Tubi Explodes in Popularity, Outranking Max and Apple TV+
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I have been pretty amazed by Tubi, which has gotten very far with little buzz in the media compared to the struggling subscription streamers.
Tubi has a crazy deep catalog including shows like Ranma 1/2, Accel World, My Cat from Hell, Kitchen Nightmares, and The People's Court.
It's like broadcast and the lower tier of cable TV died and went to heaven. On other FAST services like Pluto and Plex you will also find multiple MTV channels that really play music videos and South American soccer.
I'd imagine it puts some pricing discipline on the subscription streamers.
The current ad load is currently pretty light but they have a good chance to improve on the TV commercial model with personalization. They ask for your email address to save your viewing state across devices and after I did that I began to get what seemed like retargeted ads for brands I had engaged with before. (To be fair, after I bought a big bag of cat litter at PetSmart last month I've heard their jingle almost continuously on YouTube... Anything for you!)
Can't speak authoritatively on this, but I think same catalog is shopped around to other free or semi-free providers, like Roku or Samsung TV+.
My understanding is that it hides the "video on demand" aspect in that it creates a "Death Note channel" that like a linear TV channel that plays nothing but Death Note.
That Shield was my introduction to FAST but I installed most of the same apps on my XBOX ONE because, for the last three months, I'd had the project of gentling a feral cat which is partially an excuse to watch TV and play video games in the "Cat Room"
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/112685858662625838
though lately Bob B has been coming down the floor (finally accepted me as his person) and pointing at the TV to register his disgust with what's on it. (And no, I didn't watch このすば 3 on Tubi!)
I was visiting my 75-year-old father who's struggling with memory issues last week. He has an awful time working his TV - he has Roku, but he can't figure out how to use it and if you show him, he'll end up forgetting. I was thinking this would be a great market for older folks who don't want or can't use "smart" TVs. Even YoutubeTV doesn't offer a way to "flip through" channels.
Flipping through channels is problematic in the digital age (even digital cable or ATSC) as it can take a few seconds to start a new stream whereas NTSC could sync up within just one frame,
Here, there's not that much high quality TV content on it that isn't available on the free VOD providers (BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4) for the free-to-air TV channels. If I click on to the 'Series Spotlight' and look at the TV series on offer, they're all strange low budget things ('Bad Girls Club', 'Evil Killers', 'Z Nation'...) and I've not heard of the first 19 of them. The 20th one is a 'Gordon Ramsey: Uncharted' National Geographic show that I have access to through Disney+.
For films the picture is much better in that there are popular ones that if not blockbusters were at least things I'd heard of, but it's still mostly older stuff (Donnie Darko, Kick-Ass, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Twilight, Saw, Kill Bill).