Sunday, August 14, 2016

Streaming Video Power Rankings: Week 20

I realize some of you are out there thinking, "Week in and week out, this is the most viewed post on the blog, and yet he's THIS LATE getting it up?" And to that I say--"Hey, look, isn't that Michael Phelps?"

1) Netflix: So Netflix added and re-added a few things, but the big news to me: 6 new episodes of Project MC2--twice as many as last time for this series about teenagers using science and math to fight crime. Plus this season, the show added several new characters and also introduced a potentially--uh, I'm way too excited about this, but my kids were pleased this weekend.

2) MLB TV: They sent me their "wait until the end of the season" deal this week, and you know what that means: A marked drop in my productivity (uh, except the blog, of course) as I watch baseball  on Roku. Expect this excuse to surface next week when these rankings are late!

3) Hulu: Odd week for Hulu, which added a bunch of British reality shows and, for some reason, the third season of "Laverne and Shirley." I haven't had a chance to watch the new Triumph election special, or else Hulu might score more points.

4) YouTube: Both a curse and a blessing having so much video at my fingertips: My kids and I saw Peter Allen perform "I Go to Rio" on "The Midnight Special" about 5 times this weekend. Yeah, we laughed and enjoyed ourselves...but at what cost?

5) Watch TCM: Holding steady based on content, but, man, am I tired of using an HDMI cable to hook my laptop to the TV, Get a damn Roku channel already!

6) Shout! Factory TV: I love that the third Ray Charles appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show" has Ray waiting in the wings while Dick has a long chat with John Lindsay.   It's so great seeing these old talk shows in their entirety.

7) Pub-D-Hub: Kind of phoned it in this week, or so I thought until I got to the "Yesterday's News" section, which added Richard Nixon's resignation speech, of all things, and a few other interesting collections of old news footage.

8) WWE Network: Added a ton of 1980s NWA wrestling recently. Still a lot more to go, but that's a step in the right direction.

9) Pandora: I still enjoy TuneIn, but I have been messing around with Pandora on Roku.  It's nice, but I think I already screwed up the algorithm, and now I feel like I should start over with a whole  new account to really get what I want out of it.

10) NBC Sports/Olympics/Whatever: Well, I'm sure a lot of people are watching Olympic stuff, right?

2 comments:

John H said...

Just noticed that hundreds of titles on Amazon Prime are expiring at the end of August. Many Paramount titles (including my beloved Republic B-westerns) and most of the MGM titles (American-International and Ed Cahn United Artists epics) are included. What am I going to watch while I'm on the treadmill? There's still lots of other B pics on the service but most of those are crappy 16mm prints that are splicy and dupey. Any chance that any of these will be renewed or move to another service? Most of these USED to be on Netflix years ago.
Love your streaming power ranking column. I look forward to your posts on any and all topics.

Rick Brooks said...

Thank you for the kind words! I may give Amazon short shrift sometimes because 1) I don't have it and 2) It's just so tough to track legitimate content on there. When I have had Prime, one of my big joys has been scrolling through in search of those B-pictures. I didn't know those were all expiring, but maybe they will be renewed.

You make a good point about Netflix licensing some of that (and similar content) years ago, then just letting it go and not bothering to replace it. I worry that there will be no streaming outlet for that kind of material. Somehow I am not optimistic that the upcoming Filmstruck will make room for those low-budget flicks amongst the Luis Bunuels and the Truffauts.