Another Plus Branded Streaming Service Joins The Crowd: Documentary+

A new streaming service is available on Roku that focuses on documentaries. Of course it’s going with a plus in the title. Documentary+ (docplus.com) is the name and it’s ad-supported, no monthly fee required.

A joint project between Tony Hsieh (the former Zappos CEO who recently passed away) and studio XTR, Documentary+ launched with a catalog of films by several high-profile directors and filmmakers, among them Werner Herzog, Terrence Malick, Kathryn Bigelow, and Spike Jonze, to name just a few. At launch, the service has a pretty broad selection of categories to choose from, including politics, sports, comedy, music, and true crime, among other genres, with a focus specifically on premium content. The service has more than 150 titles available at launch.

Documentary+ Is the Latest Service to Enter the Streaming Wars

I’m a documentary fan. It’s not a huge genre of interest, but it’s somewhere in the middle of genres I enjoy watching from time to time. While writing this post, I watched the Netflix miniseries on disgraced NFL player Aaron Hernandez.

Am in favor of niche streaming services, but the selection so far at this site, didn’t jump out at me with a bunch of must-see documentaries. There are more on Netflix and Amazon Prime that I’d recommend others to watch.

Still, a decent concept for a niche streaming service and you can’t beat the price, as long as the ads aren’t too intrusive.

FilmRise Grows Grows To Over 31 Million Subscribers in 2020

FilmRise is one of those free, ad-supported TV channels we haven’t paid much attention to, but apparently a lot of people have. Sure, they’re a free service, but 31.5 million subscribers is a huge number of subscribers for anything. Props to them!

New York-based film and television studio and streaming network FilmRise reports the company had a successful year in 2020, thanks to more people turning to in-home entertainment. The free, ad-supported streaming network grew its install base 30% last year now with more than 31.5 million users.

FilmRise Reports 31.5 Million Users in 2020 | Cord Cutters News

So, just installed the app on Google TV. Strangely, we were out of storage space! Apparently, there’s only 4GB and the streaming apps we had already installed filled that up. The storage can easily be expanded adding a USB drive with a mini-USB cable, so will have to add that to our to-do list.

Anyway, launched FilmRise and found a disaster film to queue up called Icetastrophe. A mountain down is the center of a meteor that shoots out icicles and subzero wind freezing people immediately into cubes of ice. Effects, story and acting are laughable, but for a late night movie, it kind of made me chuckle. A little further checking reveals this is one of those Syfy movies and was also originally billed as a Christmas movie, with the title Christmas Icetastrophe. Sorry, guilty pleasure trash lol.

A very quick perusal didn’t yield many A-list movies and TV shows on FilmRise. But hey, they have that fun game show Celebrity Bowling!

Apparently, there is enough B and C grade content on there to interest movie lovers. Anybody reading regular use FilmRise? What do you like watching on there?

Comcast’s Ad-Supported Xumo Reaches 24+ Million Subscribers – How Many Are Actively Watching?

Congrats to Comcast for 24+ million Xumo (https://corp.xumo.com/) subscribers. It’s a good number, but when Netflix boasts 190+ million paid subscribers, it’s not amazing comparatively. Heck, we were most recently impressed to see Shudder pass a 7-figure paid subscriber milestone (see: Shudder Reaches 1 Million Subscribers on September 23, 2020)

Xumo, the free, ad-supported streaming TV service now owned by Comcast, wants to make the case that it’s in the same league as its two primary rivals, Fox’s Tubi and ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV. Since January, according to Xumo, its user base has soared 2.5 times to reach more than 24 million U.S. monthly active users.

Comcast’s Xumo Touts Explosive Growth, Topping 24 Million Monthly Users for Free Streaming Service (EXCLUSIVE)

Their subscriber milestone shows many people continue to enjoy watching ad-supported TV streaming services like Xumo, Tubi, Pluto and others. Or maybe it shows that a significant number of people want to sign up — like we did — for the service.

Subscribing to something free, however, isn’t as important as people who sign up and are active.

How many of those 24+ million subscribers are actively watching say an average of 2 hours a week? That’s an average of watching one movie a week on the service. I would call those subscribers active.

Us? We wouldn’t pass this test. Not just with Xumo, but not any of the others either: Tubi, Pluto, heck we don’t even average that with the Roku channel, also free.

We are watching some live TV through Locast local channels like the Seahawks NFL games on Sunday. Have also been watching more news with the impending election and other world events through CBS All Access live TV option.

We have these free channels on Roku but the vast majority of our TV time goes to the 7 paid channels we subscribe to (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, CBS All Access, Shudder)

What about you, friendly readers? How much of these ad-supported TV/movies are you watching? Xumo, Pluto, Tubi, let’s just use those. Do you watch any of them more than 2 hours a week? Do you have a favorite of the three? Which one?