The Vergecast - The best streaming services in 2023

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

What are the best streaming services in 2023? Nilay, Alex, and David decide in the most chaotic way possible: with draft-style picks. The crew debates the best roster for the future of entertainment ��� from Netflix to Hulu to HBO Max to a few surprises. Who is the MVP, and who gets snubbed? Find out in our inaugural Vergecast streaming draft. Read more: theverge.com/streaming-wars Vote for us in the People’s Voice Webby Awards for Best Technology Podcast: http://bit.ly/3moCTDs  Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Rabbit Ear Antennas. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am doing maybe the weirdest thing on my to-do list in a while. I am reordering all of the apps on my Roku. I have 94 things installed, it looks like, which is, A, way too many, and B, total chaos because everything is in a totally bonkers order, and I can't find anything. So I'm moving stuff around, trying to get all of my important services up to the top. It is way, way too much work. It's like six button clicks every time you want to even just move an app, which is why it's

taken me months to finally get fed up enough to do it. But I'm doing it. Anyway, today's show is actually all about these streaming services. We've been trying for a while to figure out a good way to answer a really simple but really important question. What are the best streaming services? So we picked the most subjective, most chaotic way we could think of to actually answer that question.

Nilai, Alex, and I are going to draft streaming services and see who picks the the best roster for the future of entertainment. That's the whole show today, and it's coming up in just a second. But first, I have to figure out whether Hulu or ESPN Plus belongs on the second row of my Roku. This feels like a surprisingly big decision. This is the Vergecast. See in a sec.

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And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic. gold medalist and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is and mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. This is the

great verge streaming draft of 2023, which I'm saying so that it sounds like an annual thing so that we require ourselves to do this every year from now on. Epitale, hello, and welcome to the draft. I've tried to pull that trick so many times. There are so many things we don't do every year that I've insisted that we're going to do every year, but we're going to do this every year. Yeah, we're going to do this every year. It's going to be great. Alex Kranz, hello. What happens if all of the streaming services die next year? Will it just be super competitive? There's like a 60% chance that none of these things will exist a year from now.

We'll be picking go 90 again. Yeah, it's going to be great. The only thing on my list is Quibi, y'all. Let's be honest. I'm not going to lie. The word quibby appears in my notes somewhere. in all the crap that I did for this. But we'll come to that later. Okay, so let me just quickly explain how this draft is going to work, and then we'll get into it. We're going to do five rounds, and we're doing a snake draft. So the person who picks first, then they go second, then they go third, and the person who picks third, then picks fourth. So we're going around and around. We're going to pick 15 total things over the course of this. And the idea is that whatever you

pick is what you're stuck with for the next 12 months. Like imagine it like you're drafting a team, right? this is your exclusive five streaming services for the next year. I will take any single subscription as one draft pick. So you can draft the Disney bundle as one thing because that is one thing with one price. But also you can draft Disney Plus and ESPN Plus and Hulu as their own things because you can pay for them separately. That's the only one like that that I can actually think of. But if there are others, feel free and try to convince me otherwise. But what you can't do is the like Amazon channels like subscribe to stars through here thing because that's a separate thing that you pay for.

separately. So one bill, one price, one pick. Do like adjacent services count? Things that are like streaming, but maybe don't have their own content on them or a lot of their own content? Sure. If you want to pick Plex is the answer to your question. If you want to pick Plex, knock yourself out. That's an awful draft pick. You can't just pick Plex. You got to pick Alex has to pick her own Plex server. Right. I pick my Plex server. Yeah, that I will allow. And as for what counts, any streaming service. service counts, free, paid, whatever. It just has to be primarily about entertainment. I'm going to do my best to keep track of the cost of all these things. And one fun wrinkle that I just came up with is whoever spends the

least money in these five picks gets one extra free bonus pick at the end. Do you understand that the last pick of this draft is a punishment? You get to have another streaming service. Instead of five streaming services, you get to have six. You can pick, I don't know, quibby. Punishment, not a reward. Yeah, you're not wrong. If there are any disputes, Andrew, our producer, is in charge. Thank you, David. He rules and his word is final.

He's the commissioner of our league. All right, Andrew is here to pick the draft order. None of us know the draft order because as far as I know, there isn't one yet. Andrew, give it to me. Give it to me. I deserve it. Andrew, you're going to tell us who's picking first, second, and third. What do you have for us?

Okay, so Neli responded to your message in Slack first today. So Neli's going to go first. Oh, what a surprise. Give the boss the first pick in the draft. What a shocking twist. Everybody's boss gets to go first. This commissioner is terrible. Surprise. That's right. I'm the Dallas Cowboys, baby. You can't run this league without me. And then Alex is going to go second. Yes. And David is going to go third because he's the host. This sucks. I don't want to do this anymore. David, trades are allowed, man. I bet I'm still going to get my first pick at third. So this is fine. Andrew, do you have another song for us? Let's go time. Eli Patel, you're on the clock. First pick. TikTok. Wow. Zero hesitation.

TikTok. Explain. Wow. It provides the most value for the zeroest of dollars. It is the only streaming service that reliably produces videos of trucks jumping over things and into rivers. That's very important to me. And I don't know if it's going to get banned or not, but I want to be on the ride if that's going to happen. Well, so that's the, this is like the most high risk, high reward pick ever, right?

Because there's a decent chance that literally it will not be available to you when we do this draft again in. 12 months. Yeah. And you know what? Sometimes you got to draft a quarterback who's definitely going to get hurt. You know what I'm saying? Like, I just think about where do I spend the most time? It's TikTok. As we go through the draft, I think this choice will be rewarded. I might not need any other picks. Okay. So my reasoning for being anti-Tick-Tick-Tock as the first pick is that there's no like prestige TikTok is like not a thing. And like what I want from one of my picks here and maybe I'll get it later, but is the like cultural relevancy of something where it's like everybody's very excited about the most recent episode of Succession and you're going to have

to watch it in two minute increments cobbled together across the internet. Well, I do have other picks, right? Like I can pick Alex's Plex server. Second, we have not, actually, this is a rules clarification. Am I still allowed to buy things? Oh, yes, you are allowed to buy things. I can rent movies. We'll leave like the voodoo's of the world separate. If you want to pay four bucks to rent a movie, that's allowed. That exists outside of this. I'm ever more comfortable with this choice. Interesting.

Okay. Alex, what do you think? Good choice, bad choice? Terrible choice. Just, why? I watched TikTok last night while I was watching Succession, and I was a bad choice. That might be a proof of Neelai's point. You might have just proved Neelai's case. Basically, it was a bad choice.

So, like, I'm trying to have less TikTok in my life. That's fair. No, that's fair. You got to cut back. Alex, let's go. can pick. What do you have? Oh, it's HBO Max. Ooh. Okay. I'm coming out the gate. Strong. I'm, I'm, I'm aggressive. All right. Defend. Because succession. But also, I watch a lot of stuff on HBO Max.

There's, there's a lot of good content on it as long as it survives. So I've got this for like, what, another month? Immediate theme in this draft of, I need to ride this out while it lasts. Yeah. Uh-huh. So I'm going to enjoy it for a month. I'm going to watch, you know, maybe rewatch Warrior, we watch sex lives of college girls, whatever that show is called. That sounds really bad saying it out loud. But it's going to be a great time for the next month. Okay. Here's a philosophical question.

Are we streaming services with ads people or spend the extra $5 for no ads people? Oh, this is with the extra $5. I don't do ads. Okay. So we're spending the money to not get any ads. Yeah. Unlike Nelai, who says, just give me every ad. Scroll right by him, man.

Don't worry about it. Every 30 videos, just there's your ad, Neal. You got a mag save charger. This is the best ad targeting you can do. Neil, are you an ads person? Do you pay for no ads? Oh, yeah, I'd pay for no ads everywhere. Okay.

Which is funny because we run an ad-supported website. Please don't skip over the ads in this podcast. But also pay for all of our paid things. Yeah. Those don't have ads. Maybe I'm trying to bring these ideas together as much as I can. Verge Plus. That's my last pick.

If I win this bonus pick, I'm picking that because it doesn't cost any money. Because it doesn't exist. You see the logic here. Alex, what do you do with the fact that the HBO Max app is like a horrible pile of garbage that doesn't work 40 to 60% of the time? I just like close my eyes and think of the good content that I'll get to when I eventually find it in the app works. You watch TikTok until the page loads. I just avert my eyes and I press go and 30 minutes later maybe my show plays and I'm really excited. And that like once that 30 minutes hit, then I've got like you get all those old movies because they have like the whole they have all the Turner classics.

This is a strong pick because of the catalog for sure. Yeah, it's all about the catalog for me. And the app is like just an unfortunate byproduct that I have to deal with. Also, whenever you want, you can watch a square version of Justice League. That's what I'm going to do right after this because it's my first pick. I can watch it any time. Yeah, HBOX was going to be my second pick specifically because it is like, when you make a list of like relevant cultural shows that people care about, they are overwhelmingly on HBO. It's insane.

So by not having HBO Max, Neela, you and I are just resigned to being sort of social outcasts. Don't worry. I've got a Plex server coming up. Alex is going to rip everything from HBO Max to her Plex server. Would never do that. That's wrong. Okay, so I'm up third. And for my third pick, I get my first pick, which is YouTube.

This is the easiest decision of all time. I cannot believe neither of you picked YouTube. It's $2.99 a month for YouTube premium, which is insane. and which I did not realize I'd been paying all this time because they raised the price. Yeah. And which is, yeah, it's outrageous. That's like the family plan. It's ridiculous.

What do you get for that? So you get no ads, which is great. You get background listening. You get a music service for free, which is compelling. And now I don't have to pick Spotify or Apple Music or anything else because I just have YouTube music and all the music streaming services are the same. So it's kind of like getting two picks and one. But also it's like YouTube over the last like 12 months for me has been.

come the place I go when I don't know what I want to watch and I just have like 15 minutes to kill. And I think part of this is I just had a kid. So my windows of time to just sort of sit and do nothing went from being like hours long to like minutes long. But it's like highlights of soccer games that I missed because I have a small child. And hot ones interviews is basically like my entire YouTube algorithm right now. And it's great. And I have, I have nothing against it. It feels like it is the biggest one.

It's also the only one of our three so far that, will probably still exist 12 months from now. So I feel very good about that. I'm honestly shocked neither of you picked this. I felt like YouTube was like the obvious first choice. It would have been my, if I hadn't gotten, if I hadn't gotten TikTok,

I would have gone YouTube premium. Good. All right. Well, then I also get the fourth pick because of the way this draft works. Andrew, I've come around. I've decided you were right to give me the third pick. Thank you.

That was secret. Wow. So there's three I can choose from here. And I'm going to, this is the, I'm going to regret this choice, but I'm going to make it. I'm going to pick peacock.

which I would not have expected to do, but the honest truth is Peacock is where the office is and it's where Parks and Rec is. And for me, that is like 45% of my TV viewing between those two shows and the other 45 exists on another service that I hope I get to pick later. But it's just that. Like Peacock has some nifty stuff with live TV. They have some sports. They're starting to grow. But it is like fundamentally it is the place where the office is and I have to have the place where the office is on my list. I already regret this choice. As I'm saying this, I drafted this too high. Disclosure. Oh, yeah. Peacock is operated by NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast, which is a minority investor in Vox Media, our parent company. David, I hope you got some sort of kickback for this

miserable choice. I think this is a good choice. This is like, if you watch a lot of TV, Peacock is a very solid choice. I think what we're going to discover in this is that some of you watch vastly more television than I do. That's probably true. But no, for me, it's like I dabble in lots of TV and then I have like four shows that I cycle between over and over and over and over again. And two of them are the office and parks and rec, both of which are on Peacock. And I think I can reliably say both of which are never leaving Peacock because they are

part of the company that owns Peacock. So I'm not afraid that six months from now they're just going to suddenly disappear, unlike on some other services that have gained and lost my shows. Until Peacock dies and they have to like. sell to another company. There is that. But Peacock's doing kind of well. It went from being like a total disaster to like a kind of meh success-ish.

It's like it's like trending in the right direction from really bad to kind of bad. It's like you know in the rest of development they go from like a sell to a don't buy and they're like thrilled about it. Like that's Peacock. Yeah. I just think you're going to find yourself using the custom video player UI that they developed for no reason. And you're like, this is my third pick? Like, that's just how that's going to feel for you. Yeah.

If the space bar on my iPad doesn't pause your video player, you've done it wrong. And Peacock has done it wrong. All right, Alex, you're up next. I don't think this is going to shock anybody, but Paramount Plus. Wow. That doesn't shock me. Wow. The reaches in these rounds are out of control.

I had that so much lower on my list. I get Star Trek. Love a Star Trek. I get most of Yellowstone. the good versions. Evil, that's lovely, the good fight. A bunch of like random CBS stuff like ghosts. And most importantly of all, 60 minutes.

So you're buying shows. Yeah, yeah. I'm all about the shows. Okay. For the most part. I got some others here. But for the most part, it's about like the shows for me. But like it's like Peacock where you get a bunch of live stuff too.

So I can like watch live news if I need to. That sort of thing. And then I got to see what's going to happen on Picard next week. like, I can't lose that. I mean, I guess, like, saying you're buying shows, like, at the end, we're all just buying content. Yeah. Like, no one's, like, I'm buying this for a great UI.

Like, it's all content. But you very specifically are, like, these four shows are why I'm drafting this service. A hundred percent. Also, like, the Peacog UI is fine. It's better than HBO, kind of. In that, like, the app loads from time to time. Yes. Yeah.

Like, once you actually use it, it's miserable. And I hate it. But otherwise, it's, it does the job. So I will say when I first did my rankings, I had Paramount Plus really, really, really low. And then the final four happened and the Masters happened. And both of those things only streamed on Paramount Plus. And all of a sudden, it's like as a person who also likes to watch like Champions League Soccer.

Like Paramount Plus has a sneaky amount of like really good, really high end sports that for me are like I actually don't subscribe to Paramount Plus. And there were a couple of times the last couple of weeks I almost did. and I suspect I'm going to end up having to do so. You'll like it. Even though I don't care about Star Trek. To me, Paramount Plus is just like, where do you go if you like Star Trek? And there's lots of those people and I am not one of them.

Yeah, there's a bunch of other stuff. Like, obviously the Star Trek is really big right now at the moment for me. But for the most part, it's all of the other content that I watch. And now I can keep up with everybody at home who all watch Yellowstone and all of those shows. So I can like have conversations with my family. That's very exciting. That's real. Okay, here's the rules question.

Are you paying $9.99 a month for just Paramount? Are you paying $11.99 a month and also getting Showtime? Oh, $11.99 a month. Yeah, that's the easiest trade-up of all time. That's just the price for Yellow Jackets, right? You pay $2 a month to watch Yellow Jackets? 100%. That's how they make billions.

Yeah. I'm so sorry. So smooth. Okay, so you take Paramount Plus and Showtime for $11.99 a month. I actually think that was a pretty good pick. Uh, Nilai. Hereup, what do you got? Oh, this is hard.

I can go two ways. Well, okay, and you're going to get a pick, and then we're going to take a break, and then you're getting another pick. So. Oh, yeah. No, that's actually super easy then. Disney Plus. Okay.

Why? Uh, child. Yes. You have a child. Bluey. I'm drafting Bluey. This is the Bluey pick. Very specifically bluey, frozen, Moana.

Like, this stuff just flows through the house like water. Also, it is like the single app on her iPad that I trust. Mm. Like in any way, shape, or form. Like YouTube kids is just a disaster clown car of a situation. She loves it. But you've taken it off the board, right? Because you took YouTube, totally off the board.

So YouTube kids went for the ride. Right. So you got to, the kid pick has to be D plus. Okay. So, and also, well, I was, I have two follow up questions. One is, are you just taking Disney Plus or are you taking the bundle and also getting Hulu and ESPN Plus? It's more expensive, but you get more stuff.

I'm taking the bundle. Okay. Hulu is fine. Actually, my question is, if I take the bundle, you can still pick Hulu, right? That's right. Okay. So, yeah, I'm taking the bundle, not totally strategic. If I was taking it totally off the board, zero.

Like, that's just draft strategy, right? Sure. But there's, you know, Hulu has a reasonably good catalog. It's got some movies on there. The real thing I'm taking is ESPN Plus, which has the one show I watched during football season more consistently than anything else, NFL prime time, which is great. Yeah, you two are the two people I know that are. or like ESPN Plus. It's great.

Yeah, but it's just for one show. Do you want to watch college softball on a Saturday afternoon? Like, they got you. Yeah. $4.99 a month. Let's go. Also, you just made an interesting point, which is you sound like a person who would be against doing what everybody thinks is going to happen, which is that Disney just pulls all of the

Hulu stuff into Disney Plus because it's a better and more successful app. Anyway, but it sounds like in the like it's the one app I trust on the iPad vein, maybe you don't want that to happen? We can age gate it already. So, like, she's already got the kids version of Dplus, which is, like, there's a lot of age gates built into it. Like, they know that their audience is kids. So I'm not worried about the catalog and the app expanding, because I think that Disney, of all companies, will be good at knowing that my daughter is five, you know? Like, it's actually hard for her to get some movies.

Like, some Pixar movies are rated PG, and she can't get them in her version of Dplus. Like, we have to use my account. So I'm not so worried about that. I do think, like, the reason I was like, whatever on Hulu is like. Hulu will go away before TikTok goes away. Oh, really? Yeah. Or it will outlast us all.

Those are the only two outcomes. Season 61 of the Handmaid's Tale coming soon. Exactly. Like, every one of its corporate owners has tried to kill Hulu, and it has outlasted all of them. But I think in this particular round of the streaming wars, neither Disney nor Comcastr really wants it to exist. It just seems like the, if you're taking it, you should take it as part of this bundle,

But it's a risky early round pick right now. Alex, what do you think? This would have been my next pick. So I'm very on board for this. Alex, what do you think? I mean, I assumed one of you with children was going to pick it. So I was just waiting for one of you with children to pick it. I don't need a lot of the stuff on there.

It does kind of feel like if you don't have kids or care about Marvel and Star Wars, Disney Plus is actually like mostly useless to you. But if either of those things apply to you, it is like the most important thing in the universe. Yeah, it's like I can just go see those movies when they come out. And like the TV shows have all been fine. People should know that if I could draft Disney Plus without drafting Star Wars, I would do it. If I could just leave that on the table, it would be fine. This is very much the bluey draft pick.

And if you have a child, you know how important this pick is. That's fair. All right. We're through two rounds. We should take a break. And then we're going to do the rest. Let me just recap the first two rounds. So after two rounds, Neely has picked TikTok and the Disney bundle, which is Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus.

Alex has HBO Max and Paramount Plus slash showtime, and I have YouTube and Peacock. I feel like I'm losing so far, I would say. I also just want to say, I was so thrown off by not getting the first pick, you guys. It's bad. It's going bad for me. But I'm going to come back strong from the break. I also just want to say we are six picks in and no one has picked Netflix, and that's kind of wild. But I suspect that's coming up soon.

Let's take a quick break, and then we'll get back into it. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I've really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce.

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Andrew, do you have any more music for us? Yes. It's the Virgo's streaming draft. Come at you live from New York City. Brought to you by Monster Air. That's right. All right, Nealai, round three. This is my reach.

This is the one that is, it's an obvious bad idea, but I'm doing it. Because it's going to blow the cost structure for me. It's over. There's no way I'm getting the bonus pick after this. YouTube TV with Sunday ticket. Ah. That's expensive, right? It's like 80 bucks a month plus, like,

$300 for Sunday ticket in Red Soin? Yeah. Per month or just... It's 72.99 a month right now for just YouTube TV because the price goes up like every three to four days. And Sunday ticket, they just announced yesterday as this goes live, the price for Sunday ticket is going to be $2.89 in a pre-sale and $3.89 if you buy it during the season. Are you sure? You're sure about this pick?

Yeah. I mean, they got me. What am I going to do? I mean, I will say Alex brought up Yellowstone. I watched all of Yellowstone on our YouTube TV because Paramount channels in there. So you can just like DVR it and skip the ads. It is an election year. I feel like I'm going to watch and end up watching a lot of CNN. I appear on CNBC. Sometimes my wife likes to watch me on television. Like I can concoct argue.

It's like mostly nonsensical arguments, right? Yeah. But I can concoct arguments for the value of live cable television. But if not for Sunday ticket, I would not be drafting this high. It's Sunday ticket that I'm drafting. Yeah. It's football. For me, it's Red Zone.

Just the, like, that's the only way I watch football anymore. And there's a lot of money I would pay and do pay every year to do it. But I can do it through YouTube. Yeah, right. You can buy the Red Soon channel through YouTube. Right. You already have it. Right.

Again, I'm off the cost curve. It doesn't even matter. But I'm buying the version that comes with Red Zone because there's a cheaper one that doesn't. Yeah, you really did just kind of give yourself an insurmountable lead in the spending a lot of money every month. $73 a month. All the rest of mine are going to be free. Freebie, baby. Let's do this thing.

Is the YouTube TV over like Hulu with Live TV or any of those other ones just purely it's it's football? Yeah, I can't imagine why I would pay for the one without football. I think that's a YouTube's calculation here. I was going to say, I feel like you just explained why YouTube spent all this money on football. Also, I mean, I've used the other ones. They're fine. I think the YouTube TV interface is better.

It doesn't matter. Like, yeah, it's football. I'm buying football. Alex, did you have live TV on your list at all? Kind of. I feel like if you don't care about sports, why would you? I mean, I've got Paramount Plus. I've got another pick.

potentially, but yeah, I don't really care about sports, so I don't really care about most live TV. The $75 a month for live TV is not blow your mind. No. Okay. I can just pirate it. I mean, I can just watch it over the air. Over the air. You haven't drafted your Plex server yet.

Don't forget. It's still out there. All right. Well, then let's move on. What's your next pick? Okay, this one's a Tuffy. I'm going to do something really, speaking of live TV, I'm going to do something really cheap. I'm going to do not Plex, but channels, which is a DVR service.

because it can work with TV everywhere. So anything that potentially is TV everywhere accounts, I can DVR those. But then you need a cable subscription. Not necessarily. It's not just cable. It's a bunch of other stuff, too. Oh, I see. So I think it might work with Parano Plus.

I can find out. But then it also gives me all the live TV. And it gives me access to like To Be and all of those things, which gives you CNN and all of that. Yeah, wait. So explain how channels works for people who don't know. This is like deep streaming nerd stuff. You got to walk us through it. So it's basically a DVR service, and you can plug in, if you've got an HD home run tuner, you just plug that in, and it automatically pulls down anything you get over the air, and you can DVR that. But you can also attach M3U playlists, which is what Tooby and Pluto and all of those free services offer. So you can then have all of those channels as well and just like watch all of the channels like you watch normal TV.

So I can watch all of the Carol Burnett show I want. And that's all I care about in the world. This is a power move. This definitely violates the spirit of the game, but I like it. So we're going to allow it. Yeah, this is great. You should definitely draft a kicker in the first round. I don't know.

Yeah. I'm just drafting all the teams, all in ones. Yeah, all of them. It's an absolute cheat. And if you tell me no, I'll accept it. I'll accept it. No, this is absolutely. This is a paid streaming service.

It's in the rules. Yeah. This totally counts. Yeah, it's a paid service and it requires way more work and effort than any of the other ones we've discussed here so far. I've never gotten past the sort of like initial setup hurdle of channels because it is like you said, you need special hardware. You need to like have done real work to get it set up. Once it's like up and running, is it easy or do you have to like Tomagachi style tend to your channels? Yeah, it's totally easy.

Like I was getting there was some sport. I don't remember which one that my brother couldn't get with Fios at his house, but I could. could get it over the air. And so I just sent him the code, like the IP address for my server. And he was just watching his sport live and was totally fine. And he lives many miles away from me. So it works super, super easy once you get it set up. I mean, I do feel like anything that starts with the phrase I sent him the IP address of my server is objectively not super, super, super easy. Yeah, it was just like a phone number. He's just like, I need a number for this. What's the number? And I send him the number. And he's like, okay, done.

That's fair. Type these numbers. Yeah. So it works, it works great. Okay. But you do have to get it set up. We probably should have said at the top that we all get the over-the-air broadcast channels for free, right? That's just, you can't help but have those.

They're just there. Yeah, you can't draft an antenna. Yeah. Right. You can't draft an antenna. You just have one. So I'm just enjoying all of them waiting for ATSC 3.0 to save our lives. It's never going to have them.

I look forward to you drafting ATSC3. 3.0 every draft for the next 20 years. Just throwing away all of your picks on that one. I get two picks now and I have three that I'm choosing from and I need the two of you to help me. We're just going to talk through this together. I'm your enemy. No, just we're just, we're going to talk this through. It's ultimately my decision and I know you're lying to me.

So it's, we'll get there. So there's Netflix. There's Amazon Prime video and there's Discovery Plus. These are the three I'm debating between. Wow. Really? These are all the kind of like volume plays, right? Like Prime Video just has a billion movies to watch.

Most of them are bad, but they're there. Netflix has infinite stuff, including like every bad reality show that I like right now. And then Discovery Plus is basically, for me, it's like the HGTV and murder shows for my wife service. So these all kind of serve the same purpose. But you already have YouTube, right? Like YouTube has all the HG TV kind of shows. only they're made by, they're like, uglier because they're made by just a dude in his house.

Yeah, there's just worse. Like I have watched a lot of the architectural digest celebrities show you their house tours. Love those videos. Yeah. But sometimes I want to see people try and fail to flip their own house. It's very important to me. I think I have to pick Netflix here,

just because Netflix is like, yeah, it's both a giant of the space and also just has a mountain of content that really nobody else can touch. This is your back. background music choice. This is what you're saying. You just want stuff that's on. Yeah, this is my like, something good to watch, but I don't have a specific desire for what I want to watch. Because the

flip side is like Apple TV Plus is still sitting there. Right. And Apple TV Plus is like three shows that I love. And that's it. That's the whole service. Yeah. That's the I'm drafting content. This is, this is why I asked Alex that question earlier, right? Like, you can either draft content or you get to this point and you're like, just stuff. Yeah. And I think, I think for me, I'm still in the just stuff mode. I just don't have enough show loyalty is the thing that I'm realizing. Like, I don't have that many things that I care so much about that I can't like. I use the first pick of the draft on stuff.

Like, that's what TikTok. It's just stuff. Like, I get, I feel you. I think what I'm going to do here is I'm going to do Netflix and I'm going to do Discovery Plus. And I now have just several lifetimes worth of relatively mediocre stuff to watch. And also whenever the next squid game comes out. I have that. Disclosure, I'm in a Netflix EP. This show is called The Feetrov and David should watch it. It's very good. I can watch it now. I'm the only one of us who's allowed to watch it from now on. Yeah, so there we go. I took it. I have Netflix. This is good. I feel better now. I feel like I'm winning. I was doing bad after two rounds. Now I feel like I'm winning. It wasn't even on my list. Netflix wasn't on your list? It wasn't even on my list. Wow. I got really mad. They canceled some show I liked. And so I stopped watching it for like three weeks. And I was like, oh, I don't actually miss it that much. So that has been consistently my thing. I

I will say the reason I was bummed to not get HBO Max was that it's really the only one that I would like super, super notice if I didn't have it anymore. Yeah. All the rest are like varying levels of good shows, but HBO Max is the one that's like, like I watch Succession religiously. And almost all of the shows that I watch religiously on purpose are on HBO, which is crazy and wild and kudos to HBO for continuing to be the only one to do that. But yeah, Netflix is like, it's just a lot of stuff. and it's better stuff than most of the other company's stuff, but it's still just stuff. Yeah. So I think I feel good about that.

I'm taking Netflix for 20 bucks a month and Discovery Plus for seven bucks a month. And now my wife has all of the murder documentaries she could possibly want. You're welcome, Anna. I love you. Here's a question. Did you expect Netflix to fall this far? I definitely did, is what I'll tell you. It's on my list, but like it's like a late round nice to have pickup.

Well, so that was the thing that was most surprising to me in going through this was how few incredibly compelling reasons there were to pick Netflix. Yeah. And this is the thing we've talked about a lot on this show, right? Like, Netflix is great at having lots of shows and being available everywhere, and its app works pretty well. But they're still in search of like the things that draw people to come to it on purpose and really like create cultural moments.

They have, they've had some wins. Like, squid game was huge. Tiger King was huge. Like they have these beats. Wednesday. Yeah. Stranger Things. Wednesday.

Outer Banks. Like if you're a teenager in America, they've got you. I've been watching The Night Agent recently. It's very good. It's just the like pulpy spy show, but it's excellent. But yeah, and I don't know. I just feel like part of this, I'm definitely holding out hope that the next Grey Man movie on Netflix is better than the first one because I love that book series and I hate that movie. No, no, they, this whole thing that they do where they're like, rich people make movies for lots of money. The Rock, you have an idea. Put Galada, like stop it. Like, you don't know you're doing. Yeah, none of them have been any good. What was the Michael Bay one with the numbers in the title?

Oh, was it Six Underground? Yes, the numbers in the title. That's what I got for you. That movie, like the description of Six Underground is like meant for me specifically as a person. Yeah, and you don't have any recollection of that happening to you at all. No, I really don't. It was bad is all I remember. But I feel good about picking it up here because I feel like I'm always going to have something to watch and it'll always be fine.

Totally adequate content. All right. So now we are we are into round first. already. Alex, you're up next. What do you got? Ooh, I'm going to go Criterion. Oh. I pay for it already. I really enjoy it. It's probably got the best set of Hong Kong action films that you can find in streaming. It's really hard to find those in streaming. And it's actually

got a whole bunch of them, especially like a bunch of Michelle Yo stuff is just popped up on there. It's got a lot of like old classic musicals, which that's like some people watch YouTube, I just go and like watch specific dance scenes from old classic musicals, and I can just do that on Criterion. And it's got a bunch of documentaries. Like, I'm enjoying my choice. This is a good pick. I didn't even have Criterion on my list, but that's a, that's a really good pick. And Criterion also does a really good job with like, they have a lot of bonus features. They do cool, like, behind the scenes stuff. It's like, it is probably like the film buff's most film buffiest thing. There's like a ton of movies on there. I will never ever watch.

but I like that I could if I really wanted to. If I want to go watch some French new wave, I can do that. I'm not going to, but I like that I know I can. But you can. Nilai, did you have criteria on your list? I did not. Yeah, you should have waited on criterion. It's a good pick, but I had not even occurred to me to think about it.

Once we get in these rounds, it's all bets are off. Like Alex is just off in the woods. She's like, right, channels in the criterion streaming service. Like, wee! Over in a quarter. I'm having a great time. No, it's an excellent pick, by the way. I think that's very smart.

It's just a big nerdy art pick. And ironically, maybe the single most likely candidate to still be around a bunch of years from now. Like, I don't know if I would pick against Criterion in this longevity fight. Yeah, because they got killed once and they came back. Like, yeah. They're going to live forever now. People still like black and white movies, including my father-in-law, who every time we go visit is like, have you seen this movie from 1936? And I'm like, nope, haven't seen it.

He's like, well, let's watch it tonight. So I'm getting a film education. It's lovely. All right. Now, O'Neill, you get two now. Wait,

I feel like this is unfair because you and I keep getting two in our own and Alex is going in between us. I'm like, yeah, but it means we have to wait longer. Yeah,

I feel like this draft order makes more sense when you have more people. I will say, I think Alex has gotten every single thing she wanted. Yeah.

It's true. I don't feel bad for Alex. You guys are off in sports land over there and I'm a little grimlin. I'm like doing strategy. All right, I have a rules question.

She said this about YouTube that you get a music service for free. Are we only drafting video services or do I have to put a music service in the mix? If you want a music service, you can draft a music service. But if I don't, like, are we just assuming that everyone has a Spotify subscription on the side? Or if I don't draft one, do I not listen to music? If you don't draft one, you get ad-supported Pandora.

That's the baseline. All right, that was important because you took YouTube music. Yeah. All right. Then I'm taking Apple Music. Easy. I knew I should have picked that last. Why Apple Music?

I'm an Apple Music. I think the interface is calmer. It doesn't seem like the music industry is perpetuating some sort of three-card Monty situation with me every time I open it. Fair. I like that they have lossless. I can't tell you if I can actually hear it or not, but I like that it's there. It's like a binky for me.

And, you know, I'm an old head. So it sort of seamlessly imported my iTunes library from way back. Then I still just like gaze upon it from time to time. Yeah. How much of the music service choice is like inertia? as opposed to anything else. Because I even had this thought when I picked YouTube and got YouTube music, I was like, ugh, do I still need to pick Spotify?

Because I've, like, had Spotify for 10 years, and it's going to be a gigantic pain in the ass to switch. Is it just the switching costs? Like, if you were starting over, would you still pick Apple music? Well, I think the switching cost, it's not money, right? It's like, well, have my music. Like, I am not a curated playlist person, unless I'm just, like, yelling at a voice assistant to start playing some music, you know?

Sure. I'm like, I'm going to listen to this album. I want to listen to these songs. So there's just a part of me that's very much, it's hard to switch unless you know that I want the entire, like, clash catalog, the entire cure catalog. Like, I'm still there. I'm still doing that thing. And so if that was easier, I would happily switch. But having, like, open an app and, like, go tell it which 18 records I want to pre-populate and have downloaded again is a very high switching cost. And I don't have to pay it without music.

All right. Nelai, you have another pick, but we're going to pause between your picks again. we're going to take one more break and then we're going to come do the last round and then all the insane cleanup we have to do to make any, just make any sense. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts,

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That's cloud. cloud. a.ai slash Vergecast and check out Cloud Pro which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. clod.aI.combe. All right, we're back. Let's just recap. We've done four rounds. We have one more round to go.

So far, Neli has picked TikTok, the Disney bundle, YouTube TV, and Apple Music. And just based on my math here, is spending like a little over $100 a month so far. So great job. I'm living the brand name lifestyle, man. I'm the luxury mall. You really are. It's really true. Alex has picked HBO Max, Paramount Plus slash showtime,

the channels app, and the Criterion Collection, because Alex exists on a different planet from the rest of us. Alex lives in Brooklyn. That's true. And Alex is spending in the realm of like $45 a month, somewhere in that range. I have YouTube, Peacock, Netflix, and Discovery Plus because I live in the Midwest. I am an American mom. You got the little haircut to the side. Yeah. And let's see. I'm spending 60 bucks all in.

So I would say it's very unlikely that Nilai loses the who spends the most. So congrats to Nealai already. And now we are on to our fifth and final round. Neelai, you're up. What are you got? All right. I'm picking between two. They're radically different.

But I'm going to do it. I'm just going to say this out loud. I'm picking my buddy Vippen's Plex server. It's really good. I can just text him. Tell us about Vippin's Plex server. So I've been doing Vipen for a long time. He's, uh, he's been running this thing for a long time.

He has, it's all automatic. It's all legal content. It's just Linux distributions. Yeah. And whenever I want a new Linux distribution, I just text him and it appears. Channels does that too. You don't have to ask questions about where they come from. Look, every now and again, I'm like, oh, I need the latest version of Red Hat.

Vippin's daughter is about the same age as my daughter. So it's, it's often that he has the same, uh, needs of Linux on his Plex server. How are Vippin's metadata's? My understanding is that much of the metadata cleanup you need to reliably distribute Linux around your home is automated. Sometimes you just want to watch Linux. You know what I mean?

Sometimes it's Friday night and you just want to put on Linux and watch it for two hours. Every now and again. You're just like, yeah. Are you paying for Plex pass? No. No, no, no, no. So is it no offline? No.

Yeah, this is just a, this is just a clean-up pick at the end here. You know, you draft your first-round quarterback, and you pick one in the seventh round just to put some competition and make sure. That's what that's why I'm doing this. I like it. What was your other choice if you didn't pick that? Hilariously, randomly, serious X-M. What? Yeah.

And that's straight up. There's like three shows that Becky listens to that are only unsirious. You just almost picked Apple Music and Sirius XM back-to-back. Do you live in a car? I picked the general hilarity of the Linux conversation over. the actual need of making my wife happy. What does she listen to on serious? There's like a bunch of comedy podcasts

that she listens to on serious. They're only on serious. So that's why we have it. And then I do actually live in the car. And so I listen to a lot of serious in the car. What's your go to? What do you listen to? Are you a yacht rock guy?

Not yacht rock. Lithium, obviously the all turner rock. Oh, and first wave. Nice. You can tell where my music tastes like fully lie. The other thing that's completely insane to do, if you have a serious subscription, you spend a lot of time in the car,

and you just need voices. is you can listen to CNBC as an audio stream. And that is the most insane podcast that you can listen to. Like Jim Kramer 8 in the morning, just like yelling about money is, like, I definitely don't feel sleepy. I'll tell you that much. And it's Jim Kramer saying, look at this chart and you saying, Jim, I can't. Exactly. Can't see the chart.

It is a vastly different experience to listen to it as an audio feed in the morning. Okay. I just want to say about Sirius XM that I bought a car, which meant that I got three. free months of Sirius XM, which I used zero times because I couldn't even figure out how to set it up. And then since it elapsed, I would say I either get a phone call or a piece of physical mail from Sirius XM asking me to resubscribe every single day. And I have now become resolute that I will never ever, ever listen to Sirius XM as long as I live. I refuse. Yeah, I mean, but I'm commuting from the woods to the city once a week. So I spend five hours in a single day in the car often.

And it's like great. But like, why? Like honestly, for the purpose of the draft, that's very utilitarian. Like, we're making entertainment here, and it's Vipin's Splix server. Which I'm assuming is free. Vipin doesn't charge you server fees. Again, we're friends for a long time. It all evens out in the end. All right. I've bought him a lot of drinks over the years. We're putting a zero next to Vip and Splix server. We'll put 99 cents because you have to buy him a beer every once in a while. It costs 99 cents a month. All right. All right. Last pick, Alex. What do you got? What's the Apple service thing that's the Apple music and the Apple TV.

Apple one. Apple one. Oh, that's good. That's a good pick. I'm going to spend a bunch of money and do that one because I too like Apple Music more than Spotify and Apple Music Classical. I've actually been using that way more than I thought I would. And then I think Apple TV is like, it's got good content. What do you watch? What are your shows? Really into Dickinson. I loved that when it came on. Severance for All Mankind. The Morning Show. I don't watch The Morning Show. That's a lot.

But it's there. Ted Lasso. I haven't watched the season of Ted Lasso. I think that says a lot. It's less good. It actually even occurred to me to spend time doing it.

Yeah. It's fine. It's a show. You know what is good. Is hello tomorrow? Is it actually good? Weird, but delightful. I've only watched like four episodes,

but it's very good. Shrinking, also very good. This is the thing about Apple TV Plus. It doesn't have that much stuff, but it's like good show to bad show ratio is probably higher than any other platform I can think of. Like Dickinson is a show I will,

I will rewatch. It's one of my. watch shows at this point. I just, I love it. And then for all mankind, like, it's great. You watch people get progressively worse makeup as they pretend to age 10 years every season and then go into space with iPods. It's rad. Alex, that was a really good pick. I'm sort of annoyed because you also, for Apple One, you get Apple Arcade and you get a bunch of iCloud storage that you will never use. But that's a pretty good pick. If I, if I cloud storage isn't, then Alex is finally, with the last pick, snake to the most important pick in the draft.

Yeah, you guys are all going to be getting that obnoxious on Cloud notification now. I don't think I got George Cats. If not, we need to redo this whole thing. I'm going to take Dropbox business. That's my last pick. Okay, so. What's your final one?

I have two left on my list, which are very different purposes for me. One is Amazon Prime Video, which was what I was going to pick if I didn't get YouTube because it's another one that's just like a big bunch of content plus of music service for free. So that was exciting. And then there's Hulu with Live TV. which I want to pick because I like Hulu because it also has a couple of my like endlessly rewatched shows and because I need live sports.

I think I'm going to pick Hulu. I think Hulu with Live TV, which is 70 bucks a month. It comes with, well, okay, here's a rules clarification question. If I sign up for Hulu with Live TV, I also get the Disney bundle. I like back into the Disney bundle. Does that count? There's no way to get Hulu with Live TV without getting Disney Plus? No, you just get it for free.

It's 70 bucks a month. Like they're just, they're like, sure have Disney. You want some Star Wars? Yeah, I think this is allowed. Okay, good. I came at Hulu the other way. If I hadn't blown the salary cap with Sunday ticket, we would be competing here, and I think it would be fair. Okay.

All right, good. I buy it. Then, yeah, I'm taking Hulu with Live TV, 70 bucks a month. I get Disney Plus. I get ESPN Plus. I get New Girl, which is just about to leave Netflix and go to Hulu, which is another one of the shows I've watched 700 times. Schitt's Creek is there. It's another one I've watched.

Oh, my God. This is an incredible sleeper final pick. Oh, yeah. I feel really good about this. But, like, Neela and I both have access. to that. He can just hit up his buddy. Can I just get Vippins? My last pick is Nilai giving me Vippins number. That's my final pick. All that's on there is Linux, you guys. Stop it. Just love that red hat. I really, like, I did not mean to do this. I accidentally ended up with like the most down the middle

set of streaming services. This is really upsetting. All right. So we have done five picks. Congratulations to everybody. We completed the draft. Andrew, do you have a cool last sound? for the end of the draft. Andrew, you've been keeping track of everything. All the math, all the money. Total it up for us. How are we doing? Okay.

So, Nil, despite picking two streaming services that did not cost any money, collectively, 104, 98. A month. Plus the 289 for the Sunday ticket, which would be 393.96. One-time payment of that 289, but still. Alex, its lowest here,

At 6392. Good work. Frugal. David, you really added it up with Hulu at Live TV coming at $1.295. Whoa. Oof. I got football and I'm kind of cheaper monthly. Picking Netflix was a mistake now that I'm looking at it.

20 bucks for Netflix was a bad use of 20 bucks a month. YouTube premium family is a lot of money. Yeah, but the reason, okay, let me defend family real fast. I don't have to watch ads, even when Anna wants to watch YouTube, which is worth the extra money. That's true. That's true. But okay, so that means Alex, you get the free pick here at the end. Ooh. Anything you want. Sky's the limit. Okay. Does this one count? Libro FM. Oh, my God, Alex. I got to read my books. So it's an audiobook service. Doesn't count. Doesn't count. Okay. I don't know why. It just doesn't. I just can't. I can't do it.

Wait, is that an audiobook streaming service or is that just like a book? Audio book service and you get like a credit to buy a book each month. No. Okay. All right. Cool. That's great. I still can read books on my own time.

And you didn't make sure I was going to be allowed to read books. What's the Microsoft? The Microsoft streaming cloud thing for games. Oh, that's interesting. I think of it as Microsoft X cloud. But whatever it's actually called now, that one. I just call it Game Pass. I think it has a more complicated name, but everybody just calls it game pass.

Yeah. That's also a good way to put that. Yeah, game pass. You ended up with the two game services. With Apple One, you got Apple Arcade, and now you're going with Game Pass. Yeah, and then I play the other games while I'm watching my Criterion. Really good wild card pick at the end, man. That is a really good pick.

Because it's either that or Plex, but I already did channels, which gives me the same benefit as Plex, but a better DVR layout. Yeah. Stuff still sometimes adds to it when I don't DVR it. It's wild. It's crazy. This means that Amazon Prime went completely unpicked. Yeah.

Which I think is not totally surprising. How often are you like, oh, man, I just really got to watch like extraction, but even more boring and on a worse UI. Again, because Becky is so in a comedy, every now and again, there's like one comedy special on Amazon Prime. Yeah. I think that's it. I'm really angry at this pick, Alex. That was a really good pick that I feel like I, if I had thought of that, I probably would have picked a while ago. Game Pass is good.

And also, like, a strong future bet. Like if we come back and the question is like, how did all our bets do? Yeah, game pass is going to exist. Yeah. Like the majority of mine will still be around except for probably my first two, maybe. I feel great about my draft. This is a good, it's a, this is a solid year ahead. On my list, the only things that went unpicked that I still have on my list are nobody picked prime video.

Nobody picked Spotify, which is very interesting. We're all happy with our other weird services or free Pandora. And then I have a bunch of like, I wrote down, you know, know, FreeVee and 2B and Pluto TV and the Roku channel and all that stuff and Sling and nobody picked any of that. I'm not super shocked. But see, I get the Roku channel because it does an M3U playlist so I can watch it anytime on channels. Yeah. Here's what I'm saying. If this drafted had like two or three more people in it, I think the drafting around those channels would have been intense, especially because then

they would have been how you would strategically have lowered the cost to try to get that extra pick. All right. Well, next year, we'll this draft will include 13 people. We're going to have a 32 team draft next year. And everybody gets five picks. It's going to get outrageous. Although I will say, even in this draft, David, I felt as though I was stealing picks from you and I don't think I did that really except maybe for Sunday ticket.

Neither of us was competing with Alex. No. Alex has fully trust the process. Like whatever was going on over there. I will say, I was hoping that my three and four picks were going to be YouTube and TikTok. That was going to be the turn I made at three and four. I thought one of you would take HBO, one of you would take Disney, and that I would get YouTube and TikTok and just like laugh at you old people about how I understand the future. And it didn't really work out that way, unfortunately.

No one took Instagram Reels. Well, you took TikTok, so you basically took Instagram Reels. But if you wanted that thing, you want, you want diet TikTok, you take Instagram rails. True. I like that I'm not going to know anything about the real world ever with my picks. I don't know what's happening in the world. from what you came into this with. So you're good there.

I've learned nothing about the draft in this whole process, and I'm not going to with my picks. All right, we should go. We're going to do this again next year, and we're going to have to come up with some score by which we see how we did this year. Also, today, as this show goes live, there's an event at which HBO Max and Discovery Plus

may cease to be what they currently are, so this might all get real weird, real fast. We'll have lots more to talk about. Thank you both for doing this. This is very fun. This is great. Yeah, super fun. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today.

Thanks to Nilai and Alex for being here and going through this crazy process with me. And thank you so much for listening. There's a whole lot more from this conversation and all of our streaming coverage on the verge.com. We put some links in the show notes, but there's all kinds of stuff all over the website. And I really, really, really want to know what you think of our picks. Who won the draft? What was the most surprising undrafted service? What obvious stuff did we miss?

Who's the stupidest of the three of us? You can email us all of your thoughts at Vergecast at the verge.com or call the Vergecast hotline, 866 Verge 1-1. We love hearing from you, and I want to hear all of your thoughts on the streaming draft, including ideas for next year, because like I said, I intend to do this every year until the heat death of the universe. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Fox Media Podcast Network.

We'll be back on Friday with Nilai and Alex to talk about what's going on. with Elon Musk and Twitter, electric cars, Microsoft teams, and a whole bunch of other stuff. See you then. Rock and roll.