Distro TV

There are the big boys of free ad-supported live streaming, such as Pluto TV, Xumo, Tubi, The Roku Channel, Stirr, Sling TV Free, Plex, Peacock, and the like.

You've probably heard of most of those, and have probably watched at least some of them. They're really all worth a look. Some of them have really easy to use interfaces, and some are not quite as user friendly. All of those are pretty good insofar as free live streaming is concerned.

Some of them have more that live streaming. They all offer on-demand content to varying degrees. Some actually have other original intent, but added live streaming after launch. Plex, for instance, didn't start as a live streaming service. Peacock is actually a pay service, but has a free tier. Same goes for Sling TV. The Roku Channel was free on-demand content and added live TV much later.

These aren't the only live streaming services, though. I recently ran across one called Distro TV. They've been around since 2019, but only recently came across my radar. One major difference between Distro TV and the others listed, is that Distro TV is independent of the major networks and studios. Pluto TV is owned by Paramount. Xumo and Peacock are owned by Comcast. Fox owns Tubi. Stirr is owned by Sinclair. Sling TV is owned by Dish Network. And so on. Distro TV calls itself "the largest, independent, free, ad-supported streaming television service." And they very well may be.

I'm not their primary target audience, though. It appears as though they are targeting people younger than me. Much younger. That happens more and more as time goes on. If you haven't that out yet, you will.

The content is still similar to that of the other services. However, Distro TV seems to have a higher percentage of non-English language channels available. While the other services mentioned do, of course, have non-English language channels, Distro TV seems to have a higher percentage in that category.

The number of live streaming channels is under 200, but not much under 200. I counted 187, plus nine music channels. That is nearly three times the number available from Sling TV Free, but Sling TV's free offerings are more of a "best of" listing. That's not to say that Distro TV doesn't have some gems that aren't available there. They do have some content you won't find on Pluto TV or Sling TV Free.

The problem I have with Distro TV, and yes, I do have a problem with it, is that the app doesn't work well. On Roku, the live guide freezes. I've not found an issue with the other menus, but the grid guide doesn't work well. The only way to fix the freeze is to exit the app and re-enter.

On Fire TV, the grid will not freeze, but the scrolling up will stop at times. It's as if the top limit moves down every so often. The only way to get back to it is to exit the app and re-enter.

The performance on Chromecast is worst of all. It's not available. The Website shows Android TV as a supported platform, but Google's own Android/Google TV device isn't supported.

There's a lot of potential in Distro TV, but they aren't there yet. They need to fix the apps above all else. I suspect they are focusing on getting additional content, which would be good, but I hope they set aside some work for the app. It needs it.

For now, this won't be a part of my Streaming Life. But, if the app gets fixed, I'll give it another look

Olympics viewership down 42%, except for streaming

The Beijing Olympics ended with horrible ratings. But not for streaming viewership. While overall rating for the Olympics were a huge disappointment for NBCU, the streaming audience grew. And that's a good thing for streamers like you and me.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Winter Games were down 42% from the previous Winter Games, and down from last year's Summer Games.

The topline figure is that the Olympics averaged 11.4 million viewers across all of NBCU’s platforms in primetime. That’s down 42 percent from the 19.8 million average for the 2018 winter games in Pyeongchang, South Korea — in keeping with the trend both from the first few days of the games (and, in fact, closing the gap with four years ago a little bit) and the general decline of broadcast network ratings in the past four years.

NBCU’s coverage from Beijing is also down about 26 percent from the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which averaged 15.5 million primetime viewers in the company’s “Total Audience Delivery” metric (a combination of Nielsen ratings for TV and Adobe Analytics figures for digital platforms). That too is on par with the declines from last summer from the opening week of the winter games.

Not all of the news was horrible, however. In fact, the streaming news was pretty good. Streaming viewership was up.

... the streaming audience for Beijing was either the largest or second largest for any Olympics to date, depending on the measurement. Streaming on Peacock, NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports app had an average primetime viewership of 516,000 viewers, up 8 percent from the summer and an all-time high for any Olympics in the streaming era. Streaming made up about 4.5 percent of the total primetime audience for the games.

U.S. viewers watched 4.3 billion minutes of Olympic coverage over 18 days on the NBCU outlets and social media platforms, the most for any winter games and behind only the 5.6 billion minutes for Tokyo last year. Steaming minutes improved by 78 percent over the 2018 Winter Olympics, and NBCU said Peacock had its “best 18-day stretch of usage” in the 19 months since its national launch. Peacock streamed every event live from Beijing.

With an overall decline in viewership, the fact that streaming was up offers good news for those of us that use that method of watching TV. The streaming audience is growing, even when viewership for the event being watched is dropping.

Maybe this will help push the networks into thinking about streaming and look to offer more for streamers. NBCU did a good job of offering coverage to streamers, with every event available on Peacock TV.

While ABC, CBS, and Fox may be smiling at the low ratings for NBC during the Olympics, they need to learn from this as well. They need to understand that streaming viewership is increasing, and they need to offer more for streamers. If they do, my Streaming Life will be better. And so will yours.

Raspberry Pi streamer Update 3

My Raspberry Pi streamer project has gone okay so far. There are a couple of issues, which I covered in two earlier posts: Update 1, Update 2.

Now I've run into a new issue, but this is a very different issue. Very different. But I also had a good experience to go along with it.

First the good. I didn't really like the remote I originally bought for it, and found a different one that I thought would be better. It is better. I like the new remote. I found it on sale from Walmart.com, and haven't been able to find it elsewhere. The mouse part doesn't work well, but that was true of the first remote. However, the buttons are great. The remote looks and feels a lot like an Apple TV remote, but larger. I like it.

Now the bad. If you recall, I installed the Android TV setup on a 2 GB Raspberry Pi. It recommends a 4 GB device. I didn't have a 4 GB device, so I decided to try it on a 2 GB device just to see what would happen. It ran, but I still wanted it on a 4 GB device. So I bought a 4 GB Raspberry Pi.

It took a few days, since I bought it directly from CanaKit rather than through Amazon, like my first device. Part of the reason was because it wasn't available from Amazon, which would likely have shipped sooner. Anyway, it arrived and didn't work.

Now, it wasn't that the Android TV setup didn't work. It was that the Raspberry Pi board didn't work. I never go to the point of installing Android TV on it. It failed before we got that far. How far did we get? First power up for initial setup. No display. I did proper troubleshooting and ruled out the cause as the monitor, the HDMI cable, the power supply, even mouse and keyboard were changed out. It's the Raspberry Pi itself.

I've communicated for replacement (I want one; I don't really want my money back, just a working device). We'll see how that goes.

The 2 GB Raspberry Pi still works, but I wanted the 4 GB to operate to get a better idea about things. I must say that I am disappointed. I plan to run Plex on a 4 GB Raspberry Pi, but I need a running 4 GB Raspberry Pi first.

My Steaming Life is quite frustrated at the moment. I'm awaiting on that company in Canada to help make it better.

Washington's Birthday

Today is Washington's Birthday. Well, it's not the actual anniversary of the day George Washington was born, that's tomorrow. But there is a federal holiday, and it's called Washington's Birthday, and here in 2022, that's today.

Here's the listing of this year's holidays from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management:

Can you read that part at the bottom? The part that references today's holiday? It says:

**This holiday is designated as "Washington’s Birthday" in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.

Some of you, maybe most of you, are thinking that today is Presidents Day. It's not. There is no such thing. And some of you may want to argue about it. "The combined Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday together and call it Presidents Day."

No they didn't. There never was a federal holiday for Lincoln. Ever. Look it up. There may have been state holidays, there may have even been local holidays that closed schools, but there never was a federal holiday for Lincoln. Ever. I'm not saying there shouldn't have been, I'm just saying there wasn't. And that's the truth.

What some -- or most -- may not realize is that the holiday wasn't to celebrate George Washington as president. Yes, he was president. He was the first under the current Constitution, but that's not why there's a holiday for him.

George Washington was one of the most important figures in the creation of the United States as an independent country. He was reviled and respected -- maybe even more respected than reviled -- by the United Kingdom when the War of Independence was fought. He was loved by many in this young country.

His actions in the founding of this country happened in the 1770s and 1780s, with the War of Independence being fought from 1775 (the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence was well after the start of the war; look it up) to 1784 (Cornwallis surrendered to Washington in 1781, the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, but Congress didn't ratify it until early 1784; look it up).

Washington became president in 1789, the first one under the Constitution that was ratified in 1788. However, this was at the end of his service to the nation he helped found. He achieved his high status well before he became president. Had he never become president, his birthday would still have been celebrated, and we'd probably not have any of this silly myth about a "Presidents Day."

We would also have not had the presidency of George Washington. Maybe that would have been a good thing, maybe it would have been a bad thing. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and others, including ones that never served as president, may have been our first president. Perhaps they would have handled some of the major events of those eight years differently. Maybe even some of those events may not have happened at all.

What I do know is that George Washington's birthday wasn't first celebrated because of his presidency. It was because of his actions that led to the creation of this nation, and its establishment as a republic. Without him, there may not have ever been a United States. He didn't do it single-handedly, of course, but without him, there may very well have never been this country.

George Washington was a flawed man. He was an adulterer and a slave owner. He was not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination. However, we are all human, and we all have faults, some worse than others. Washington was one of the most important men to lead this young country, well before he became president. That is why his birthday is celebrated.

Today doesn't celebrate the men who held the office of president. There is no celebration of Joe Biden. There is no celebration of Donald Trump. There is no celebration of any president at all, except for Washington, but his being president has nothing to do with the celebration. There is no holiday celebrating anyone for being president. And there probably never should be.

So, what does all this have to do with streaming? Nothing. Unless you bought a new streaming device or TV in some store's poorly-named sale. Now go watch some educational video with your streamer, and learn the facts about something. Like the actual holiday that is today.

Watching the NBA All-Star game

Tonight is the National Basketball Association's all star game. If you are a streamer, you can watch the game, as long as you have a subscription to one of the live streaming services carrying the game.

If you have an antenna, it won't do you any good. The game is on TNT and TBS, and you can't find that over the air. So, how can you, a streamer, watch it?

There are four streaming services that carry either of those networks. Actually, they carry both of them, so you can choose. Well, six services, if you county Sling three times. Because Sling is, well, Sling.

TNT/TBS

• Sling TV (Orange) ($35/month)
• Sling TV (Blue) ($35/month)
• Sling TV (Orange+Blue) ($50/month)
• YouTube TV ($65/month)
• Hulu+Live TV ($70/month)
• DirecTV Stream ($70/month)

Sling TV has two different plans. They carry many of the same channels, but the Orange plan has some channels the Blue plan doesn't have, and the Blue plan has some channels the Orange plan doesn't have, and the Orange+Blue plan combines them. The other services either have multiple plans that are build on the lower plans with each level adding more, or add-ons to the various plans.

Fubo TV, which markets itself as the top streaming service for sports, is actually the worst for basketball fans. Many games are on TBS or TNT, and Fubo doesn't carry either.

Oh, there are also some NBA events around the all star game that are carried on NBA TV. That can be a standalone service, or it can be part of a streaming package, such as with YouTube TV, as a higher tier plan for DirecTV Stream, or as an add-on to Sling TV (any plan).

If the NBA all star game is something you want in your Streaming Life, you have options.