Cord Cutters: Page 2

Google TV Freeplay now has 10,000 free movies and shows available to stream on demand, the first time the service has offered on-demand video since it launched. Google made the announcement on its blog yesterday, describing the addition as giving users "instant access to free entertainment." No subscription is required to watch.

There's no single subscription that gets you every NFL game in 2026. Before picking a setup, answer three questions: do you need your local team's games, an out-of-market team, or the national exclusives that land on Thursdays, holidays, and international windows? The answer decides whether this season costs $55 or several hundred dollars (Marketplace, about a month ago).

Put a 4K stream and an Ultra HD Blu-ray of the same movie on the same television, and both will paint the screen with an identical 3,840 x 2,160 grid of pixels. Yet anyone who has watched both back to back knows they rarely look the same, a gap Engadget laid out today in its breakdown of 4K Blu-ray vs 4K streaming picture quality. The resolution numbers match. The amount of picture data sitting behind them does not, and that mismatch explains almost everything else in this comparison.

The Onn Full HD streaming stick, a $15 Google TV dongle that turns any HDMI-equipped television into a capable smart TV, has become harder to find and more expensive to buy. Its publicly displayed price has climbed to $30 for some shoppers, double its 2023 launch price, with in-store stock running thin at many locations, according to Cord Cutters News and Android Police. For cord-cutters who relied on the Onn Full HD streaming stick as the cheapest entry point into Google TV, the question is...

The Nvidia Shield TV base model has been unavailable across NVIDIA's major U.S. retail partners for months. NVIDIA broke its silence on the matter, and the answer left the central question unresolved. The company said the base model is "largely out of stock due to demand" and that it has "no updates to share regarding future availability at this time." If you're wondering why Nvidia Shield TV is out of stock, that's the official explanation. It doesn't tell you when, or whether, the device is...

Screen mirroring an Android phone to a Roku takes only a few taps, but only if both devices support Miracast, the wireless display protocol Roku relies on. Pixel owners should skip mirroring altogether and lean on in-app casting instead, since Google built its phones around Google Cast and DIAL rather than Miracast. That one branching decision, Miracast or not, determines almost everything else in this guide.

Spotify is raising the pin limit in Your Library from four items to 20, with a global rollout underway for Free and Premium users.

DuckDuckGo's browser now blocks most of pre-roll and mid-roll YouTube ads automatically, with no extension required and no setup needed on most platforms. The feature went live this week as default-on for Windows, Mac, and iOS users running the latest version.

Netflix reaches 72% of American adults, making it the most widely used streaming platform in the country. Its share of total U.S. television viewing still fell to 7.8% in April, its lowest level since May 2025, per Nielsen data. Nearly everyone has it. Not everyone is watching.

If you're trying to watch The Open 2026 without missing a shot, here's the short version: USA Network carries live coverage every round, NBC joins on the weekend, and Peacock is the streaming layer that connects all of it. No single cable channel covers the whole event, but the rights structure is more logical than it first appears once you understand which platform owns which window.

Roku has raised prices on every streaming device it sells, with increases ranging from 33% to 50% across the full lineup. No hardware was updated, no new features were announced, and the changes took effect immediately, according to The Verge today. The Roku Ultra jumped from $99.99 to $149.99. The entry-level Streaming Stick climbed from $29.99 to $39.99.

Google's TV platform holds a six-point lead over Apple's tvOS in the latest Hub Entertainment Research survey, 14% to 8%, among U.S. respondents describing the operating system on their most-used TV or streaming player, according to Android Authority. That lead matters less than the gap separating both companies from Roku and Fire TV. Before going further, it's worth being precise about what's actually being measured here: this is a survey of primary viewing setups, not shipment figures,...

U.S. viewers with a digital antenna can watch USA vs Belgium for free tonight on FOX at 8 p.m. ET. No account, no trial, no credit card. No antenna? FOX One's 3-day free trial covers the match with no upfront charge, as long as you cancel before it renews. UK viewers have the cleanest deal: BBC One on TV or BBC iPlayer online, free and in 4K. Australians can watch on SBS at no cost. India is the one exception ZEE5 holds the official rights at approximately ₹799 (around $8 USD), with no free...

Some Netflix users are seeing prompts asking them to add a unique email address before using a profile, according to Android Authority. Netflix has not publicly detailed whether the prompt is mandatory for all users, how widely it is rolling out, or how Kids profiles will be handled.

The culprit behind soft, degraded Hulu streams is usually not your router. Both the iOS and Android Hulu apps ship with a mode called "Data Saver" enabled by default, which reportedly actively caps stream quality to reduce data consumption. Most users never touch it. Turning it off takes about 20 seconds and is the right first move before running speed tests or resetting hardware.

A YouTube TV Help Community Product Expert said a recent change removed Live Guide background playback from YouTube TV on certain devices, cutting a feature that let subscribers keep a live channel running while browsing upcoming programming. The change is intentional, no app setting restores it, and the community explanation doesn't fully account for all the hardware where users are reporting the loss, including Roku devices, based on user reports cited by multiple outlets last week.

Spotify this week launched Track Reactions, a feature that lets collaborators respond to individual songs in shared playlists using emoji visible to every playlist member. Announced on the Spotify Community blog, the feature closes a loop that has been open since collaborative playlists existed: until now, adding a song generated no quick in-playlist reaction.

Turn off Autoplay Next Episode in your Netflix profile's Playback settings. That single change stops the continuous playback pattern that leads to the "are you still watching?" prompt, which fires after three consecutive episodes or about 90 minutes of uninterrupted viewing, per Engadget. The steps below walk through exactly how to do it on a browser and on mobile, and what to expect once you have.

Peacock is launching its vertical video feed in the Peacock app, rolling out original Bravo microdramas and a swipeable short-form section built into the mobile app. According to Peacock, the two Bravo series are the first official originals in the microdrama format announced by a major U.S. entertainment streaming platform.

The Spotify disco ball icon fix is now live on iPhone. The familiar flat green circle is back in the App Store today, 25 days after Spotify publicly told users the standard icon would return "next week." The update is available now, according to 9to5Mac.