The best streaming services in 2023

What are the best streaming services in 2023? Nilay, Alex, and David decide in the most chaotic way possible: with draft-style picks. The crew debates the best roster for the future of entertainment — from Netflix to Hulu to HBO Max to a few surprises. Who is the MVP, and who gets snubbed? Find out in our inaugural Vergecast streaming draft. Read more: theverge.com/streaming-wars Vote for us in the People’s Voice Webby Awards for Best Technology Podcast: http://bit.ly/3moCTDs Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of rabbit ear antennas. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am doing maybe the weirdest thing on my to do list in a while. I am reordering all of the apps on my Roku. I have 94 things installed, it looks like, which is A, way too many, and B, total chaos because everything is in a totally bonkers order and I can't find anything. So I'm moving stuff around, trying to get all of my important services up to the top. It is way, way too much work. It's like six button clicks every time you want to even just move an app, which is why it's taken me months to finally get fed up enough to do it, but I'm doing it. Anyway, today's show is actually all about these streaming services. We've been trying for a while to figure out a good way to answer a really simple but really important question.

• 0:48David Pierce?

  What are the best streaming services? So we picked the most subjective, most chaotic way we could think of to actually answer that question. Neelai, Alex and I are going to draft streaming services and see who picks the best roster for the future of entertainment. That's the whole show today and it's coming up in just a second. But first, I have to figure out whether Hulu or ESPN Plus belongs on the second row of my Roku. This feels like a surprisingly big decision. This is The Vergecast. See you in a sec.

• 1:17Speaker 01

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• 1:44Speaker 02

  When it comes to AI, there is what we could do and what we should do. What will we decide? I'm Kimberly Nevela, host of the Pondering AI Podcast from SAS. Every episode, I sit down with innovators, researchers and technologists to consider the questions that come after the AI breakthroughs. Questions that don't have easy answers but need to be asked. If you're curious or concerned about AI, join me as we challenge assumptions and ponder the issues together. Find Pondering AI wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:22David Pierce?

  Welcome back. This is the Great Verge Streaming Draft of 2023, which I'm saying so that it sounds like an annual thing, so that we require ourselves to do this every year from now on. Neelai Patel, hello, and welcome to the draft.

• 2:36Nilay Patel?

  I've tried to pull that trick so many times. There are so many things we don't do every year that I've insisted that we're gonna do every year, but we're gonna do this every year.

• 2:43David Pierce?

  Yeah, we're gonna do this every year. It's gonna be great. Alex Cranz, hello.

• 2:45Alex Cranz?

  What happens if all of the streaming services die next year? Will it just be super competitive?

• 2:51David Pierce?

  There's like a 60% chance that none of these things will exist a year from now. We'll be picking Go90 again.

• 2:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:57David Pierce?

  It's gonna be great.

• 2:58Nilay Patel?

  The only thing on my list is Quibi, y'all. Let's be honest.

• 3:01David Pierce?

  I'm not gonna lie, the word "Quibi" appears in my notes somewhere in all the crap that I did for this, but we'll come to that later. Okay, so, let me just quickly explain how this draft is gonna work, and then we'll get into it. We're gonna do five rounds, and we're doing a snake draft. So the person who picks first, then they go second, then they go third, and the person who picks third then picks fourth. So we're going around and around. We're gonna pick 15 total things over the course of this, and the idea is that whatever you pick is what you're stuck with for the next 12 months. Imagine it like you're drafting a team, right? This is your exclusive five streaming services for the next year. I will take any single subscription as one draft pick. So you can draft the Disney bundle as one thing, because that is one thing with one price. But also, you can draft

• 3:44David Pierce?

  Disney Plus and ESPN Plus and Hulu as their own things, because you can pay for them separately. That's the only one like that that I can actually think of, but if there are others, feel free and try to convince me otherwise. But what you can't do is the like, Amazon channels, like subscribe to stars through here thing, because that's a separate thing that you pay for separately. So, one bill, one price, one pick.

• 4:05Alex Cranz?

  Do, like, adjacent services count?

• 4:09Alex Cranz?

  Things that are like streaming, but maybe don't have their own content on them, or a lot of their own content.

• 4:16David Pierce?

  Sure. If you want to pick Plex is the answer to your question. If you want to pick Plex, knock yourself out. That's an awful draft pick. You can't just pick Plex. You gotta pick, Alex has to pick her own Plex server. Right. I pick my Plex server. Yeah, that I will allow. And as for what counts, any streaming service counts, free, paid, whatever. It just has to be primarily about entertainment. I'm gonna do my best to keep track of the cost of all these things. And one fun wrinkle that I just came up with is whoever spends the least money in these five picks gets one extra free bonus pick at the end. Do you understand that the last pick of this draft is a punishment? You get to have another streaming service. Instead of five streaming services, you get to have six. You can pick, I don't know, Quibi.

• 5:00David Pierce?

  Punishment, not a reward. Yeah, you're not wrong. If there are any disputes, Andrew, our producer, is in charge.

• 5:06Speaker 06

  Thank you, David.

• 5:07David Pierce?

  He rules and his word is final. He's the commissioner of our league. All right, Andrew is here to pick the draft order. None of us know the draft order, because as far as I know, there isn't one yet.

• 5:18Alex Cranz?

  Andrew, give it to me. Give it to me. I deserve it.

• 5:20David Pierce?

  Andrew, you're gonna tell us who's picking first, second, and third. What do you have for us?

• 5:24Speaker 06

  Okay, so Neelai responded to your message in Slack first today. So Neelai's gonna go first.

• 5:32David Pierce?

  Oh, what a surprise. Give the boss the first pick in the draft. What a shocking twist. Everybody's boss gets to go first.

• 5:38Alex Cranz?

  This commissioner's terrible.

• 5:40David Pierce?

  That's right. I'm the Dallas Cowboys, baby.

• 5:44David Pierce?

  You can't run this league without me.

• 5:46Speaker 06

  And then Alex is gonna go second.

• 5:48Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 5:49Speaker 06

  And David is gonna go third, because he's the host.

• 5:51David Pierce?

  This sucks. I don't want to do this anymore. David, trades are allowed, man. I bet I'm still gonna get my first pick at third, so this is fine. Andrew, do you have another song for us? It's go time.

• 6:04David Pierce?

  All right, Eli Patel, you're on the clock. First pick?

• 6:07Nilay Patel?

  TikTok.

• 6:08David Pierce?

  Wow!

• 6:08Nilay Patel?

  Zero hesitation, TikTok.

• 6:10David Pierce?

  Explain.

• 6:10Nilay Patel?

  Wow. It provides the most value for the zeroest of dollars. It is the only streaming service that reliably produces videos of trucks jumping over things and into rivers. That's very important to me. And I don't know if it's gonna get banned or not, but I wanna be, I wanna be on the ride if that's gonna happen.

• 6:26David Pierce?

  Well, so that's the, this is like the most high-risk, high-reward pick ever, right? Because there's a decent chance that literally it will not be available to you when we do this draft again in 12 months.

• 6:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and you know what? Sometimes you gotta draft a quarterback who's definitely gonna get hurt. You know what I'm saying? Like, I just think about where do I spend the most time? It's TikTok. As we go through the draft, I think this choice will be rewarded. I might not need any other picks.

• 6:51David Pierce?

  Okay, so my reasoning for being anti-TikTok as the first pick is that there's no, like, prestige TikTok is like not a thing. And like, what I want from one of my picks here, and maybe I'll get it later, but is the like, cultural relevancy of something where it's like, everybody's very excited about the most recent episode of Succession, and you're gonna have to watch it in two-minute increments, cobbled together across the internet.

• 7:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, I do have other picks, right? Like, I can pick Alex's Plex server. Second, we have not, actually, this is a rules clarification. Am I still allowed to buy things?

• 7:26David Pierce?

  Oh, yes, you are allowed to buy things.

• 7:28Nilay Patel?

  Like, I can rent movies.

• 7:29David Pierce?

  We'll leave like, the voodoos of the world separate. If you wanna pay four bucks to rent a movie, that's allowed. That exists outside of this.

• 7:38Nilay Patel?

  I'm ever more comfortable with this choice.

• 7:40David Pierce?

  Interesting, okay. Alex, what do you think? Good choice, bad choice?

• 7:42Alex Cranz?

  Terrible choice. Just...

• 7:45David Pierce?

  Why?

• 7:45Alex Cranz?

  I watched TikTok last night while I was watching Succession, and that was a bad choice.

• 7:50David Pierce?

  That might be a proof of Eli's point. You might have just proved Eli's case.

• 7:55Alex Cranz?

  Basically, it was a bad choice. So like, I'm trying to have less TikTok in my life.

• 8:01Nilay Patel?

  That's fair. No, that's fair. You gotta cut back.

• 8:03David Pierce?

  Alex, let's go. Second pick. What do you have?

• 8:06Alex Cranz?

  Oh, it's HBO Max.

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  Whoo.

• 8:07David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 8:08Alex Cranz?

  I'm coming out the gate strong. I'm aggressive.

• 8:11David Pierce?

  All right, defend.

• 8:13Alex Cranz?

  Because succession. But also, I watch a lot of stuff on HBO Max. There's a lot of good content on it, as long as it survives. So I've got this for like, what, another month?

• 8:24Nilay Patel?

  Immediate theme in this draft of, I need to ride this out while it lasts.

• 8:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. So I'm gonna enjoy it for a month. I'm gonna watch, you know, maybe re-watch Warrior, re-watch Sex Lives of College Girls, whatever that show's called. That sounded really bad saying it out loud, but it's gonna be a great time for the next month.

• 8:43David Pierce?

  Okay, here's a philosophical question. Are we streaming services with ads, people, or spend the extra $5 for no ads, people?

• 8:51Alex Cranz?

  Oh, this is with the extra $5. I don't do ads.

• 8:54David Pierce?

  Okay, so we're spending the money to not get any ads?

• 8:57Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 8:57David Pierce?

  Unlike Neelai, who says, just give me every ad.

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  Scroll up, I am, man. Don't worry about it.

• 9:02Alex Cranz?

  Every 30 videos, just, there's your ad.

• 9:05Nilay Patel?

  You got a MagSafe charger? This is the best ad targeting you can do.

• 9:08David Pierce?

  Neelai, are you an ads person? Do you pay for no ads?

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, I pay for no ads everywhere.

• 9:12David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  Which is funny, because we run an ad-supported website. Please don't skip over the ads in this podcast.

• 9:17David Pierce?

  But also pay for all of our paid things.

• 9:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:19David Pierce?

  Those don't have ads.

• 9:20Nilay Patel?

  Maybe I'm trying to bring these ideas together as much as I can.

• 9:24David Pierce?

  Verge Plus.

• 9:25Nilay Patel?

  That's my last pick. If I win this bonus pick, I'm picking that, because it doesn't cost any money. Because it doesn't exist. You see the logic here.

• 9:32David Pierce?

  Alex, what do you do with the fact that the HBO Max app is like a horrible pile of garbage that doesn't work 40 to 60% of the time?

• 9:39Alex Cranz?

  I just like, close my eyes and think of the good content that I'll get to when I eventually find it and the app works.

• 9:46David Pierce?

  You watch TikTok until the page loads.

• 9:48Alex Cranz?

  Just avert my eyes, and I press go, and 30 minutes later, maybe my show plays, and I'm really excited. And that, like, once that 30 minutes hits, then I've got like, you get all those old movies, because they have like, the whole, they have all the Turner Classic stuff.

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  This is a strong pick because of the catalog, for sure.

• 10:04Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's all about the catalog for me. And the app is like, just an unfortunate byproduct that I have to deal with.

• 10:11Nilay Patel?

  Also, whenever you want, you can watch a square version of Justice League.

• 10:17Alex Cranz?

  That's all I've, that's what I'm gonna do right after this. Because it's my first pick. I can watch it anytime.

• 10:23David Pierce?

  Yeah, HBO Max was gonna be my second pick, specifically because it is like, when you make a list of like, relevant cultural shows that people care about, they are overwhelmingly on HBO. It's insane. So by not having HBO Max, Neela, you and I are just resigned to being sort of social outcasts.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  Don't worry, I got a Plex server coming up.

• 10:42David Pierce?

  Alex is gonna rip everything from HBO Max to her Plex server. Problems solved.

• 10:47Alex Cranz?

  Would never do that. That's wrong.

• 10:49David Pierce?

  Okay, so I'm up third, and for my third pick, I get my first pick, which is YouTube. This is the easiest decision of all time. I cannot believe neither of you picked YouTube. It's $22.99 a month for YouTube Premium, which is insane, and which I did not realize I'd been paying all this time, because they raised the price.

• 11:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:06David Pierce?

  And which is, yeah, it's outrageous. That's like the family plan. It's ridiculous.

• 11:09Alex Cranz?

  What do you get for that?

• 11:11David Pierce?

  So you get no ads, which is great. You get background listening. You get a music service for free, which is compelling. And now I don't have to pick Spotify or Apple Music or anything else, because I just have YouTube Music and all the music streaming services are the same. So it's kind of like getting two picks in one. But also, it's like, YouTube, over the last like 12 months for me, has become the place I go when I don't know what I want to watch and I just have like 15 minutes to kill. And I think part of this is I just had a kid, so I, my windows of time to just sort of sit and do nothing, went from being like hours long to like minutes long. But it's like, highlights of soccer games that I missed, because I have a small child, and Hot Ones interviews is basically like my entire YouTube algorithm right now. And it's great.

• 11:55David Pierce?

  And I have, I have nothing against it. It feels like it is the biggest one. It's also the only one of our three so far that will probably still exist 12 months from now. So I feel very good about that. I'm honestly shocked neither of you picked this. I felt like YouTube was like the obvious first choice.

• 12:09Nilay Patel?

  It would have been my, if I hadn't gotten, if I hadn't gotten TikTok, I would have gone YouTube Premium.

• 12:14David Pierce?

  Good. All right. Well, then I also get the fourth pick. Because of the way this draft works.

• 12:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 12:19David Pierce?

  Andrew, I've come around. I've decided you were right to give me the third pick. Thank you.

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  That was a secret.

• 12:24David Pierce?

  Wow. So there's three I can choose from here, and I'm gonna, this is the, I'm gonna regret this choice, but I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna pick Peacock.

• 12:31Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 12:33David Pierce?

  Which I would not have expected to do, but the honest truth is Peacock is where The Office is, and it's where Parks and Rec is. And for me, that is like 45% of my TV viewing between those two shows. And the other 45 exists on another service that I hope I get to pick later, but it's just that. Like, Peacock has some nifty stuff with live TV. They have some sports. They're starting to grow. But it is like fundamentally, it is the place where The Office is, and I have to have the place where The Office is on my list. I already regret this choice. As I'm saying this, I drafted this too high.

• 13:05Nilay Patel?

  Disclosure.

• 13:06David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:07Nilay Patel?

  Peacock is operated by NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast, which is a minority investor in Vox Media, our parent company. David, I hope you got some sort of kickback for this miserable choice.

• 13:18Alex Cranz?

  I think this is a good choice. This is, this is like, if you watch a lot of TV, Peacock is a very solid choice.

• 13:24Nilay Patel?

  I think what we're, we're gonna discover in this is that some of you watch vastly more television than I do.

• 13:29David Pierce?

  That's probably, that's probably true. But no, for me, it's like, I dabble in lots of TV, and then I have like four shows that I cycle between over and over and over and over again. And two of them are The Office and Parks and Rec, both of which are on Peacock. And I think I can reliably say both of which are never leaving Peacock because they are part of the company that owns Peacock. So I'm not afraid that six months from now, they're just gonna suddenly disappear, unlike on some other services that have gained and lost my shows.

• 13:55Alex Cranz?

  Until Peacock dies and they have to like sell to another company.

• 13:59David Pierce?

  There is that. But Peacock's doing kind of well. It went from being like a total disaster to like a kind of meh success-ish.

• 14:09David Pierce?

  It's like, it's like trending in the right direction from really bad to kind of bad. It's like, you know, in Arrested Development, they go from like a sell to a don't buy, and they're like thrilled about it. Like, that's Peacock.

• 14:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just think you're gonna find yourself using the custom video player UI that they developed for no reason. And you're like, this is my third pick? Like, that's just how that's gonna feel for you.

• 14:31David Pierce?

  Yeah. If the spacebar on my iPad doesn't pause your video player, you've done it wrong. And Peacock has done it wrong. All right, Alex, you're up next.

• 14:41Alex Cranz?

  I don't think this is gonna shock anybody, but Paramount Plus.

• 14:44David Pierce?

  Wow, that does not shock me.

• 14:45Nilay Patel?

  Wow, the reaches in these rounds are out of control.

• 14:49David Pierce?

  I had that so much lower on my list.

• 14:52Alex Cranz?

  I get Star Trek. Love a Star Trek. I get most of Yellowstone, the good, the good versions. Evil, that's lovely, the good fight, a bunch of like random CBS stuff like Ghosts. And most importantly of all, 60 Minutes.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  So you're buying shows?

• 15:07Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm all about the shows.

• 15:10Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 15:10Alex Cranz?

  For the most part. I got, I got some others here, but for the most part, it's about like the shows for me. But like, it's like Peacock where you get a bunch of live stuff too. So, so I can like watch live news if I need to, that sort of thing. And then I gotta see what's gonna happen on Picard next week. Like, I can't, I can't lose that.

• 15:28Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I guess like saying you're buying shows, like at the end, we're all just buying content. Yeah. Like, no one's like, I'm buying this for a great UI. Like, it's all content. But you very specifically are like, these four shows are why I'm drafting this service.

• 15:40Alex Cranz?

  A hundred percent. Also, like, the Peacock UI is fine. It's better than HBO, kind of.

• 15:46David Pierce?

  In that, like, the app loads from time to time. Yes.

• 15:49Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, like, once you actually use it, it's miserable and I hate it. But otherwise, it's, it's, it does the job.

• 15:56David Pierce?

  So I will say, when I first did my rankings, I had Paramount Plus really, really, really low. And then the final four happened, and the Masters happened, and both of those things only streamed on Paramount Plus. And all of a sudden, it's like, as a person who also likes to watch like Champions League soccer, like Paramount Plus has a sneaky amount of like really good, really high-end sports that for me are like, I actually don't subscribe to Paramount Plus. And there were a couple of times, the last couple of weeks, I almost did, and I suspect I'm gonna end up having to do so.

• 16:27Alex Cranz?

  You'll, you'll like it.

• 16:29David Pierce?

  Even though I don't care about Star Trek. Like, to me Paramount Plus is just like, where do you go if you like Star Trek? And there's lots of those people, and I am not one of them.

• 16:34Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's, it's, there's a bunch of other stuff. Like, obviously, the Star Trek is really big right now at the moment for me. But for the most part, it's all of the other content that I, I watch. And now I can keep up with everybody in, in, at home who all watch Yellowstone and all of those shows. So I can like have conversations with my family. That's very exciting.

• 16:54David Pierce?

  That's real. Okay, here's the rules question. Are you paying $9.99 a month for just Paramount? Or are you paying $11.99 a month and also getting Showtime?

• 17:03Alex Cranz?

  Oh, $11.99 a month.

• 17:04David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's the, yeah, that's the easiest trade up of all time. That's just the price for Yellowjackets, right? You pay $2 a month to watch Yellowjackets?

• 17:10Alex Cranz?

  Hundred percent.

• 17:11David Pierce?

  That's how they make billions. Yeah. I'm so sorry.

• 17:17Alex Cranz?

  So smooth.

• 17:19David Pierce?

  Okay, so you take Paramount Plus and Showtime for $11.99 a month. I actually think that was a pretty good pick. Neelai, you're up. What do you got?

• 17:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, this is hard. I can go two ways.

• 17:28David Pierce?

  Well, okay, and you're gonna get a pick and then we're gonna take a break and then you're gonna get another pick, so.

• 17:32Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, no, no, that's actually super easy then. Disney Plus.

• 17:35David Pierce?

  Okay, why?

• 17:36Nilay Patel?

  Child.

• 17:40Nilay Patel?

  Child, Bluey. I'm, I'm, I'm drafting Bluey.

• 17:43David Pierce?

  This is the Bluey pick.

• 17:44Nilay Patel?

  Very specifically, Bluey, Frozen, Moana. Like, this stuff just flows through the house like water. Also, it is like the single app on her iPad that I trust. In like, in any way, shape or form. Like, YouTube Kids is just a disaster clown car situation. She loves it, but you've taken it off the board, right? Because you took YouTube totally off the board, so YouTube Kids went for the ride.

• 18:09David Pierce?

  Right.

• 18:10Nilay Patel?

  So you gotta, the kid pick has to be D+.

• 18:12David Pierce?

  Okay, so, and also, well, I was, I have two follow up questions. One is, are you just taking Disney Plus or are you taking the bundle and also getting Hulu and ESPN+? It's more expensive, but you get more stuff.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  I'm taking the bundle.

• 18:26David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 18:26Nilay Patel?

  Hulu's fine. Actually, my question is, if I take the bundle, you can still pick Hulu, right?

• 18:31David Pierce?

  That's right.

• 18:31Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so yeah, I'm taking the bundle, not totally strategic. If I was taking it totally off the board, zero. Like, that's just draft strategy, right?

• 18:39David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 18:39Nilay Patel?

  But there's, you know, Hulu has a reasonably good catalog. It's got some movies on there. The real thing I'm taking is ESPN+, which has the one show I watched during football season more consistently than anything else, NFL Primetime, which is great.

• 18:52Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you two are the two people I know that are like ESPN plus.

• 18:55David Pierce?

  It's great.

• 18:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it's just for one show.

• 18:58David Pierce?

  Do you want to watch college softball on a Saturday afternoon? Like, they got you.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:01David Pierce?

  Four nine nine a month. Let's go. Also, you just made an interesting point, which is you sound like a person who would be against doing what everybody thinks is going to happen, which is that Disney just pulls all of the Hulu stuff into Disney Plus because it's a better, more successful app. Anyway, but it sounds like in the like, it's the one app I trust on the iPad vein. Maybe you don't want that to happen.

• 19:21Nilay Patel?

  I, we can age gate it already. So like, she's already got the kids version of D plus, which is like, there's a lot of age gates built into it. Like, they know that their audience is kids. So I'm not worried about the catalog and the app expanding because I think that Disney, of all companies, will be good at knowing that my daughter is five, you know? Like, it's, it's actually hard for her to get some movies, like some Pixar movies are rated PG, and she can't get them in her version of D plus. Like, we have to use my account. So I'm not so worried about that. I do think, like, the reason I was like, whatever on Hulu is like, Hulu will go away before TikTok goes away.

• 19:56Alex Cranz?

  Oh, really?

• 19:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it will outlast us all. Those are the only two outcomes.

• 20:02David Pierce?

  Season 61 of The Handmaid's Tale coming soon.

• 20:05Nilay Patel?

  Exactly. Like, every one of its corporate owners has tried to kill Hulu, and it has survived. It has outlasted all of them. But I think in this particular round of the streaming wars, neither Disney nor Comcast really wants it to exist. It just seems like the, if you're taking it, you should take it as part of this bundle. But it's a, it's a risky early round pick right now.

• 20:26David Pierce?

  Alex, what do you think? This would have been my next pick, so I'm, I'm very on board for this. Alex, what do you think?

• 20:30Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I assumed one of you with children was gonna pick it. So I was just waiting for one of you with children to pick it. I, I don't need a lot of the stuff on there.

• 20:38David Pierce?

  It does kind of feel like if you don't have kids or care about Marvel and Star Wars, Disney Plus is actually like mostly useless to you. But if either of those things apply to you, it is like the most important thing in the universe.

• 20:50Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's like, I can just go see those movies when they come out. And like, the TV shows have all been fine.

• 20:55Nilay Patel?

  People should know that if I could draft Disney Plus without drafting Star Wars, I would do it. If I could just leave that on the table, it would be fine. This is very much the Bluey draft pick. And if you have a child, you know how important this pick is.

• 21:09David Pierce?

  That's fair. All right, we're through two rounds. We should take a break and then we're going to do the rest. Let me just recap the first two rounds. So after two, after two rounds, Neelai has picked TikTok and the Disney bundle, which is Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus. Alex has HBO Max and Paramount Plus slash Showtime. And I have YouTube and Peacock. I feel like I'm losing so far, I would say. I also just want to say, I was so thrown off by not getting the first pick, you guys. Like, it's, it's bad. It's going bad for me, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back strong from the break. I also just want to say, we are six picks in and no one has picked Netflix. And that's kind of wild.

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:45David Pierce?

  But I suspect that's coming up soon. Let's take a quick break and then we'll get back into it. We'll be right back.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  When it comes to AI, there is what we could do and what we should do. What will we decide? I'm Kimberly Nevela, host of the Pondering AI Podcast from SAS. Every episode, I sit down with innovators, researchers and technologists to consider the questions that come after the AI breakthroughs. Questions that don't have easy answers, but need to be asked. If you're curious or concerned about AI, join me as we challenge assumptions and ponder the issues together. Find Pondering AI wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:29Speaker 07

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• 23:07David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Round three, streaming draft. Andrew, do you have any more music for us?

• 23:15David Pierce?

  It's the Virgus streaming draft. Coming at you live from New York City. Brought to you by Monster Ed.

• 23:24David Pierce?

  All right, Neelai, round three.

• 23:26Nilay Patel?

  This is my reach. This is the one that is, it's an obvious bad idea, but I'm doing it. Cause it's gonna blow the cost structure for me. It's, it's, it's over. There's no way I'm getting the bonus pick after this. YouTube TV with Sunday Ticket.

• 23:42Alex Cranz?

  That's expensive, right?

• 23:43Nilay Patel?

  It's like 80 bucks a month, plus like $300 to, for Sunday Ticket and Red Zone.

• 23:48David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 23:49Alex Cranz?

  Per month or just?

• 23:50David Pierce?

  It's, it's $72.99 a month right now for just YouTube TV. Because the price goes up like every three to four days. And Sunday Ticket, they just announced yesterday, as this goes live, the price for Sunday Ticket is gonna be $289 in a pre-sale and $389 if you buy it during the season. Are you sure? You're, you're sure about this pick?

• 24:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, they got me. What, what am I gonna do? I mean, I will say, Alex brought up Yellowstone. I watched all of Yellowstone on our YouTube TV. Cause Paramount Channel's in there, so you can just like DVR it and skip the ads. It is an election year. I feel like I'm gonna watch, end up watching a lot of CNN. I appear on CNBC. Sometimes my wife likes to watch me on television. Like, I can concoct argu-, it's like mostly nonsensical arguments, right?

• 24:33David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  But I can concoct arguments for the value of, of live cable television. But if not for Sunday Ticket, I would not be drafting this high. It's Sunday Ticket that I'm drafting.

• 24:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's football. For me, it's Red Zone. Just the, the like, that's the only way I watch football anymore. And there's a lot of money I would pay and do pay every year to do it. But I can do it through YouTube.

• 24:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. You can, you can buy the Red Zone channel through YouTube.

• 24:56David Pierce?

  Right.

• 24:56Nilay Patel?

  You already have it.

• 24:56David Pierce?

  Right.

• 24:57Nilay Patel?

  Again, I'm off the cost curve. It doesn't even matter, but I'm buying the version that comes with Red Zone. Cause there's a cheaper one that doesn't.

• 25:02David Pierce?

  Yeah, you really did just kind of give yourself an insurmountable lead in the spending a lot of money every month. $73 a month.

• 25:10Nilay Patel?

  All, all the rest of mine are gonna be free. Free V, baby, let's do this thing.

• 25:14David Pierce?

  Is the YouTube TV over like Hulu with live TV or any of those other ones just purely it's it's football?

• 25:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I can't imagine why I would pay for the one without football. I think that's YouTube's calculation here.

• 25:25David Pierce?

  I was gonna say, I feel like you just explained why YouTube spent all this money on football.

• 25:28Nilay Patel?

  Also, I mean, I've used the other ones. They're fine. I think the YouTube TV interface is better. It doesn't matter. Like, yeah, it's football. I'm buying football.

• 25:35David Pierce?

  Alex, did you have live TV on your list at all?

• 25:38Alex Cranz?

  Kind of.

• 25:38David Pierce?

  I feel like if you don't care about sports, why would you?

• 25:40Alex Cranz?

  I mean, I've got Paramount Plus. I've got another pick potentially, but yeah, I don't really care about sports, so I don't really care about most live TV.

• 25:48David Pierce?

  The $75 a month for live TV is not blowing your mind?

• 25:51Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 25:52David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 25:52Alex Cranz?

  I just pirate it. I mean, I can just watch it over the air. Over the air.

• 25:58David Pierce?

  You haven't drafted your Plex server yet. Don't forget. It's still out there. All right. Well, then let's move on. What's your next pick?

• 26:04Alex Cranz?

  Okay, this one's a toughie. I'm gonna do something really, speaking of live TV, I'm gonna do something really cheap. I'm gonna do not Plex, but Channels, which is a DVR service, because it can work with TV Everywhere. So anything that potentially is TV Everywhere accounts, I can DVR those.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  But then you need a cable subscription.

• 26:23Alex Cranz?

  Not necessarily. It's not just cable. It's a bunch of other stuff, too.

• 26:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 26:27Alex Cranz?

  So I think it might work with Paramount Plus. I can find out. But then it also gives me all the live TV and it gives me access to like Tubi and all of those things, which gives you CNN and all of that.

• 26:37David Pierce?

  Yeah, wait, so explain how Channels works for people who don't know. This is, this is like deep streaming nerd stuff. You gotta, you gotta walk us through it.

• 26:44Alex Cranz?

  So it's basically a DVR service and you can plug in, if you've got a HD home run tuner, you, you just plug that in and it automatically pulls down anything you get over the air and you can DVR that. But you can also attach M3U playlists, which is what Tubi and Pluto and all of those free services offer. So you can then have all of those channels as well and just like watch all of the channels like you watch normal TV. So I can watch all of the Carol Burnett show I want and that's all I care about in the world.

• 27:18Nilay Patel?

  This is a power move.

• 27:20David Pierce?

  This definitely like violates the spirit of the game, but I like it. So we're gonna allow it.

• 27:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is great. You should definitely draft a kicker in the first round. Like, I don't know.

• 27:29David Pierce?

  Yeah, I'm just drafting all the teams all at once.

• 27:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, all of them. It's it's an absolute cheat. And if you tell me no, I'll I'll accept it. I'll accept it.

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  No, this is absolutely. This is a paid streaming service. It's in the rules.

• 27:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, this totally counts.

• 27:43Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's a paid service and it requires way more work and effort than any of the other ones we've discussed here so far.

• 27:50David Pierce?

  I've never gotten past the sort of like initial setup hurdle of channels because it is, like you said, you need special hardware. You need to like have done real work to get it set up. Once it's like up and running, is it easy or do you have to like Tamagotchi style tend to your channels?

• 28:04Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's totally easy. Like I was getting, there was some sport. I don't remember which one that my brother couldn't get with FiOS at his house, but I could get it over the air. And so I just sent him the code, like the IP address for my server. And he was just watching his sport live and was totally fine. And he lives many miles away from me, so it works super, super easy. Once you get it set up.

• 28:30David Pierce?

  I mean, I do feel like anything that starts with the phrase, I sent him the IP address of my server. Is objectively not super, super easy.

• 28:38Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it was just like a phone number. He was just like, I need a number for this. What's the number? And I send him the number and he's like, okay, done.

• 28:44David Pierce?

  That's fair. Type these numbers.

• 28:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, so it works. It works great.

• 28:49David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 28:49Alex Cranz?

  But you do have to get it set up.

• 28:50David Pierce?

  We should probably should have said at the top that we all get the the over the air broadcast channels for free. Right? That's there's just you can't help but have those. They're just there.

• 28:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you can't draft an antenna.

• 29:01David Pierce?

  Yeah, right. You can't draft an antenna. You just have one.

• 29:03Alex Cranz?

  So I'm just, I'm just enjoying all of them, waiting for ATS 3.0, ATSC 3.0 to save our lives. It's never gonna happen.

• 29:11David Pierce?

  I look forward to you drafting ATSC 3.0 every draft for the next 20 years.

• 29:17Alex Cranz?

  You're just throwing away all of your picks on that one. Oh.

• 29:20David Pierce?

  I get two picks now and I have three that I'm choosing from and I need the two of you to help me. We're just going to talk through this together.

• 29:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'm your enemy.

• 29:27David Pierce?

  No, just we're just, we're gonna talk this through. It's ultimately my decision and I know you're lying to me, so it's we'll get there. So there's Netflix, there's Amazon Prime Video, and there's Discovery Plus. These are the three I'm debating between.

• 29:40Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 29:40Alex Cranz?

  Really?

• 29:41David Pierce?

  These are all the kind of like, volume plays, right? Like, Prime Video just has a billion movies to watch. Most of them are bad, but they're there. Netflix has infinite stuff, including like, every bad reality show that I like right now. And then Discovery Plus is basically, for me, it's like the HGTV and murder shows for my wife service. So these all kind of serve the same purpose.

• 30:05Alex Cranz?

  But you already have YouTube, right? Like, YouTube has all the HGTV kind of shows, only they're made by, they're like, uglier, because they're made by just a dude in his house.

• 30:15David Pierce?

  Yeah, there's just worse. Like, I have watched a lot of the Architectural Digest celebrities show you their house tours. Love those videos.

• 30:22Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 30:22David Pierce?

  But sometimes I want to see people try and fail to flip their own house. It's very important to me. I think I have to pick Netflix here, just because Netflix is like,

• 30:32Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 30:33David Pierce?

  It's both a giant of the space and also just has a mountain of content that really nobody else can touch.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  This is your background music choice. This is what you're saying. You just want stuff that's on.

• 30:43David Pierce?

  Yeah, this is my like, something good to watch, but I don't have a specific desire for what I want to watch. Because the flip side is like, Apple TV Plus is still sitting there, right? And Apple TV Plus is like, three shows that I love, and that's it. That's the whole service.

• 30:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's the, I'm drafting content. This is, this is why I asked Alex that question earlier, right? Like, you can either draft content, or you get to this point and you're like, just stuff.

• 31:07David Pierce?

  Yeah, and I think, I think for me, I'm still in the just stuff mode. I just don't have enough show loyalty, is the thing that I'm realizing. Like, I don't have that many things that I care so much about that I can't like...

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I used the first pick of the draft on stuff. Like, that's what TikTok, it's just stuff. Like, I get, I feel you.

• 31:26David Pierce?

  I think what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna do Netflix, and I'm gonna do Discovery Plus. And I now have just several lifetimes worth of relatively mediocre stuff to watch. And also, whenever the next Squid Game comes out, I have that.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  Disclosure, we, I'm a Netflix EP. The show's called The Future of, and David should watch it. It's very good.

• 31:46David Pierce?

  I can watch it now. I'm the only one of us who's allowed to watch it from now on. Yeah, so there we go. I took it. I have Netflix. This is good. I feel better now. I was doing bad after two rounds. Now I feel like I'm winning.

• 31:56Alex Cranz?

  It wasn't even on my list.

• 31:57David Pierce?

  Netflix wasn't on your list?

• 31:58Alex Cranz?

  It wasn't even on my list.

• 32:00David Pierce?

  Wow.

• 32:00Alex Cranz?

  I got really mad. They canceled some show I liked, and so I stopped watching it for like three weeks. And I was like, oh, I don't actually miss it that much.

• 32:08David Pierce?

  So that has been consistently my thing. I will say, the reason I was bummed to not get HBO Max was that it's really the only one that I would like, super, super notice if I didn't have it anymore.

• 32:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 32:19David Pierce?

  All the rest are like varying levels of good shows, but HBO Max is the one that's like, like I watch Succession religiously. And almost all of the shows that I watch religiously on purpose are on HBO, which is crazy and wild and kudos to HBO for continuing to be the only one to do that. But yeah, Netflix is like, it's just a lot of stuff and it's better stuff than most of the other company's stuff, but it's still just stuff.

• 32:43Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 32:43David Pierce?

  So I think, I feel good about that. I'm taking Netflix for 20 bucks a month and Discovery Plus for seven bucks a month. And now my wife has all of the murder documentaries she could possibly want. You're welcome, Anna. I love you.

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  Here's a question. Did you expect Netflix to fall this far? I definitely did, is what I'll tell you. I have, it's on my list, but like, it was like a late round, nice to have pickup.

• 33:03David Pierce?

  Well, so that was the thing that was most surprising to me in going through this was how few incredibly compelling reasons there were to pick Netflix, like.

• 33:13Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 33:13David Pierce?

  And this is the thing we've talked about a lot on this show, right? Like Netflix is great at having lots of shows and being available everywhere and its app works pretty well, but they're still in search of like the things that draw people to come to it on purpose and really like create cultural moments. They have, they've had some wins, like Squid Game was huge. Tiger King was huge. Like they have these beats.

• 33:34Alex Cranz?

  Wednesday.

• 33:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Stranger Things, Wednesday, Outer Banks. Like if you're a teenager in America, you're, they've got you.

• 33:41David Pierce?

  I've been watching The Night Agent recently. It's very good. It's just the like pulpy spy show, but it's excellent. But yeah, I don't know. I just feel like part of this, I'm definitely holding out hope that the next Gray Man movie on Netflix is better than the first one because I love that book series and I hate that movie.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  No, no, they, they, this whole thing that they do where they're like, rich people make movies for lots of money. The Rock, you have an idea. Put Gal Gadot, like, stop it. Like, you don't know what you're doing.

• 34:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, none of them have been any good.

• 34:06Nilay Patel?

  What was the Michael Bay one with the numbers in the title?

• 34:09David Pierce?

  Oh, was it Six Underground?

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  Yes, the numbers in the title. That's what I got for you.

• 34:14David Pierce?

  That movie, like, the description of Six Underground is, like, meant for me specifically as a person.

• 34:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and you don't have any recollection of that happening to you at all?

• 34:24David Pierce?

  No, I really don't. It was, it was bad, is all I remember. But I feel good about picking it up here, because I feel like I'm always gonna have something to watch, and it'll always be fine.

• 34:32Alex Cranz?

  Totally adequate content.

• 34:34David Pierce?

  All right, so now we are, we are into round four already. Alex, you're up next. What do you got?

• 34:39Alex Cranz?

  Ooh, I'm gonna go Criterion.

• 34:41David Pierce?

  Oh.

• 34:42Alex Cranz?

  I pay for it already. I really enjoy it. It's probably got the best set of Hong Kong action films that you can find in streaming. It's really hard to find those in streaming. And it's actually got a whole bunch of them, especially, like, a bunch of Michelle Yeoh stuff is just popped up on there. It's got a lot of, like, old classic musicals, which, that's like, some people watch YouTube, I just go and, like, watch specific dance scenes from old classic musicals, and I can just do that on Criterion. And it's got a bunch of documentaries, like, I'm enjoying my choice.

• 35:13David Pierce?

  This is a good pick. I didn't even have Criterion on my list, but that's, that's a really good pick. And Criterion also does a really good job with, like, they have a lot of bonus features, they do cool, like, behind-the-scenes stuff. It's like, it is probably, like, the film buffs' most film buffiest.

• 35:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, there's, like, a ton of movies on there I will never, ever watch, but I like that I could if I really wanted to. If I wanna go watch some French New Wave, I can do that. I'm not going to, but I like that I know I can.

• 35:40David Pierce?

  But you can. Neela, did you have Criterion on your list?

• 35:44Nilay Patel?

  I did not.

• 35:44David Pierce?

  Yeah, you should have waited on Criterion. It's a good pick, but I had not even, it had not even occurred to me to think about it.

• 35:49Nilay Patel?

  Once we get in these rounds, it's all bets are off. Like, Alex is just off in the woods. She's like, all right, channels in the Criterion streaming service.

• 35:54Alex Cranz?

  Like, whee, over in a corner. I'm having a great time.

• 35:57Nilay Patel?

  No, it's, it's an excellent pick, by the way. I think that's very smart.

• 35:59Alex Cranz?

  It's just a big nerdy art pick.

• 36:02David Pierce?

  And ironically, maybe the single most likely candidate to still be around a bunch of years from now? Like, I don't know if I would pick against Criterion in this longevity fight.

• 36:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, because they got killed once and they came back. Like,

• 36:14David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Alex Cranz?

  They're gonna, they're gonna live forever now.

• 36:17David Pierce?

  People still like black and white movies, including my father-in-law, who every time we go visit is like, have you seen this movie from 1936? And I'm always like, nope, I haven't seen it. And he's like, well, let's watch it tonight. So I'm getting a film education. It's lovely. All right, now, O'Neil, you get two now.

• 36:33Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I feel like this is unfair because you and I keep getting two in a row and Alex is going in between us.

• 36:37Alex Cranz?

  I'm like, hi.

• 36:37David Pierce?

  Yeah, but it means we have to wait longer.

• 36:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I feel like this draft order makes more sense when you have more people.

• 36:42David Pierce?

  I will say, I think Alex has gotten every single thing she wanted so far.

• 36:49Alex Cranz?

  You guys are off in sports land over there and I'm a little gremlin.

• 36:52Nilay Patel?

  I'm like doing strategy. All right, I have a rules question. You said this about YouTube, that you get a music service for free. Are we only drafting video services or do I have to put a music service in the mix?

• 37:05David Pierce?

  If you want a music service, you can draft a music service.

• 37:07Nilay Patel?

  But if I don't, like, are we just assuming that everyone has a Spotify subscription on the side? Or if I don't draft one, do I not listen to music?

• 37:14David Pierce?

  If you don't draft one, you get ad-supported Pandora. That's, that's, that's the baseline.

• 37:19Nilay Patel?

  All right, just, I, that was important because you, you took YouTube Music.

• 37:22David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Nilay Patel?

  All right, then I'm taking Apple Music. Easy.

• 37:25Alex Cranz?

  I knew I should have picked that last.

• 37:27David Pierce?

  Why Apple Music?

• 37:28Nilay Patel?

  I'm an Apple Music person. I, I, I think the interface is calmer. It doesn't seem like the music industry is perpetuating some sort of three-card Monte situation with me every time I open it.

• 37:38David Pierce?

  Fair.

• 37:38Nilay Patel?

  I like that they have lossless. I can't tell you if I can actually hear it or not, but I like that it's there. It's like a binky for me. And, you know, I'm an old head, so it sort of seamlessly imported my iTunes library from way back. Then I still just like gaze upon it from time to time.

• 37:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, how much of the music service choice is like inertia as opposed to anything else? Because I even had this thought when I picked YouTube and got YouTube Music. I was like, ugh, do I still need to pick Spotify? Because I've like had Spotify for 10 years and it's going to be a gigantic pain in the ass to switch. Is it just the switching costs? Like, if you were starting over, would you still pick Apple Music?

• 38:14Nilay Patel?

  Well, it depends. I think that switching cost, it's not money, right? It's like, well, have my music. Like, I'm not a curated playlist person unless I'm just like yelling at a voice assistant to start playing some music, you know?

• 38:26David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  I'm like, I'm gonna listen to this album. I want to listen to these songs. So there's just a part of me that's very much, it's hard to switch unless you know that I want the entire, like, Clash catalog, the entire Cure catalog. Like, I'm still there. I'm still doing that thing. And so if that was easier, I would happily switch. But having like open an app and like, Go tell it which 18 records I want to pre-populate and have downloaded again is a very high switching cost and I don't have to pay it with Apple Music.

• 38:53David Pierce?

  All right, Neelai, you have another pick, but we're gonna pause between your picks again. We're gonna take one more break and then we're gonna come do the last round and then all the insane cleanup we have to do to make any of this make any sense. We'll be right back.

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• 40:35David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's just recap. We've done four rounds. We have one more round to go. So far, Neelai has picked TikTok, the Disney bundle, YouTube TV, and Apple Music. And just based on my math here, is spending like a little over $100 a month so far. So, great job.

• 40:51Nilay Patel?

  I'm living the brand name lifestyle, man. I'm the luxury mall.

• 40:54David Pierce?

  You really are. You, it's really true. Alex has picked HBO Max, Paramount Plus/Showtime, the Channels app, and the Criterion Collection, because Alex exists on a different planet from the rest of us.

• 41:05Nilay Patel?

  Alex lives in Brooklyn.

• 41:08David Pierce?

  And Alex is spending in the realm of like $45 a month, somewhere in that range. I have YouTube, Peacock, Netflix and Discovery Plus because I live in the Midwest.

• 41:20David Pierce?

  I am, I am an American mom.

• 41:24Alex Cranz?

  You got the little haircut to the side.

• 41:26David Pierce?

  Yeah. And let's see, I'm spending 60 bucks all in. So I would say it's very unlikely that Neelai loses the who spends the most. So congrats to Neelai already. And now we are on to our fifth and final round. Neelai, you're up. What do you got?

• 41:41Nilay Patel?

  All right, I'm picking between two. They're radically different, but I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna say this out loud. I'm picking my buddy Vipin's Plex server.

• 41:51Nilay Patel?

  It's really good. I can just text him.

• 41:53David Pierce?

  Tell us about Vipin's Plex server.

• 41:55Nilay Patel?

  So I've known Vipin for a long time. He's, uh, he's been running this thing for a long time. He has, it's all automatic. It's all legal content. It's just Linux distributions.

• 42:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 42:03Nilay Patel?

  And whenever I want a new Linux distribution, I just text him and it appears.

• 42:08Alex Cranz?

  Channels does that too.

• 42:10David Pierce?

  You don't have to ask questions about where they come from.

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  Look, every now and again, I'm like, oh, I need the latest version of Red Hat.

• 42:17Nilay Patel?

  Vipin's daughter is about the same age as my daughter. So it's, it's often that he has the same, uh, needs of Linux on his Plex server.

• 42:26David Pierce?

  How are Vipin's metadatas?

• 42:29Nilay Patel?

  My understanding is that, uh, much of the metadata cleanup you need to reliably distribute Linux around your home is automated.

• 42:39David Pierce?

  Sometimes you just want to watch Linux. You know what I mean? Sometimes it's Friday night and you just want to put on Linux and watch it for two hours.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  Every now and again, you're just like, oh, yeah.

• 42:46Alex Cranz?

  Are you paying for Plex Pass?

• 42:48Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, no, no, no, no.

• 42:50Alex Cranz?

  So is it no offline?

• 42:51Nilay Patel?

  No, no, this is just a, this is just a cleanup pick at the end here. You know, you draft your first round quarterback and you pick one in the seventh round just to put some competition and make sure that's what, that's why I'm doing this.

• 43:02David Pierce?

  I like it. What was your other choice if you didn't pick that?

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  Hilariously, randomly, Sirius XM.

• 43:07David Pierce?

  What?

• 43:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And that's straight up, there's like three shows that Becky listens to that are only on Sirius.

• 43:14David Pierce?

  You just almost picked Apple Music and Sirius XM back to back. Do you live in a car?

• 43:18Nilay Patel?

  I picked the general hilarity of the Linux conversation over the actual need of making my wife happy.

• 43:25David Pierce?

  What does she listen to on Sirius?

• 43:26Nilay Patel?

  There's like a bunch of comedy podcasts that she listens to on Sirius. They're only on Sirius. So she like, that's why we have it. And then I do actually live in the car. And so I listen to a lot of Sirius in the car.

• 43:34David Pierce?

  What's your go to? What do you listen to? Are you a yacht rock guy?

• 43:38Nilay Patel?

  Not yacht rock. Lithium, the obviously the alternative rock. Oh, and First Wave.

• 43:43David Pierce?

  Nice.

• 43:44Nilay Patel?

  You can tell where my music tastes like fully lie. The other thing that's completely insane to do. If you have a Sirius subscription, you spend a lot of time in the car and you just need voices. Is you can listen to CNBC as an audio stream. And that is the most insane podcast that you can listen to. Like Jim Cramer at eight in the morning, just like yelling about money is like, I definitely don't feel sleepy. I'll tell you that much.

• 44:09David Pierce?

  It's Jim Cramer saying, look at this chart and you saying, Jim, I can't.

• 44:12Nilay Patel?

  Exactly.

• 44:13David Pierce?

  Can't see the chart.

• 44:14Nilay Patel?

  It is a vastly different experience to listen to it as an audio feed in the morning.

• 44:17David Pierce?

  Okay. I just want to say about Sirius XM that I bought a car. Which meant that I got three free months of Sirius XM, which I used zero times because I couldn't even figure out how to set it up. And then since it elapsed, I would say I either get a phone call or a piece of physical mail from Sirius XM asking me to resubscribe every single day. And I have now become resolute that I will never, ever, ever listen to Sirius XM as long as I live. I refuse.

• 44:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, but I'm commuting from the woods to the city once a week. So I spend five hours in a single day in the car often. And it's like, great. Like, why? Like, honestly, for the purpose of this draft, that's very utilitarian. Like, we're making entertainment here and it's Vip and Splex server.

• 44:58David Pierce?

  Which I'm assuming is free. Vipin doesn't charge you server fees.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  Again, we're friends for a long time. It all evens out in the end.

• 45:04David Pierce?

  All right.

• 45:05Nilay Patel?

  I've bought him a lot of drinks over the years.

• 45:07David Pierce?

  We're putting a zero next to Vipin's place server. We'll put 99 cents because you have to buy him a beer every once in a while. It costs 99 cents a month.

• 45:14Nilay Patel?

  All right.

• 45:14David Pierce?

  All right. Last pick. Alex, what do you got?

• 45:18Alex Cranz?

  What's the, what's the Apple service thing that's the Apple Music and the Apple TV?

• 45:22Nilay Patel?

  Apple One.

• 45:23David Pierce?

  Apple One.

• 45:24Nilay Patel?

  That's good.

• 45:25David Pierce?

  That's a good pick.

• 45:25Alex Cranz?

  Going to spend a bunch of money and do that one because I too like Apple Music more than Spotify and Apple Music Classical. I've actually been using that way more than I thought I would. And then I think Apple TV is like, it's got good content.

• 45:40David Pierce?

  What do you watch? What are your shows?

• 45:42Alex Cranz?

  Really into Dickinson. I loved that when it came on. Severance, For All Mankind, The Morning Show. I don't watch The Morning Show. That's a lie. But it's there. Ted Lasso.

• 45:53Nilay Patel?

  I haven't watched a season of Ted Lasso. I think that says a lot. It hasn't even occurred to me to spend time doing it.

• 45:58Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 45:58David Pierce?

  It's fine. It's a, it's a show. You know what is good is Hello Tomorrow.

• 46:02Alex Cranz?

  Is it actually good?

• 46:03David Pierce?

  Weird, but delightful. I've only watched like four episodes, but it's very good. Shrinking, also very good. This is the thing about Apple TV Plus. It doesn't have that much stuff, but it's like, good show to bad show ratio is probably higher than any other platform I can think of.

• 46:17Alex Cranz?

  Like Dickinson is a show I will, I will re-watch. It's one of my re-watch shows at this point. I just, I love it. And then For All Mankind, like, it's great. You watch people get progressively worse makeup as they pretend to age 10 years every season and then go into space with iPods. It's rad.

• 46:32David Pierce?

  Alex, that was a really good pick. I'm sort of annoyed because you also, for Apple One, you get Apple Arcade and you get a bunch of iCloud storage that you will never use. But that's a, that's a pretty good pick.

• 46:42Nilay Patel?

  If I, if iCloud storage isn't, then Alex is finally, with the last pick, snaked the most important pick in the draft.

• 46:50Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you guys are all going to be getting that obnoxious iCloud notification now.

• 46:55Nilay Patel?

  I don't think iCloud storage counts. Like, if not, we need to redo this whole.

• 46:59David Pierce?

  I'm going to take Dropbox Business as my last pick. Okay, so.

• 47:04Alex Cranz?

  What's your final one?

• 47:05David Pierce?

  I have two left on my list, which serve very different purposes for me. One is Amazon Prime Video, which was what I was gonna pick if I didn't get YouTube, because it's another one that's just like a big bunch of content plus of music services for free. So that was exciting. And then there's Hulu with Live TV, which I wanna pick because I like Hulu, because it also has a couple of my like endlessly rewatched shows, and because I need live sports. I think I'm gonna pick Hulu. I think Hulu with Live TV, which is 70 bucks a month, it comes with, well, okay, here's a rules clarification question. If I sign up for Hulu with Live TV, I also get the Disney bundle. I like back into the Disney bundle. Does that count?

• 47:43Nilay Patel?

  Wait, there's no way to get Hulu with Live TV without getting Disney Plus?

• 47:46David Pierce?

  No, you just get it for free. It's 70 bucks a month. Like, they're just, they're like, sure, have Disney.

• 47:50Alex Cranz?

  You have so much money.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I think this is allowed.

• 47:53David Pierce?

  Okay, good.

• 47:53Nilay Patel?

  I came at Hulu the other way. But if I hadn't blown the salary cap with Sunday Ticket, we would be competing here, and I think it would be fair.

• 48:01David Pierce?

  Okay, all right, good. I buy it. Then, yeah, I'm taking Hulu with Live TV, 70 bucks a month. I get Disney Plus, I get ESPN Plus, I get New Girl, which is just about to leave Netflix, and go to Hulu, which is another one of the shows I've watched 700 times. Schitt's Creek is there. It's another one I've watched.

• 48:14Nilay Patel?

  Oh my god, this is an incredible sleeper final pick.

• 48:17David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah. I feel really good about this.

• 48:18Alex Cranz?

  But like, Neelai and I both have access to that. He can just hit up his buddy.

• 48:23David Pierce?

  Can I just get Vipint? My last pick is Neelai giving me Vipint's number.

• 48:29David Pierce?

  That's my final pick.

• 48:30Nilay Patel?

  All that's on there is Linux, you guys.

• 48:33Alex Cranz?

  Just love that red hat.

• 48:36David Pierce?

  I really, like, I did not mean to do this. I accidentally ended up with like the most down-the-middle set of streaming services. This is really upsetting. All right, so we have done five picks. Congratulations to everybody. We completed the draft. Andrew, do you have a cool last sound for the end of the draft?

• 48:59David Pierce?

  Andrew, you've been keeping track of everything. All the math, all the money totaled up for us. How are we doing?

• 49:04Speaker 06

  Okay, so Neelai, despite picking two streaming services that did not cost any money, collectively, 104.98.

• 49:13Alex Cranz?

  A month.

• 49:14Speaker 06

  Plus the 289.

• 49:16David Pierce?

  Right.

• 49:16Speaker 06

  For the Sunday ticket, which would be 393.96. One-time payment of that 289, but still. Alex, it's lowest here at 63.92.

• 49:28David Pierce?

  Good work.

• 49:29Alex Cranz?

  Frugal.

• 49:29Speaker 06

  David, you really added it up with Hulu at live TV, coming at 129.95.

• 49:35Nilay Patel?

  Whoa.

• 49:36Speaker 06

  A month.

• 49:38Nilay Patel?

  I got, I got football and a kind of cheaper monthly.

• 49:43David Pierce?

  Picking Netflix was a mistake, now that I'm looking at it. 20 bucks for Netflix was a bad use of 20 bucks a month.

• 49:49Speaker 06

  YouTube Premium Family is a lot of money.

• 49:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, but, but the reason, okay, let me defend family real fast. I don't have to watch ads, even when Anna wants to watch YouTube, which is worth the extra money.

• 50:02Speaker 06

  That's true.

• 50:02David Pierce?

  But, okay, so that means Alex, you get, you get the free pick here at the end.

• 50:06Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 50:07David Pierce?

  Anything you want. Sky's the limit.

• 50:09Alex Cranz?

  Okay, does this one count? Libro.fm?

• 50:12Speaker 06

  Oh my God, Alex.

• 50:13Alex Cranz?

  I gotta read my books.

• 50:15Speaker 06

  So it's an audiobook service?

• 50:16David Pierce?

  Doesn't count.

• 50:17Alex Cranz?

  Doesn't count? Okay.

• 50:18David Pierce?

  I don't know why. It just, it just doesn't. I just can't.

• 50:20Speaker 06

  Wait, is that's an audiobook streaming service? Or is that just like a, like a book?

• 50:24Alex Cranz?

  It's an audiobook service and you get like a credit to buy a book each month.

• 50:29David Pierce?

  No.

• 50:29Alex Cranz?

  Okay. All right, cool. Well, that's great. I still, I still can read books on my own time. I didn't make sure I was gonna be allowed to read books. Um, what's the Microsoft, the Microsoft streaming cloud thing for games?

• 50:42David Pierce?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 50:44Alex Cranz?

  I like, I think of it as Microsoft X Cloud, but whatever it's actually called now, that one.

• 50:48David Pierce?

  I just call it Game Pass. I think it has a more complicated name, but everybody just calls it Game Pass.

• 50:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 50:52Alex Cranz?

  That's a good, that's also a good way to put it. Yeah, Game Pass.

• 50:55Speaker 06

  So you ended up with the two game services with Apple One, you got Apple Arcade and now you're going with Game Pass?

• 51:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, and then I play the other games while I'm watching my Criterion.

• 51:04Nilay Patel?

  Really good wildcard pick at the end, man.

• 51:07David Pierce?

  That is a really good pick.

• 51:08Alex Cranz?

  Cause it's either that or Plex, but I already did Channels, which gives me the same benefit as Plex, but a better DVR layout.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Alex Cranz?

  Stuff still sometimes adds to it when I don't DVR it. It's wild. It's crazy.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  Does it? This means that Amazon Prime went completely unpicked.

• 51:22David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  Which I, I think is not totally surprising.

• 51:26Alex Cranz?

  How often are you like, oh man, I just really gotta watch like Extraction, but even more boring and on a worse you I.

• 51:34Nilay Patel?

  Again, because Becky is so into comedy, every now and again, there's like one comedy special on Amazon Prime.

• 51:40Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  Like that's it.

• 51:41David Pierce?

  I'm really angry at this pick, Alex. That was a really good pick that I feel like I, if I had thought of that, I probably would have picked a while ago. Game Pass is good. And also like a strong future bet. Like if we come back and the question is like, how did all our bets do?

• 51:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. Game, Game Pass is gonna exist.

• 51:55David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 51:56Alex Cranz?

  Like the majority of mine will still be around, except for probably my first two, maybe.

• 52:01Nilay Patel?

  I feel great about my draft. This is a good, it's a, this is a solid year ahead.

• 52:05David Pierce?

  On my list, the only things that went unpicked that I still have on my list are, nobody picked Prime Video, nobody picked Spotify, which is very interesting. Um, we're all happy with our other weird services or Free Pandora. And, and then I have a bunch of like, I wrote down, you know, Free V and Tubi and Pluto TV and the Roku Channel and all that stuff and Sling and nobody picked any of that. I'm not super shocked.

• 52:28Alex Cranz?

  But see, I get, I get the Roku Channel because it does an M3U playlist, so I can watch it anytime on Channels.

• 52:35David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'm saying. If this draft had had like two or three more people in it, I think the drafting around those channels would have been intense. Especially because then they would have been how you would strategically have lowered the cost to try to get that extra pick.

• 52:50David Pierce?

  All right. Well, next year, we'll, this draft will include 13 people. We're gonna have a 32-team draft next year. And everybody gets five picks. It's gonna get outrageous.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Although I will say, even in this draft, David, I felt as though I was stealing picks from you and I don't think I did that really, except maybe for Sunday Ticket. Neither of us was competing with Alex. No. No one was really competing. Alex is fully trust the process, like whatever was going on over there.

• 53:15David Pierce?

  I will say, I was hoping that my three and four picks were going to be YouTube and TikTok. That was going to be the turn I made at three and four. I thought one of you would take HBO, one of you would take Disney, and I would get YouTube and TikTok and just like laugh at you old people about how I understand the future. And it didn't really work out that way, unfortunately.

• 53:31Nilay Patel?

  And no one took Instagram reels?

• 53:32David Pierce?

  Well, you took TikTok, so you basically took Instagram reels.

• 53:36Nilay Patel?

  But if you want, if you wanted that thing, Instagram, right? You want diet TikTok, you take Instagram reels.

• 53:42David Pierce?

  True.

• 53:42Alex Cranz?

  I like that I'm not going to know anything about the real world ever with my picks. I don't know what's happening in the world.

• 53:49David Pierce?

  Which is not that different from what you came into this with, so you're good there.

• 53:52Alex Cranz?

  I've learned nothing about the draft in this whole process, and I'm not going to with my picks.

• 53:58David Pierce?

  All right, we should go. We're going to do this again next year, and we're going to have to come up with some score by which we see how we did this year. Also, today, as this show goes live, there's an event at which HBO Max and Discovery Plus may cease to be what they currently are. So this might all get real weird, real fast. But we'll have lots more to talk about. Thank you both for doing this. This was very fun.

• 54:17Alex Cranz?

  This is great.

• 54:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, super fun.

• 54:25David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for The Vergecast today. Thanks to Neelai and Alex for being here and going through this crazy process with me. And thank you so much for listening. There's a whole lot more from this conversation and all of our streaming coverage on theverge.com. We put some links in the show notes, but there's all kinds of stuff all over the website. And I really, really, really want to know what you think of our picks. Who won the draft? What was the most surprising undrafted service? What obvious stuff did we miss? Who's the stupidest of the three of us? You can email us all of your thoughts at [email protected] or call the Vergecast hotline, 866-VERGE11. We'd love hearing from you, and I want to hear all of your thoughts on the streaming draft, including ideas for next year, because, like I said, I intend to do this every year until the heat death of the universe. This

• 55:10David Pierce?

  show is produced by Andrew Moreno and Liam James. Brooke Minter is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Fox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back on Friday with Neelai and Alex to talk about what's going on with Elon Musk and Twitter, electric cars, Microsoft Teams, and a whole bunch of other stuff. See you then. Rock and roll.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  When it comes to AI, there is what we could do and what we should do. What will we decide? I'm Kimberly Nebula, host of the Pondering AI Podcast from SAS. Every episode, I sit down with innovators, researchers, and technologists to consider the questions that come after the AI breakthroughs. Questions that don't have easy answers but need to be asked. If you're curious or concerned about AI, join me as we challenge assumptions and ponder the issues together. Find Pondering AI wherever you get your podcasts.

• 56:04Speaker 09

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