Ask GR... which entertainment subs are the best?

We're in a world where companies publishing entertainment increasingly want you to sign up and pay regularly for their products.

A plethora of entertainment subscriptions are now on the market, covering TV, music, gaming, reading and more.

But which ones are worth the cost and which ones are a bit of a rip-off? It's time to Ask GR! Please select up to four entertainment subs from the list above which you feel offer great service and value. Of course, the options can't include everything so do post details of other (reputable!) services which you feel are worth checking out!

I went with:

Netflix
BBC
Sky Sports
Amazon Prime

They're the ones I use the most and would 'struggle' without.

I don't even recognise some of these! :lol:

Gaming

Game Pass
In terms of gaming I think the only service that I look at and think "wow, that's a great deal" is Game Pass. But interestingly at the same time I have let my subscription lapse since last year and haven't bothered to start it up again so it can't be that good! In reality this is more to do with me just having too much to play so saving money on stopping Game Pass for a while made sense, I'll be back on board at some point once I've cleared some of my backlog!

8/10

Playstation Plus
I have been pretty disappointed with Plus. I've had it for 2 years and in that time have only found maybe 2 of the free games to have been of any real interest. Similarly I have bought nothing using the "Plus discounts". Other than the odd bit of Fall Guys I've not done any online gaming either so that side of the sub is a waste as well.

3/10

Nintendo Online
This is still a pretty rough service, but the fact it is cheaper than PS+ and that I actually use some of the online functions for my Switch games makes it worth having. Some of my best gaming has been taking part in AYAMMM for Super Mario Maker 2 which would have been impossible without Online so just for that this gets serious bonus points.

6/10

Others

Netflix
I've been a subscriber to this for the best part of 10 years now, I've always found myself watching things from the service throughout that period and have discovered/watched some of my favourite shows and movies as a result of having it. Having such a wide selection of kids shows and movies has been a huge win as well to keep the children entertained and grab 5 minutes peace every now and then! The price rises over time have started to eat in to the good will somewhat but overall it is still a solid service.

8/10

Disney+
Like many I picked this up at the start of lockdown 1.0 and have been pretty happy with it. I'm not keen on the "every studio has their own service!" approach but have always felt that Disney are the only ones that it would be possible to make a concession for, such is the extent of content that they own. Sure enough the ability to watch "most" of the Disney Classics/Pixar movies/Marvel/Star Wars content from down the years has proved worth it. Again the wealth of content for the kids is a huge win.

8/10

Game Pass Ultimate is clearly the best value out of all the gaming propositions. I'm loving Disney+ but the feeling was always whether there would be the content moving forwards to continue making it a good value proposition. The announcements of new stuff and the addition of Star probably mean that it is. I keep paying for Netflix but I watch it very rarely now though the kids do so I won't be cancelling any time soon though I have scaled it back from the UHD package.

EDIT: Oh and the TV licence is well worth it's cost purely for TMS, Radio 5 Live and 6 music. :wub:

Out of all of these I only pay for a TV licence and Netflix. I don't even have enough time to watch everything on those that I want to. I genuinely don't understand how people have the time to burn through TV series so quickly and say they've "watched everything on Netflix". To me it's one of those platforms where I'm never going to have the time to watch everything on 'my list' on it, but I feel like I get enough value for money from it to make it worthwhile for me.

That being said, I don't really have much interest in any of those others. Maybe some of the sports packages, but the prices are silly, and I refuse out of principle to pay for these bullshit fragmented sports packages where you can't even watch everything (i.e. all PL games) even with the multiple subscriptions.

Also, I use YouTube a fair amount, but they're clearing making it as annoying to use as possible without Premium. All that does though is make me refuse to ever buy Premium, rather than make me relent and want to buy it.

Of the ones that I subscribe too:

Netflix [8]
Huge variety; lots of junk but some great stuff, too. Keeping this.

Disney+ [9]
It would have been [7] but the recent Star additions have really ramped up the value in my eyes. Keeping this... although I do wonder about future price increases.

BBC licence [8]
For me, the BBC is my first source for news and weather and I find the quality to be good. The cost is a little high but it does provide lots of content - and also support for more niche groups and areas - so I don't mind too much. Keeping this.

PS Plus [5]
I don't like the idea of paying for "free" games that Sony picks out although the price reductions in sales are good. I'm only really paying it now so that I can play Fallout 76 online so I'll probably stop when that fixation ends.

Nintendo Online [2]
Very poor. It's relatively low cost but the online service is weak and so I kinda begrudge paying for it. I only bought a sub recently to do the GRcade Mario Kart night and Animal Crossing weekend event (I should have paid for a monthly sub rather than annual!) so I doubt I'll re-sub.

I think Amazon Prime is probably best value given that you can get 1 day delivery as well as TV and film streaming.

Gamepass and (to a lesser extent) PS Now justify themselves in their service. The standard gaming subs like PS+, Gold and Nintendo Online are all awful because they force people into subscribing just to play online. They shouldn't pick up any points here at all.

Netflix is the best of the film/TV streaming simply because it isn't owned by Amazon or Disney.

BBC is my main source of online news, one of the few TV networks I watch (both live TV and on iplayer), and Radio 4/world service is my standard radio listening, so while I'm worried about government propaganda and editorial bias I still, for the most part, do like the BBC.

Also shout out to crunchyroll for being free with ads, it's actually pretty good as a low effort way of watching quite a lot of anime.

At the moment Disney+ is killing it in terms of content. I just wish they'd update the PS5 app to run 4K for strawberry float sake. Other side of the spectrum though, Amazon Prime, in terms of usability, is the pits.

Game Pass, by a mile. Then licence fee and Amazon Prime (though if it was just the content and not the fast/free delivery it wouldn’t be enough value). And finally, digital magazine: The Week (combined sub with the print edition).

Lotus wrote:Also, I use YouTube a fair amount, but they're clearing making it as annoying to use as possible without Premium. All that does though is make me refuse to ever buy Premium, rather than make me relent and want to buy it.

YouTube Vanced is a game changer, definitely bin the official YouTube app in favour of Vanced.

Is Viz Manga like the magazine?

Drumstick wrote:
Lotus wrote:Also, I use YouTube a fair amount, but they're clearing making it as annoying to use as possible without Premium. All that does though is make me refuse to ever buy Premium, rather than make me relent and want to buy it.

YouTube Vanced is a game changer, definitely bin the official YouTube app in favour of Vanced.

Agree with this, Vanced is fantastic.

BBC - Still one of the better UK based news sources, despite obvious pressure from the right-wing to take more biased stances in the last couple of years. Also TMS!

Disney+ - This was already a must because both the wife and our child love it, but now Star has been added there's plenty on there for me too.

Spotify - I get this for free but I could absolutely not go back to the free service and it has almost everything I would want to listen to on it. The playlists it generates are a nice touch too.

Netflix - Was better value in the early days but it's still just about worth it.

I don't have any of the others on the list.

Game pass - great value, even at full price. Very happy with the selection of games, even if the cloud gaming is a bit iffy over WiFi.

Netflix - Still decent value, but having been subscribed for a long while, it's nothing like as good value as it used to be, what with several price rises, and a shrinking third party library being propped up by a large number of "originals" that I'm often not that interested in. Would much prefer it if they could go back to a wider library of films, but the video streaming market is getting increasingly more fragmented as time goes on, so it won't happen.

Disney Plus - Nice and cheap compared to other services, but the library puts much smaller, and I'm not at all bothered about Marvel stuff or most Disney films, primarily just the Star Wars and Pixar content. Whether we continue subscribing will be entirely up to my wife. Not checked the new Star content, but I see that's brought about a new price increase.

Licence fee - Feels like an odd one to evaluate in terms of value. Iplayer remains a great service, and BBC Sounds for radio/podcasts is as well, but it funds so much more, like news coverage, which is increasingly toothless, and cowed to right wing talking points, and it functionally remains a tax on all other live broadcast services on this list.

Tidal - Subscribed for the hi def audio seeing as I spent a decent chunk on some Sonos speakers, so it's nice to be streaming above standard mp3 quality. It's OK value I guess, pretty standard for music streaming. It's not the best player I've used, but seeing as Google killed Google Play Music in favour of the inferior youtube music, that's not an option any more anyway. Still waiting for another service to properly integrate your own library so that items from the same artist not natively available on the service (mix tapes, bootlegs, etc.) will still appear as part of that artist's catalogue.

I think as long as they have stuff you want to use and you don't fall into the trap of just subscribing to everything without cancelling something first, they're all pretty good value for money with the exceptions of Sky and Virgin TV. The convoluted pricing structure, the 18 month contracts, the bolt-ons for HD, 4K and Multiroom (can you believe they're still getting away with those charges). It's like something from a bygone era.

Initially I used to miss not having Sky+, but as the years have gone by it's a real rarity I'm sitting there thinking 'strawberry float, wish I could rewind this!' as aside from Live news and sport on satellite, most of the things I watch are via an app.

Does the TV licence really count as an entertainment sub? It's a legal requirement for most of us!

Amazon Prime - I get it for half price and the free next-day delivery is really handy since there's an Amazon Locker outside my work

Netflix - will probably be cancelling this soon since the price for the 4K tier is increasing to £13.99 per month.

PS+ - I play a lot of Destiny 2 and Dead by Daylight, so I need this.

Nintendo Online - don't play as much as I used to but I'm currently on the free year I got with Mario Maker 2. Will be getting shitloads of use when Monster Hunter: Rise comes out next month.

Disney+ - no-brainer for me with all the Marvel and Star Wars stuff, plus they've just added all that Stars content

Spotify - get it for half price and use it on a variety of devices all the time, this is probably the best bang for my buck out of all my subs

FITE TV - for watching AEW

Stardom World - for watching Stardom

NJPW - for watching New Japan Pro Wrestling

Dual wrote:Does the TV licence really count as an entertainment sub? It's a legal requirement for most of us!

It's not a legal requirement, unless you're watching live TV you don't have to pay it.

The obvious answer is Stingray, but then Thunderbird 4 gives a great showing. You'd kind of expect better subs on a show set underwater so I'd say Thunderbird 4 stands out a bit more.

Ask GR... which entertainment subs are the best?

Pick up to four entertainment subs that you feel are the best for service and value

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