AT&T’S WATCHTV IS HERE, AND IT’S A HEAD-SCRATCHER
Now available on several mobile phones and media players, WatchTV comes with 33 channels, but no local or sports stations.
AT&T’s brand new streaming TV service, WatchTV, gives me pause. Not because it’s bad. Rather, it’s just decent enough to make me stop and think twice about my current cord-cutter setup.
As a refresher, WatchTV, first announced June 21, is the totally free (for some AT&T wireless customers) live and on-demand streaming TV app. Now available on several mobile phones and media players, WatchTV comes with 33 channels, but no local or sports stations.
Since I fall into the “some” category of customers, and free is fully $35 per month cheaper than what I pay for YouTube TV, WatchTV has the potential to save me, and others in the same boat, a decent wad of cash.
There are, of course, plenty of ifs, ands or buts.
Consider the following:
PRICE
Free for AT&T Unlimited & More and AT&T Unlimited & More Premium customers, and $15 a month for everyone else.
Channel lineup: A&E, AMC, Animal Planet, Audience, BBC America, BBC World News, Boomerang, Cartoon Network, CNN, Discovery, Food Network, FYI, Hallmark, Hallmark M&M, HGTV, Hello Labs, History, HLN, IFC, Investigation Discovery, Lifetime, Lifetime Movies, OWN, Sundance, Taylor Swift Now, TBS, TCM, TLC, TNT, TruTV, Velocity, Viceland, WeTV.
Platforms: iOS, Android, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast, Samsung Smart TV, Chrome and Safari
The good: Free is unbeatable. So if you’re already an AT&T wireless customer and you want one of the new wireless wireless data plans, then you get WatchTV whether you actually want or need it, making the service pretty hard to turn down.
Plus the app, itself (I’ve only used the iPhone version), is easy to figure out. Watch Now, My Library and Discovery tabs help direct you to content you might want to see. There’s also a Guide button for a classic TV guide grid, and a way to filter the schedule based on content type (TV shows, movies, sports and kids). In addition, available on-demand material is plentiful, making the app a fairly comprehensive destination for fans of the networks included.
THE MEH
Digital cable alternatives are supposed to be easy. No contracts. Clear rules. No-brainer cancellation options. That’s why they exist. They’re supposed to offer the opposite of everything we hate from our cable providers. But, like cable, WatchTV can be a real head-scratcher.
First, you have to determine if you want to sign up for a new wireless data plan, then you have to pick and choose options (Unlimited & More Premium subscribers get a free premium channel like HBO, Starz or Showtime), and then you have to master AT&T’s sign-up process, which took me several tries.
In other words, if you want WatchTV, you’ll have to work for it. And you’ll also have to read the fine print, say for when you want to stream TV in HD from your smartphone using your data plan or you want to stream on multiple devices at the same time.
THE BAD
One could argue that a dearth of local affiliates and regional sports networks is a definite con, but WatchTV isn’t meant to be the everything-for-everyone package so I’m not going to hold that against it.
What is more than a little frustrating, however, is that if you want to add on those types of channels, you have to download and pay for an entirely separate app. AT&T would like that app to be its other streaming TV service, DirecTV Now, and the company is even offering unlimited wireless customers a $15 credit toward a DirecTV Now subscription.
If I want a chunk of cable channels plus a few locals, then I can theoretically get them all at a decent price from the same company. But, and here’s the annoying part, I still have to download two separate apps with completely different experiences. Not fun.
VERDICT
If this, and this, then that
If you’re a specific type of customer (probably a cable-less millennial), with a very niche set of streaming needs (no interest in sports), and you were already in the market for an unlimited data plan from AT&T (hi, that’s me), then WatchTV is a real steal of a deal. Otherwise, go find something else to watch.