2024 Cord-Cutter Awards: The best streaming services, devices & more

Walmart continues to launch surprisingly premium streaming boxes under its Onn brand, Onn Google TV 4K Pro By far the best one. For just $50, you can get a fast streaming box with Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos audio, and 32GB of storage. The remote control is also excellent, with backlit buttons, a remote lookup function and plenty of useful shortcut keys. No other streaming media player offers so much for such a small price.

Apple didn’t release a new streaming device this year or last, but the late 2022 Apple TV 4K remains the best example of a high-end streaming box. While other platforms continue to slap annoying banner ads in more places, Apple’s tvOS interface remains crisp, clean, and useful (especially if you Follow my setup suggestions), and it’s still the most responsive streaming box.

Apple has also rolled out some thoughtful updates this year, including Machine learning-driven conversation enhancement And a separate home screen row for shows you’ve bookmarked for later. If cost is no object, this $129 box is still your best option.

Despite increases in streaming TV prices, Netflix’s standard plan has remained at $15.49 per month for nearly three years, with the last increase dating back to January 2022.

Of course, the company found other Ways to increase revenue from now on include an ad-supported tier ($6.99 per month), stricter rules around password sharing, and the elimination of the single-stream basic tier. But none of these moves detract from the value of Netflix’s regular plans, and its stable pricing deserves praise in an increasingly expensive world.

Many streaming services now offer free, ad-supported content, but Philo is one of the few that actually lets you skip the ads. Philo’s free plan, Landed earlier this yearincludes a 30-day DVR that can record an unlimited number of programs, and you can fast forward to commercial breaks after recording is complete. (Philo’s paid version, which includes a slate of cable channels without sports content, costs $28 a month.) The only free streaming service with a DVR is Freestream for Sling TVbut it has a stricter 10-hour recording limit.

Peacock’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics is a perfect example of the power of streaming. Rather than providing the bare minimum, Peacock turns gaming into an interactive eventwith a multi-view feed you can zoom into individual matches or highlight them to hear the corresponding audio. Combined with rapid-fire “prime zone” coverage, a plethora of alternative live streams and a massive library of replays, the entire event feels like a choose-your-own Olympic adventure that every sports anchor should copy.

To help fund TV producers’ entry into streaming Blow up cable bundle modelforcing an increasingly empty pipeline to raise prices and driving away valuable customers in the process. Unfortunately for them, the streaming subscribers they trade are more fickle, and Learn to cancel services they no longer need.

All of which helps explain this year’s seemingly unlikely alliance between Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery. The two companies now offer all streaming services — Disney+, Hulu and Max —a big bundle Pricing starts at $17 per month, with the hope that customers will be less likely to throw any of them away individually. A bundle like this Not worth it for everyonebut if you already subscribe to everything, they’re an easy way to save money.

It won’t be easy to compete with Disney given that ESPN airs some of the most popular sports events on television, but that’s what DirecTV did when it negotiated a new broadcast deal this year. satellite provider Say no to another bloated channel lineup and higher pricesand asked Disney for smaller, more flexible packaging.

It worked. Two weeks after power outage, DirecTV and Disney reach new agreement This will split the latter’s channels into three packages centered around sports, entertainment and family programming. These options aren’t available yet, and it’s unclear exactly what they will look like, but they could change pay TV packages as we know them forever.

Chromecast ushered in the streaming era in 2013, offering a cheap way to use your phone as a remote to play movies on your TV. But 11 years later, Google retired the Chromecast brand and discontinued the last Chromecast adapter.

Casting still exists As a standard feature on Google TV devices, however Now it’s “Google Cast”Google has exited the cheap streaming adapter business in favor of pricier products Google TV streaming box. Even though little has changed on a practical level, it still feels like the end of an era.