SPECTRUM 10 CHANNELS TV CHOICE FULL
SPECTRUM 10 CHANNELS TV CHOICE PLUS

Spectrum TV Choice is only available to Spectrum internet customers. I can only speculate that the company is worried a close look will reveal its streaming services aren’t very good deals. Johnson said Spectrum isn’t offering demos for media reviews. I asked if I could take TV Choice out for a test drive. Johnson said only that to describe the TV Choice rollout as a stealth campaign “would be misleading and not accurate.” All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

That makes you wonder why Spectrum isn’t aggressively marketing them - why the stealth approach? You can’t even find a video touting the services on Spectrum’s YouTube channel. Apparently they’ve been available in Southern California for weeks. “We continue to launch and test new services to better serve customer demand for more choice.”Īlthough Spectrum has been testing the new services in a handful of markets, I only learned about them by chance, while researching a related topic. “Spectrum TV Stream and Spectrum TV Choice are targeted at customers who don’t currently purchase a video product from us,” said Dennis Johnson, a company spokesman. Spectrum is also offering a slightly different online service called TV Stream, which instead of allowing you to choose 10 favorite channels provides 25 channels of Spectrum’s own choosing. You can add a box and DVR functionality for an extra $20 a month. Where does that leave most Spectrum TV customers? Not much better off than before.Premium channels such as HBO, Showtime and Starz can be tacked on for just $7.50 apiece or $15 a month for a premium bundle.īecause there’s no cable box, there’s no DVR service, so you can’t record shows.

SPECTRUM 10 CHANNELS TV CHOICE FULL

Instead, Spectrum will merely let you purchase those services as optional add-ons “at retail rates,” meaning full price. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro even boasted about the deal to The Hollywood Reporter, noting that it’s “very strong in terms of rates and minimum penetration.”Įven if you finagle access to Spectrum’s cheaper bundles, you won’t get a deal on Disney+ or ESPN+. Bloomberg reports that ESPN is guaranteed to be in the channel lineup for 85 percent of Spectrum customers-same as before-only dropping to 80 percent when ESPN launches its standalone streaming service. Charter’s contracts with TV networks require it to distribute certain channels to a minimum percentage of Spectrum customers, so the company mainly uses those skinnier packages as a last-ditch effort to win back cord-cutters. Those options might be wildly popular if all Spectrum customers could get them, but they can’t. In the past, Charter has offered both a sports-free bundle called Spectrum TV Essentials and a quasi-a la carte plan called Spectrum TV Choice, in which customers get local channels and their choice of 10 additional cable channels. What about the additional flexibility that Spectrum was pushing for? That doesn’t seem to have materialized.

In terms of value, Spectrum’s Disney deal doesn’t add much. You can also choose from several other live TV streaming options that are cheaper than Spectrum or abandon the bundle entirely.

SPECTRUM 10 CHANNELS TV CHOICE PLUS

Meanwhile, a subscription to Hulu + Live TV will get you a similar mix of channels, plus the full Disney bundle (including Hulu) for $77 per month.

Dropping some less popular channels will offset those hikes, but probably not by much. They’re also likely to increase, as Charter has agreed to pay higher carriage fees plus a “wholesale” rate to Disney for its streaming services. None of those prices include cable boxes if you’d rather not use Spectrum’s streaming apps.

Spectrum Select TV Plus: $113 per month, or $123 per month with DVR.

Spectrum Select TV: $103 per month, or $113 per month with DVR.

Spectrum 10 channels tv choice