By Nicholas Steinhauser
Staff Writer
With a major technological shift in the past few years, streaming services are now the most popular platforms through which Americans watch television. Gone are the days of cable TV, as streaming services are more convenient for people who want to binge-watch movies or one of their favorite shows.
Despite these benefits, the quality of streaming services is often not discussed. While they all get the job done on the surface, their issues make me wonder what it would be like if cable was still the main way to watch TV. If you have most of these streaming platforms, you’ll be able to access a wide variety of great movies and shows. Individually, however, I believe that most of them have glaring problems.
Widely regarded as the most popular streaming service is Netflix. While I do believe Netflix is, and has been, one of the strongest streaming platforms – even before the COVID-19 pandemic – I never found myself eager to watch a new series or movie that the service has released. The shows I have watched, such as “Cobra Kai” and “Fuller House,” have been disappointing to me, and I did not feel engaged or interested in what I was watching.
The most controversial aspect of Netflix is its recent crackdown on password sharing. This has angered a large majority of subscribers, and understandably so, as they are now unable to share their accounts with others unless they are willing to pay a fee. Many services had adopted this policy already; but Netflix, being one of the few that has not, gave its subscription even greater value.
Paramount+ is another streaming service that always felt underwhelming to me. While the premier platform allows audiences to watch classic movies and shows, this service hasn’t done much else. When I subscribed to it, I never noticed any original or interesting content. The ads are long, the load times are slow and the service in general is structured poorly to the point where it's difficult to navigate through to find new content. I believe Paramount+ is one of the weaker services.
Peacock, while being my favorite streaming service, also has its fair share of issues. It does have some good quality content for my preferred genres of television and decent new shows, but it is lacking in areas that platforms like Netflix and Hulu do much better. I have not had many issues with loading and buffering, but I know that it is a common issue.
The NFL recently put the Chiefs vs. Dolphins playoff game exclusively on Peacock, which is very unfortunate for football fans who needed to either subscribe to the service or activate a free trial to watch what was once an accessible sport. While this may be more of a problem with the NFL than Peacock, it is still something that should not happen in the future.
I only have one serious gripe with Hulu, but it is so important that it drags the service’s quality down. While the service contains a variety of classics of different genres, several of them are inaccessible without a premium subscription to other streaming platforms such as Hulu + Live TV and Hulu with Max. That defeats the purpose of having the service for certain shows. On top of that, their original series are quite lacking.
Disney+ is the last main service I have opinions on, and I’m not sure what to think of it compared to the others. On one hand, it has all of the classic Disney movies and popular Marvel films, along with other decent series and movies to boot. On the other hand, it keeps upping their prices. I will say it is probably one of the better services, but it does only fit a specific demographic and may not be favorable for everyone.
Overall, while I do appreciate many of these services, none are without flaws. There are several others that I did not cover, but these are the platforms I have owned for a while and have been able to form judgments on.
Individually, I believe these services are quite underwhelming given their flaws and what they offer. Unfortunately, it is better to pay the extra money to buy a couple of them and get exactly what you want.
