A common complaint is that there are far too many streaming services out there and monthly spending on them, even with bundle discounts, can add up to as much as a cable bill.
Today begins a semi-annual charting that Dark Horizons will do cataloguing the prices of various major and some minor SVOD services currently on the market. There are two lists – one for the United States, the other for Australia. Each is in their own country’s currency and reflect the prices that will be in place by the end of March this year.
The list does not include any pseudo pay-TV or skinny bundle style packages – all of these are standalone services that chart highly in online store apps so some smaller apps aren’t included. It also only covers the price of buying them direct as opposed to going through a ‘Channels’ style interface on Roku, Amazon or the Apple TV app.
The chart will include variations within each for different tiers (eg. Netflix’s SD/HD/4K levels), for a discount if you get an annual subscription, for those with ads/no ads arrangements, and for those that offer a discount if bundled with others (eg. Disney+ with ESPN+ & Hulu).
You can calculate out your costs from there. A fairly common grouping in the U.S. for example would be Netflix (HD), an Amazon Prime yearly subscription, and the Disney/ESPN/Hulu bundle – that all comes in at approximately $36.90 per month. With HBO Max added to the mix, that rises to $51.89.