and Netflix during Stranger Things and Dark Mirror binges.

The good thing is you can pick up the service and then drop it. So pay for it for a few months while your show(s) are out and then drop it until the following year. This is what we have done with CBS for the past few years, only subscribing during the summer. I also wait for a decent Raise(dot)com sale and pick up streaming gift cards at a discount, usually 15-20% off. We currently keep Netflix and Hulu year round so when I see a good deal, I just pick one up and add it to the account balance.

The good thing is you can pick up the service and then drop it. So pay for it for a few months while your show(s) are out and then drop it until the following year. This is what we have done with CBS for the past few years, only subscribing during the summer. I also wait for a decent Raise(dot)com sale and pick up streaming gift cards at a discount, usually 15-20% off. We currently keep Netflix and Hulu year round so when I see a good deal, I just pick one up and add it to the account balance.

Yes, in all this streaming defragmentation the possibility to stop and resume a subscription is something valuable and I really hope it will last. Honestly it seems strange to me that these companies are allowing it at all. Shh, don't tell the people out there...