Hello Cord Cutters, here is a new update of the streaming wars, and for this article we have a completely new and unique service Play Station Vue . Well, cutting cable might save you a lot of money, but it is never easy as you have to change a lot of your traditional TV watching habits. All the OTT-VOD (over-the-top video on demand) streaming services available in the market are great for both movies and TV shows, but the problem is that they don’t offer latest and ongoing TV shows and movies, and even if they do, they are pretty expensive.
So guys, In this article of mine I came up with a solution in form of a service, which will give you the exact comfort of watching live TV channels, ongoing shows and sports events just as you watch with cable subscriptions, without having to pay all those big cable bills. The service is as I told you earlier is Play Station Vue, so basically I will review the service, and help you deciding whether the service is suitable for you. So without much ado, lets understand what Play Station Vue is? and How it works?
What is Play Station Vue?
Play Station Vue is the latest service launched by Sony, in March 2016, to answer all the popular services in the cord cutting market like Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO NOW. Despite these services are already pretty famous, PS Vue came with a catch, which gave it a new identity in the world of streaming. The feature which separates PS Vue from all the other service is that it provides live channels.
Yes, just like cable TV, PS Vue also offers live TV channels, including a lot of major TV channels and networks. But unlike cable, PlayStation is a monthly based subscription service, which you can cancel any time you want, without paying a single extra penny.
Cost and Packages
In order to provide live TV channels to each and every state of USA, because most of the major channels it offers are local therefore, for each state they have to make a separate deal. Until now PS Vue have 7 regions across US, where they will offer Live TV channels (Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami).
There are 3 packages or plans to choose from. The basic pack (Access) starts from $40 which offers around 60 channels. The second package is the Core package, which costs around $45 a month and has about 70 channels in it, including Sundance, Golf, ESPNU…. The third and the last is the most expensive plan (Elite), costs $55 a month. The channel catalog has all the channels of the Core Package, plus 30 to 35 more channels.
Live streaming is not available for the other states, but PS Vue launched another service which is available nationwide. This service is almost similar to the previous one, with just one difference that there is no live TV, but all the shows and movies are available the next day they are aired. Which is more or less like the video-on-demand services. The plans are almost same, same number of channels. The cost of each plan in the on-demand Vue service is $5 less for each plan in the live TV service.
For complete list of channels in Play Station Vue Catalog read this list by Cnet.
Interface
The interface of the service is pretty basic, noting exceptional and is not comparable to services like Netflix, Hulu etc. The live TV service is way different than the interface of cable box, which is quite difficult to navigate. There is no option to skip or change channels directly, you have to go all the way back if you want to watch something else.
The other problem which users have encountered that the channel list which appears in PS 3 is not complete and is missing 15-20 main channels, which is annoying as it becomes really hard to access those channels. The problem does not comes with PS 4.
PS Vue also has a DVR service, which is amazing as you don’t need any storage device to record your shows. All the shows and movies get stored in a cloud storage. The content you stored will remain there for 28 days, which is enough I guess.
PS Vue Competition
As I mentioned earlier that PS Vue is different than the other on-demand or video rental services, therefore it doesn’t gets direct competition from these services. The main competition offered to PS Vue is by Sling TV, a service which of similar niche as Vue is.
Sling TV also offers live TV channels from a lot of good networks. The channels catalog of Sling TV is not as big as Play Station Vue, but it is a less expensive ($20 a month) service so we can manage that. Sling TV was launched earlier than Vue, therefore the service has a headstart. Sling TV also has premium channels packages, which are beautifully categorized according to their genres, example – Sports Extra, News Extra…. Each of the package costs extra $5.
So guys this was my review of Play Station Vue. If you have any question regarding the service, leave a comment below, I will try my best to help you out. For any other query regarding online streaming services and cordcutting, drop a message below.
Thankyou!
Hi,
I was excited to try both Sling and Sony Vue after using (and paying dearly for) DirecTV.
I tried these services out several months ago so my memory is a little fuzzy on the details but I remember the thing that irritated me most..
I liked Vue more for the better selection of content my kids and I wanted to watch ( I only watch a few channels). And at first it seemed great that they had a “DVR” kind of service that saves shows for 28 days.
However what doesn’t get mentioned in most reviews is in my opinion a very important point.
When watching saved shows you cannot fast forward through commercials or at least watch a different channel during the commercials they show. Many (most?) cable and satellite users don’t like to watch commercials so I’ll flip to a different show and come back in a minute or two after the commercials ended. However if you jump away from the saved show and come back to it you go back to the same exact place the commercials left off. In other words there doesn’t seem to be a way to avoid commercials. And flipping away during a live show takes time without a blazing fast internet connection.
That is why I’m still sticking with DirecTV for the moment. Having to watch commercials is intolerable.
Thanks, Glen, indeed it is one of a major problem with PlayStation Vue, I’ll recommend you Hulu if haven’t tried this, it has a lot of content for kids too and most of the shows are ads free if you choose the $12 plan, which is much cheaper as compared to PSVue.
I’ll soon update my review 🙂