Paul’s Tech Makeover: (Yet Another) Cord-Cutting Update (Premium)

Last week, I provided an update on our cord-cutting efforts. Maybe I should have waited, as things are changing yet again.

Which, when you think about it, is one of the key benefits of cord-cutting: You can subscribe and unsubscribe from services at will. And we have.

This seemingly sudden change came about because of two recent and coincidental events.

First, Hulu with Live TV finally added a guide to its Apple TV and Roku apps. I really like Hulu in general. And when I tested the TV service last year, I came away feeling like it would eventually emerge as a top cord-cutting contender. But it lacked a guide for browsing what's on TV now and in the future, a curious omission.

Second, my brother-in-law decided recently to drop cable TV and go the cord-cutting route. He did this to save money---to the tune of $50 to $70 per month, if I'm not mistaken---and he made some good choices: He got a Roku and a Chromecast for each of his TVs, and he subscribed to PlayStation Vue.

Interesting.

You may recall that I had tried PlayStation Vue last summer. We had mixed results. The guide worked fine, and you could pretty easily switch between what you're watching now and what you most recently watched, a key action for sports fans and those bored with commercials during live TV.

But PlayStation Vue had a lousy DVR interface: It lumped recorded and on-demand shows together, and it needlessly mixed in shows it will record soon, making it seem like they're "new." As bad, the commercial-skipping functionality was a bit limited and we had lots of reliability issues. So we moved on.

Last weekend, I was checking out my brother-in-laws new TV setup and I was struck by how nice the guide looked. I really like YouTube TV, but his guide, from PlayStation Vue, looked even better. And I started thinking that maybe I should look at the Sony service again. (See below for the reason why this guide looked different/better to me.)

In the course of researching the options---again, things change all the time in this market, and experiences from last summer are increasingly out-of-date---I found out an important negative for Hulu with Live TV: You have to pay $15 extra each month to fast-forward through commercials in recorded shows. So the real cost of this service would be about $60 per month. That's almost the same cost as both YouTube TV ($40 per month) and Sling TV Blue ($30) together. I was hoping to save a bit more.

But that made me think of PlayStation Vue again. Maybe this was worth another look.

So I looked. PlayStation Vue has four service tiers, which range in price from $40 per month to $75 per month. The second tier, called Core, costs $45 per month and adds several channels, including DIY, IFC, SundanceTV, and several others, like MLB Network, NBA TV, and the NFL Network, that are sports-focused. This was the tier I had chosen last year and is the one my brother-in-law chose as well.

I also looked at two related choices: Whe...