There seems to be more and more choices for streaming video. Plenty of companies trying to persuade you to sign up for your $7-$10 a month. I thought I would take a few minutes to write about the streamers that we have chosen.
First here are the ones that I like and intend to keep. Then I will tell you about the services that I will likely drop.
Netflix
Back in the day, Netflix rented movies on DVD’s. Remember DVD’s? We still have a DVD player and a few DVD’s, but we haven’t turned it on in over a year. They switched to the streaming opertion in 2007.
Lots of quality content. They seem to be ruling the Emmy awards these days. One show that we like has been “Schitt’s Creek”. This is a comedy about a family that lost all of their considerable fortune and forced to move to the podunk town of Schitt’s Creek. It’s a sort of reverse Beverly Hillbillies. Developed and starring Eugene Levy. Very funny.
We recently watched “Fiddler on the Roof”. Seems to be plenty of quality material.
HBO
HBO seems to be the grand dame of streaming. They been around for a long long time. Recently they have been going through some churnwith name changes. First it was HBO Go, HBO Now then HBO Max. Confusing.
So best I can tell that “HBO Max” is all of the streaming and HBO on the cable outlet for $15/month or maybe it’s $12/month. It’s very confusing.
We usually watch “Last Week Tonightwith John Oliver.
The other series we usually watch is “Real Time with Bill Maher“.
Disney+
We first got this channel a few month ago in order to see “Hamilton”. Hamilton was the hook. We had tickets to see the show in Los Angeles in June, but that got cancelled. Sigh. So we have watched Hamilton three times.
There seems to be plenty of other shows and movies to watch. We recently watched “Annie” (see my post on Annie) and a few other movies.
Amazon Prime
We watch a fair amount of movies on Amazon Prime/ Mostly, when we can’t find it on Netflix or Disney. Most of the good/recent movies show up here to rent, generally for $4 or $5. Rental is for 30 days, then once you start watching it, you have to finish the movie in 3 days. Some movies can be purchased for about $15.
It seems that when the theaters closed, much of the newly released films showed up for rent on Amazon Prime.
CBS – All Access
Here we watch a lot of our favorite CBS shows without ads. We watch Late Show with Stephen Colbert, CBS Sunday Morning and sometimes the national news. Also, they have a funny show called “Tooning in the News” Cartoon characters give their spin on the news. Very funny.
Peacock
This is the NBC equivalent of CBS – All Access. I cancelled within a week. No support for ROKU. They couldn’t come to terms with ROKU. I am not going to watch stuff on my iPad instead of my 43” flat screen TV. Enough said.
Apex
We got this a few months ago for a show a few months ago. Haven’t watch anything recently. I’ll be dropping it soon. Not worth the $7/month.
Acorn
Heard about this from our friend in San Diego. Mostly British TV. Will try it when I get a chance. It’s $7 / month.
Out here in LA we have a curious phenomenon on our local evening news. Most nights we watch the local news on KTLA. We record on our DVR the hour long local news then we record the National news.
So last night I decided to start watching some old episodes of “
But here’s the thing. They’ve done a great job of displaying what it was like to be in England in the 1950’s. What struck me was that everyone was smoking all the time. The first few episodes had Winston Churchill smoking a cigar all the time. There was hardly a time that he didn’t have a cigar in his hand. Winston was played by 
A couple of nights ago Paula and I started watching the TV series “
calherewecome 