Streaming Video Power Rankings Week #82

I thought by becoming a cordcutter, I would have a lot more time to watch these streaming video services. Then I decided I wanted to watch the MLB playoffs, and I got PlayStation Vue. So far, I am impressed, but the DVR is funky, and anything I "save" has to be watched in 28 days, even if I keep the service for another month. So now I feel I have to watch a ton of PlayStation Vue.

All of this is a long way of saying--oh, let me just get to this week's chart so I can get back to the My Little Margie I recorded.

1) YouTube: YT does a lot of annoying things, but my kids put on a kid-friendly (and kid-centric) fail video that actually cracked me up. See, a kid was goofing around trying to be a frontman/rock star, he fell, and the kid playing drums did a rimshot with perfect timing. You had to see it.

Plus there is still lots of great 80s wrestling and old TV promos on there. That alone is well worth the $0 a month I pay for the Roku version, and YT gets the #1 spot in a week when the other big ones are still on double-not-secret probation.

2) Hulu: The more I use the new interface on Roku...the more I resent it. It makes it too hard to find new content, and it's another example of the odious trend of telling viewers what they want to watch instead of just letting them access what they really want to watch (see #5 on this list).

That said, the new Sarah Silverman show wasn't really my thing, but it was something different. Plus Hulu keeps adding content, and, best of all, it lowered its base price for new subscribers. Everything is going in the right direction with two caveats: 1) The redesign sucks 2) Where the hell is all that classic Fox TV like MASH  and St. Elsewhere that was announced months ago?

3) TubiTV: Big ups to this one for having the complete run of a series that just might be featured on a podcast that returns with new episodes this coming week...

4) Pub-D-Hub:  The thumbnail for the Batman serial, showing the Caped Crusader in a hilarious mundane pose, makes me want to watch it again, and the Hub is adding several chapters each week. I would also have ranked it high for the Roger Maris Post Cereal baseball cards commercial it added last week, but it also added a Chesterfield Sound Off Time hosted by Fred Allen.

5) Netflix: Still on punishment for the price hike, though the new David Fincher series Mindhunter is getting strong reviews. The latest Noah Baumback film has an outstanding cast and is said to have "the best performance of Adam Sandler's career." Yes, I chuckled when I read that AND when I just wrote it.

6) NBC: I was worried when the Throwback section of the site had September 2017 expiration dates for many of its series, but they now show as September 2018, indicating they are essentially meaningless. You can still enjoy shows like the original Galactica, Knight Rider, and Miami Vice free and with fairly unobnoxious commercial intrusion.

7) Watch ESPN: It's great the PlayStation Vue service lets you authenticate with many individual network apps. In some ways it's a better experience watching ESPN on here than it is on cable. There is a lot on Watch ESPN that is not otherwise available. It's a great resource for catching up on some of those 30 for 30 episodes that have not surfaced anywhere else after leaving Netflix earlier this year.

8) Tune In: You could be having a bad week, a tough day, a hectic moment, or all of those, and then you hear Deep Oldies play Eddie Holman's This Can't Be True, and all is right with the world.

9) Dailymotion: I just discovered all the [REDACTED] cartoons are on here, so I have to watch 'em before the leave. I will say again that DM is a poor, poor, poor man's YouTube, and the Roku version is an afterthought, but it's often a great plan B when something is not on the "mothership."

10) Amazon Prime: I try to add Prime each time it debuts a series which makes me think, "you know, I wish I could see that series," and the new Lore (a reenactment show based on the paranormal/folklore podcast of the same name) intrigues me. What a terrible week it was for Amazon, though, with the current scandals bleeding into the Prime Video world and making people question if the creep running it made big picture decisions based on the creepy things he was doing.