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Television Entertainment

Discovery+ Launches Today (engadget.com) 62

Posted by BeauHD from the comfort-shows dept.
Discovery+, the new streaming channel from Discovery, is officially available in the U.S.. "The list of places where you can download Discovery+ is extensive, with almost every popular platform but the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 included in the company's launch slate," reports Engadget. From the report: Most notably, you can access the app through Amazon Fire TV streaming devices and Fire Edition TVs -- with support for Prime Video Channels coming at a later date. At launch, Discovery also supports Roku devices and 2017 and later Samsung Smart TVs. Typically, Amazon Fire TV and Roku are left out of streaming launches. Of course, you can also access Discovery+ through Apple TV and Android TV if you have those instead.

Discovery+ will set you back $5 per month for the base tier. It's an extra $2 every month if you don't want to see any ads. At launch, you'll find content from channels like HGTV, Food Network, Animal Planet, TLC and of course Discovery. The $5 and $7 price tags put Discovery+ in competition with other specialty services like Peacock and Disney+, which may make it a tough sell for some people.
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Discovery+ Launches Today More

Discovery+ Launches Today

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  • Slashvertisement (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Monday January 04, 2021 @09:03PM (#60897232)
    And frist ps0t
  • Free for verizon customers (for 6 months)

  • Slashvertising costs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Monday January 04, 2021 @09:17PM (#60897258)

    Wonder what it costs to get some schmoe from the mod team to rubber stamp a slashvertisement....

    I know you folks need to make a living, but there's gotta be a better way.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Slashdot Apparel is back! SHOP NOW!

  • Fantastic! (Score:2, Funny)

    by bmimatt ( 1021295 )

    Let the deluge of "Ancient Aliens", "Alaskan Gold Diggers" and other marvels of human creativity commence!
    I remember at least some of these channels run mildly interesting/engaging programming. How did they end up here? Is the lowest common denominator really *this* low?

    • Dirty Jobs is about the only show worth watching and I already have them all from a torrent.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Torrent + Rothbard: the cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. I did like Dirty Jobs though, especially when I discovered that it was not about Steve.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by irving47 ( 73147 )

        If you can get past some of the drama, I always thought Gold Rush was fascinating, if not a bit repetitive.

        • If you can get past some of the drama, I always thought Gold Rush was fascinating, if not a bit repetitive.

          I watched it for a season, and it really did get to be the same thing. I think they missed the boat with these type reality shows. An episode, then move on to the next thing.As it is, the fake drama "If we don't get this load out of the ground by the deadline, we'll miss our deadline! Same thing happened with Ice Road Truckers, especially Most Dangerous Catch, and by now, I don't even bother to tune in.

          Science Channel is about the only one worth a damn, and there are the occasional ominous signals that's

    • Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday January 04, 2021 @09:37PM (#60897312)

      Yeah. I remember Discovery Channel when it used to be good - up to the 90's maybe. Now it's all reality shows, pointless brojects, conspiracy theories, and if you're lucky, pathetic "documentaries" that are completely devoid of content and sliced into 5 minute segments that can easily interspersed with 15 minutes of informercials, 3 minutes of which consist in recapping the previous segment.

      Anybody interested in real science and technology turns to the BBC for quality documentaries. Discovery is a typical network of American channels that panders to gullible, short attention span viewers with a Popular Mechanics-level education.

      • Fuck me, Popular Mechanics and Popular Science used to contain actual information too. There were long-form articles from top flight theoretical physicists and Nobel-laureate biologists. Now it's all giggles and smirks about the ignorant masses and their sky-God and sarcastic howto guides for tearing down statues.

      • Yeah. I remember Discovery Channel when it used to be good - up to the 90's maybe. Now it's all reality shows, pointless brojects, conspiracy theories, and if you're lucky, pathetic "documentaries" that are completely devoid of content and sliced into 5 minute segments that can easily interspersed with 15 minutes of informercials, 3 minutes of which consist in recapping the previous segment.

        Anybody interested in real science and technology turns to the BBC for quality documentaries. Discovery is a typical network of American channels that panders to gullible, short attention span viewers with a Popular Mechanics-level education.

        If you are looking for well made stuff, check out "Fall of Civilizations on Youtube. A series that was what The History Channel should have been. No fake Drama, but high quality stuff. https://www.youtube.com/channe... [youtube.com] It isn't technology, but is still stuff worth knowing.

        • Seconded. I've really enjoyed Fall of Civilizations.

          I also like the "Biographics" and "Geographics" channels (same guy).

          • Seconded. I've really enjoyed Fall of Civilizations.

            I also like the "Biographics" and "Geographics" channels (same guy).

            He should do a Fall of Television. There is a market for intelligent video. But for some reason, the networks give us "The Masked Singer" and now "The Masked Dancer" as quality entertainment, and Ancient Aliens as science.

            I've occasionally seen bits of each. The "Masked" stuff seems like nightmare fuel, and Ancient Aliens and it's compatriots are for the people who flunked science and math in high school.

            • The "Masked" stuff seems like nightmare fuel, and Ancient Aliens and it's compatriots are for the people who flunked science and math in high school.

              While there may be a correlation there, that's not what it's for.

              Most of the Discovery properties today are television for people who do not watch television.

              I mean that in the most literal sense. It's not television people watch. It's television people use as background noise because they are unable to tolerate silence (a pathology that is at the root of a fair number of problems Westerners have today). Almost never will somebody running Discovery actually look at the screen, and Discovery knows this, w

          • Seconded. I've really enjoyed Fall of Civilizations.

            Thirded.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • oddly enough, netflix of all services has a youtube channel with some excellent documentaries on it.

            excellent production values, and excellent subject matter. the our planet series is amazing

            for some more obscure stuff, and shorter time spans, i like dark docs. the delivery is well done. may not be 100% factual, but the presentation is great.

            Yup, watched Dark Docs. Not bad at all. Being a guy who doesn't sleep much, I watch Netflix documentaries in the living room late at night while the rest of the house is asleep. Hopefully they are keeping track of numbers.

            Here's one for ya - "Age of Tanks". Tank history, but made in France, so a slightly different perspective. Very interesting. It's subtitled for people who don't do French.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Do not think of the Discovery+ as some kind of serious streaming service, think of it more as a spamming streaming service. Lots of spammed out streaming services, all of them who create content doing them, $5 per month, they will scam some suckers, some times, but they will still sell the content to the other streaming services. Sort of a on and off again, streaming service, one month every couple of years or more. Most of their money coming from renting out content to other streaming services.

      • PBS (available as an add-on channel for Prime) has a good selection of high quality documentaries. Disney+ also has a decent if smallish collection of documentaries as well. There are still lots of places to get good documentaries... just not Discovery.

        • The good documentaries are all PBS and BBC. Perhaps this shows that commercial pressure do not make for good documentaries? It's an expensive genre of TV to produce, while reality TV and false-documentaries of lies are much cheaper. None of the need to hire highly-paid experts or travel to distant places for on-location shooting.

      • You can get CuriosityStream as an add on channel to Amazon prime for $20/year. It was created by the founder of the Discovery Channel and is basically all documentaries. Some of the stuff is pretty low budget but it seems to be getting better and is usually interesting and educational and reminds me more of the good old days of the Discovery.

      • I loved the Dukes of Hazard growing up.

        I abandoned the Discovery channel and it's crap fest years ago. The only thing on there worth watching now is battlebots. There are three places that I goto for my documentary fix. The CuriosityStream, Netflix and (surprisingly) YouTube. I heard that Disney+ has NatGeo but I've not checked it out.

        Netflix and CurisoityStream have the same template packages shows that early Discovery used to have. But a little browsing on Youtube and you can find almost anythi

      • it is like MTV, a diversification in the ecosystem destroyed the content - mtv moved music to vh1, then to mtv2, then to mtv classic which has all but disappeared and filled the void with reality shows and such - you see the same where discovery moved to other channels in the network, destination america, science channel, etc and used the discovery channel name to promote less costly reality shows while diluting and dissolving the how it's made/mythbusters, etc type shows that were actually grounded in scie

    • >Is the lowest common denominator really *this* low?

      One of their flagship shows is 'Dr. Zit Popper'.

      You be the judge.

    • I remember at least some of these channels run mildly interesting/engaging programming.

      I dropped Discovery Channel from my lineup when they cancelled Mythbusters and cancelled TLC about a decade earlier. I'm hoping the Discovery+ back catalog of shows for these channels goes back to when they were still decent. Believe it or not, TLC used to stand for The Learning Channel. Great science shows like Amazing Space and how-to shows like Furniture Guys.

  • Discovery? What? I thought that died with cable? (Score:4, Informative)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Monday January 04, 2021 @10:11PM (#60897386)
    The last time I watched cable TV (maybe 10 years ago) discovery was a dumpster fire of thinking free TV. Simply the buyout of The Learning Channel was the end of intelligent science and techish programming on cable.

    • The last time I watched cable TV (maybe 10 years ago) discovery was a dumpster fire of thinking free TV. Simply the buyout of The Learning Channel was the end of intelligent science and techish programming on cable.

      What you seem to be missing here, is that believe it or not, people like to watch their shitty TV shows. They probably make a lot more money running all those thinking free shows for morons.

      • Back in the 90s and early 2000s, Discovery, TLC, A&E and Space were the only channels I would watch up until I cut the cable. I was floored several years later when I flicked through the guide at my folks' place to see how absolutely horrible the first three had become.

        Don't the channels have some kind of mission statement they have to stick to? If not shouldn't they?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by wed128 ( 722152 )

          Their mission statement is: Optimize around the shows that make our advertisers the most money. Let's renew Ice Road Truckers and Duck Dynasty for another season.

  • Remember that? Now you have to have a streaming service it seems, to watch everything you had on cable. Plus now, depending on how much you stream, you might go over how much data you can download LOL.

    • Re:streaming...cheaper than cable (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hjf ( 703092 ) on Monday January 04, 2021 @10:57PM (#60897458) Homepage

      This is the "a la carte" cable everyone wanted.
      Nobody wanted to pay $80 for "200 channels i never watch".

      To those people:

      Congratulations: Now you get to pay $10 a month for every channel you want to watch.

      You got what you wished for. Now go, subscribe.

      • Nobody wanted to pay $80 for "200 channels i never watch".

        To those people:

        Congratulations: Now you get to pay $10 a month for every channel you want to watch.

        I took $100/month off my cable TV bill by dropping to the minimum and I pay nowhere near $100/month for the streaming services, so I am up a lot.

      • This is the "a la carte" cable everyone wanted. Nobody wanted to pay $80 for "200 channels i never watch".

        To those people:

        Congratulations: Now you get to pay $10 a month for every channel you want to watch.

        You got what you wished for. Now go, subscribe.

        I got what I wished for, now I don't have to subscribe.

    • While "yet another streaming service" can be annoying, this one was good for me. The only things on "cable" that I liked to watch were these types of shows (though I don't believe in ghosts I love watching "ghost story" shows on the Travel Channel). As a result when this came out I was able to subscribe to this, cancel my Philo subscription, and now save $13 per month and have no advertisements anymore.

      I mean for a long time on cable prior to the "cord cutting" migration what a lot of people were asking f

  • If they had their 90's lineup, might be good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeff4747 ( 256583 ) on Monday January 04, 2021 @10:59PM (#60897464)

    If we were back in the days when "The History Channel" showed history, or "The Learning Channel" tried to teach people stuff, then it might be an interesting prospect.

    But those days are long gone. Now I get a fake reality show about a pawn shop, or a fake reality show about digging through junkyards, or a fake reality show about beauty pageants, or a fake reality show about remodeling a house, or a fake reality show about fucking a guy for a US visa, or a fake reality show about....

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      And the fake reality shows were the better part of the programming.

      They used to make documentaries, then moved to scripted reality shows, some of which are fairly good. (Scripted reality shows have extensive post-production added). Think along the lines of Mythbusters where parts are scripted and parts are real. Even the house remodels for pawn shop ones are scripted.

      But their new CEO has gone even further towards reality shows that really don't appeal. These are extremely cheap to produce - they require pr

  • As many have said this sounds less than appealing due to what Discovery/TLC/History are now. Not sure what they look like outside of Canada but they are drivel up here. I haven't seen anything on those channels that I want to watch anymore. I used to watch it all the time due to the other drivel on the rest of the channels. If you are looking for something a bit better, and cheaper, check out CuriosityStream [curiositystream.com]. They seem to have a lot better programming that would suit the people looking for decent, know

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Camaro ( 13996 )

      Thanks for bringing CuriousityStream to my attention. I, too, despise what Discovery and TLC have become. Finally this year we'll be moving off Xplorenet satellite and onto something much better so I'm looking for worthwhile streaming services.

      • Another thumbs up for me for the CuriosityStream. I think it was founded by the guy that originally created the Discovery channel back when it was good.

  • ... to a set of rabbit ears near you.

    Give it a couple of years and they will rerun all this stuff on the weird OTA channels.

    • In columbus ohio, there is a it's channel called Quest (10.5) that is replaying old history channel stuff, at the moment "modern marvel's" is on. They do mix in some of the new reality crap(ice road, gold diggers,pawn bros)

  • Discovery Go was a total bomb. But by following Disney's footsteps and renaming it by just adding a plus to our name, customers will flock in droves to pay $5 more a month to another redundant streaming service to watch Mythbusters reruns, The House Flipping channel, (HGTV) The Murder Channel (Investigation Discovery) and whatever the hell freakshow TLC Is playing this season. They can even remove ads for only $2 more! We'll even have original programming, which will make you cancel cable even faster because we won't dare put it on a channel that people actually pay to watch for already.

    Then two years from now, when this fails, we wont learn from our mistake and join a more successful platform. We'll Just relaunch as Discovery Now! or Discovery Prime. That will surely work.
    --
    It's not social media's job to fact check. It's your job. Being too lazy or too stupid isn't a viable excuse.

  • Nothing worth of watching there anymore.
  • Sky TV in the UK has had Discovery+ since mid-November, with the first year free to customers using their "Q" satellite DVR boxen.
  • Cord Cutters hated paying $100/mo for a swath of "standard" cable channels, many of which they didn't want. Cable also used to be ad-free, but that soon went away.

    Then came all the streaming services. HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Peacock, Discovery+, Disney+, AppleTV, etc.

    If you added them all up, you're back to $100/mo, but now using your Internet/cellular connection to access it. Worse, you still get ads on many of them.

    People have been saying for decades that we need a-la-carte Cable TV channel select

    • If you added them all up, you're back to $100/mo

      Why would I add them all up? If I didn't want the channel when it was on cable, why would I suddenly want the channel now?

      For example, Discovery's channels turned into a cesspool back when I had cable. Why on earth would I pay to stream them?

  • I have the following criteria for TV watching:

    1) No commercials of any kind
    2) No reality shows
    3) If I can't learn something from it then it's probably not worth watching

    Last time I watched Discovery (admittedly a few years ago) it failed on 1 & 2. There were a few shows that fell into #3 but not many, and shrinking rapidly. I cut the chord a long time ago and currently the only thing I am willing to pay for is YouTube Premium (no commercials and a great music channel). Showtime is getting a trial run (g

    • I have the following criteria for TV watching: 1) No commercials of any kind 2) No reality shows 3) If I can't learn something from it then it's probably not worth watching

      Number 2 and 3 are no comprises. I don't reality shows, period. Number one depends on if I'm paying for the service. If I'm paying for the service then no commercials. If I'm not paying for the service then I can do a few commercials. I watch a lot of documentaries on Youtube. I can live with commericals on that service because they tend to be only a few and I can skip most of them.

      • "I watch a lot of documentaries on Youtube. I can live with commericals on that service because they tend to be only a few and I can skip most of them." - So do I but I've noticed that more and more commercials are being added. For me it disrupts the flow enough that I oped to pay for the premium service. What tipped the scales was the YouTube Music service. No commercials at all, huge catalog, and I can download the songs to my phone and stream them in the car. No more FM radio with DJs cutting in all the

        • Certainly a personal choice but for me it's worth it to pony up some money every month for the service.

          I've not ruled out ponying up for the premium service yet. I have yet to figure out how Youtube does their commercial selection. Most videos that I watch I will get two at the start, and maybe, two in the middle. Then the other day I was watching one and there where so many add interruptions that it was unwatchable. Right now I'm watching video on Gravity by Viper TV. An I have yet to see a add.... whoops spoke to soon. Literately, as I typed that an ad came on.

          Add Viper TV to my list of recommen

  • I can catch all those awesome educational shows on The LEARNING Channel. My favorite? Honey Boo Boo. High quality, informative, educational. None of that stupid surgery and science shit they used to have back in the day. My Amerikan mind, much like our outgoing Cheeto's, can be safe once again from anything resembling clear thought, intelligence, or logic. Thank Gawd and thank Trump!
    #MASA2024 /s
    Because it's Amerika and we don't have time (or the intelligence) to figure out that sarcasm thing.

  • 1) No 'channels' - it would make the old folks (me) feel better if you had your live channels streaming (like shudder does)

    2) No "Curse of Oak Island" - fine, they don't want it to cannibalize their other offerings, but it should have been stated clearly what is and isn't included

    3) Package, if you have to get "History Vault" or something else, give it to us at a discount

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