Which streaming services should I subscribe to?

It’s easy to forget how quickly the media and entertainment industry has evolved. Fifty years ago, there were only three television channels, while the nightly closedown was still part of life forty years ago. As recently as 1996, only four per cent of UK households had the internet, and in 2006, you still had to visit a video store if you wanted to rent a movie you didn’t already own.

By comparison, today’s audiences are ‘blessed’ with high-speed home broadband services, a hundred Freeview channels and dozens of streaming services competing for your monthly subscriptions. We’ve never had so much choice in terms of entertainment, but with content fragmenting across numerous rival platforms, it's increasingly hard to decide which streaming services to sign up to. A household could spend over £400 a month on streaming subscriptions, while smart TVs now come pre-loaded with numerous apps for services you may not have heard of, like Roku and Viaplay. 

We are living in a golden age of content production, even if the quality is uneven. And since we’re also living in an age of shrinkflation and endless tax increases, deciding which subscription services to sign up to could involve a spreadsheet and a calculator. These are our tips on which platforms you might want to consider paying for – along with a few which won’t cost a penny…

Free to those who can afford it

The UK’s terrestrial broadcasters all offer their own proprietary apps, from ITVX to My5. However, the leaders are Channel 4’s titular app and the BBC iPlayer. You’ll need to sign in (and confirm you have a licence in the latter case), but these terrestrial services are free to watch. Each offers a wealth of live, on-demand and archive content. YouTube can also be watched free of charge, though it does involve sitting through even more ads than Channel 4.

A game of two halves

Gone are the days when Sky held an effective monopoly on paid sports, though the Sky Go app still offers comprehensive live and catch-up sports coverage alongside hundreds of other Sky channels. Virgin Media customers have their own Play app, which also incorporates arch rival Sky’s extensive sports offerings. More recent entrants into the sports broadcasting market include TNT Sports, Premier Sports and Viaplay, plus the American-oriented DAZN.

The family favourites

We have to start with Netflix, which evolved from a DVD postal service into the world’s leading streamer with a peerless database of content. Disney+ increasingly runs it close, with the complete Marvel, Pixar and Disney back catalogues and some quality originals. Amazon Prime Video is perhaps less compelling (but does include free next-day Amazon postage), but it’s easier to applaud NOW TV’s curated Sky content alongside a vast array of British classics.

Fringe benefits

A Hayu subscription is ideal if you really love reality TV; but even if you do, Discovery+ arguably has a superior array of real-life entertainment. Apple TV+ can suffer from a limited content roster, while Paramount+ is dominated by American series, some of which has limited appeal on this side of the Atlantic. The same could be said of the newest market entrant, HBO Max, though it has some marquee titles and can be bundled with TNT Sports.

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