Anthony Guidetti

ViacomCBS is one of a few media mega conglomerates. Comcast, Disney, and AT&T are also in that list, and those three have a robust streaming strategy. Comcast has Xumo as their free live TV platform, and Peacock as their streaming service. Disney has, of course, Disney+ for family-oriented content, as well as Hulu as their HBO-style platform, and ESPN+ for sports fans, and they can be combined. AT&T has HBO Max, merging the wide range of their properties under one roof. ViacomCBS on the other hand has a long list, which includes CBS All Access and Pluto TV and Showtime and BET+ and Noggin. Compared to the others, there is an obvious problem. AT&T owns Warner Bros., HBO, and Turner which all own a great deal of content. The same goes for Comcast owning NBCUniversal, and Disney owning seemingly everything else. They all have a great deal of valuable properties which they are using to beef up their streaming services. Netflix used to be filled with content from 3rd partie

I’ve used many smartphone operating systems from iOS to Android to Windows Phone to BlackBerry to Windows Mobile. The one I miss the most is Windows Phone because although iPhone revolutionized the way we use phones, Microsoft’s Metro UI improved on Apple’s stale experience. Live tiles and unique design elements helped Windows Phone bring a daily smile to my face. Unfortunately, no one else bought one, so I had to go elsewhere for my smartphone needs. While I respect iOS, Android is my daily driver for many reasons. This doesn’t mean I haven’t considered iOS, in fact with the new iPhone SE with flagship specs at a nice price, it’s made me wonder what life would be like on the other side of the fence. However, if I were to switch, here’s a few things Apple needs to add first: RCS Messaging: iMessage offers a rich communications service built-in to Apple devices so users don’t have to deal with garbage SMS. Luckily, there’s an eventual successor to SMS called RCS, or Rich Communication

The TiVo Stream 4K is a great device overall, but it especially makes sense if you want to curate all the major streaming services into one, and if you are subscribed to Sling. If you don't like using that app, or aren't subscribed to Sling, it's a great Android TV device with a remote that reminds you of features you won't use.

But First, Some Back Story I’ve been a Sling subscriber on and off since 2016. I joined for the price mostly, as the no-contract, and no-haggling $30 price was hard to beat compared to Time Warner Cable. At the time, Sling was just about the only game in town offering an alternative to traditional cable and satellite. Sure, you don’t get locals, but an antenna works just fine, and even has better audio/video quality than cable, so I could deal with that to receive cable channels. I like to think of Sling as a no-frills service. It works well enough, but there are some quirks to get used to coming from traditional cable. The biggest one for sure is its DVR. At the time, the only way to get DVR was to pay an extra $5 a month for 50 hours of storage that never deletes unless it needs to for space. Now DVR is included with less space for free, and you pay if you want more space. Fine, however not all channels include rewinding and pausing live TV. Even worse, when you’ve rewound a li