We signed up for Playstation Vue a few weeks ago and ended up canceling out cable to save money.
We were looking for ways to save money. One of our most expensive bills was cable and internet. We were paying almost $100 dollars for just the cable part and we didn’t have anything too special. We had the second package of channels with no movie channels or anything. Plus we had one DVR and HD services. I will admit I loved the features on my DVR. It came with a voice remote where I can just tell it what I was looking for and it would give me the options. I could record 4 things at a time which was double what I could do with my last cable company.
But was the cost really worth it? I calculated the channels I watched about 12 of them. Most of the time we don’t even watch live TV and we already had Netflix.
We started researching the channels we wanted and found pretty much all of them on Playstation Vue. The two big ones we do actually watch live are Fox News for my husband and HGTV for me. Playstation Vue was the only one that we found that currently had both of them so we signed up for the free trail and we were hooked instantly.
Note: This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on the links and buy something I may get a portion of the sale at no cost to you. All opinions are still my own.
You do not need to have a Playstation to have Playstation Vue. It is available on Roku and Amazon Firestick.
Why we love it.
The “DVR” function.
It doesn’t have a limit of how much you can record or how much it can store. I put DVR in parenthesis cause I think its more than just recording your shows. You can flag anything you like as a “My Show” and it will be displayed for you to grab when ever it is available. This means it will record when it’s on live TV or display when it is On Demand also. So everything is in one spot. And since there is no limit to how much you can store you can save anything you want.
I now save all those HGTV shows I like to watch whenever I don’t want to take TV too seriously. That way even if it’s not on live TV I can just play from my saved shows and watch whatever I feel like.
The only catch is that these items only save for about 28 days. So your recordings and shows will expire, but if you have it saved when its available again it will be automatically added to your shows. I would recommend watching your prime time TV within those 28 days if you don’t have Hulu or Netflix for back up.
The Explore Feature
I use this often, mostly for movies. It’s a search function that allows you to filter by Type(movie or tv show), Genre(Action, Reality, Drama), and many more. It shows everything in that criteria that is available On Demand or that will be available for recording. I love movies, and love having random movies on hand. So every couple of days I will go through and pick the Movie Category and scroll through and pick anything I might be interested in and save it. Since I have unlimited space I don’t need to be picky about what I save. Now every time that movie becomes available I will have the opportunity to watch it.
Recommend Other Shows
This feature is great. If you have Netflix or use Amazon you should be familiar with this. If you are looking at a show you like there is a section below it that recommends other shows for you. This allows you to explore and find more fun TV opportunities.
Multiple Users
You can have multiple users so you can customer your shows for you. I watch a lot of shows my husband has no interest in, so I just created my own profile and saved my shows there. This makes it easy so when we are watching TV together we can go to one profile and look and if I am watching TV alone I can go to my profile and look at just what I have saved for me.
Interface
There is a Guide with the PlayStation Vue, but honestly we rarely use it because of the App like views that are available. Your “My Shows” are in a view that allows you to just scroll through images of your shows. You can use this same view with live TV. Instead of scrolling through a guide and looking at channels you can just scroll through images similar to Netflix and see what is currently one. It’s very user-friendly.
What we don’t love as much
The fast forward and rewind
You can fast forward and rewind on DVR shows, just like cable. But it isn’t as smooth as my cable DVR was. It does glitch a little where you will have to go to play and try to fast forward again. It’s not unbearable, but it is something that can be improved on.
On Demand Only Channels
ABC, FOX, and NBC are On Demand only. Which as far as needing live TV work fine for us. However, since all the shows are On Demand this means we don’t always have the option to fast forward through commercials. Which this is just like cable today, you can’t fast forward most of the prime time TV On Demand shows. So if you watch a lot of shows on these Channels you will have to wait 24 hours to watch and most likely have commercials.
Looking at Scheduled Recordings.
Something I got in the habit of doing was looking for what was scheduled to record for the night so when we sat down to watch TV we could decide if we wanted to watch Netflix or just watch what was on. Currently, there is no way to just go to a list of upcoming shows set to record. Which isn’t a huge deal but something that we had to adjust to.
All in all the things we didn’t love are things we can live with. We got the lowest package of available which saves us about $70 a month. It really makes some of the kinks totally worth it.
You can stream it not just on Playstation!
Comments
I had PlayStation vue for about 3 months and enjoyed it while I had it, but they got rid of all the Viacom channels and those were the ones I watched most. It was great while I had it though! Awesome review! Thanks for sharing!
Alicia Nicole xo
https://www.mymelanatedbeautiful.com
We did the same thing! It’s amazing how much money you save!!
Author
Right! It was very hard for me at first to make the jump. Then I had to keep reminding myself that it’s just TV.
It wasn’t hard for me at all to give up cable! We had a backup! We have a smart tv which u can download Netflix,Hulu,YouTube,Amazon and so forth! I’m my room we have a fire stick so it’s just like we have cable but we don’t have cable ! If that makes any sense 😂😬
That sounds awesome! I think my husband and I will be looking into this more, I mean after all who doesn’t love saving money and having unlimited space for recordings!;)
I’ve never even heard of this before! We currently only use Netflix off and on, but their selection has been pretty weak lately.
Author
I use Netflix a lot too, but it is nice to have live TV and more recent on demand options as well.
Thanks for this. We so want to cut the cord. It’s good to know we have options.
Thank you so much for doing this review! I’ve always wondered if it was worth the money and I think I’ll have to give it a try!
I’m definitely going to try this out. I usually watch Netflix and Hulu but I’m running out of options.
We’ve heard a lot of great things about PS Vue. It definitely is right up our alley!
My kids love PlayStation Vue so this is right up their alley. I’m glad you enjoyed reviewing it too.
Awesome post.