'Discovery' is here; should you pay for CBS All Access to watch it?

CBS had technical issues the first week, that affected all users btw.

You could get a better experience by getting an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) for your TV and cable box/modem. Power outages wont take out your internet or TV that way.

If you attempt to cancel your cbs all access subscription, you'll be offered an extra month free. My account won't be charged until Nov 1st. Just FYI.

Nice tip, Dobber.

I watched through my XBox One (50 mb speed) without incident. I actually watched the live local feed through the CBS app for TVH and then the stream for BATBS. The live feed was a little less quality than the direct episode stream. Other than the initial buffer grain for about 3 seconds, no glitches.

@Jammer
"If you’re in the United States, the answer to that question depends one thing: Do you want to see Star Trek: Discovery as it is released?"

Ehm, no. That's not the only thing that matters.

Other considerations should also be weighed. Do you want to support a business that you feel is exploiting you? Do you want to encourage CBS to become even more greedy next time? Do you want to encourage other companies to follow suit, making life more difficult and more expensive for both you and others in the long run?

Do you want the NEXT Trek series to be even behind a higher pay-wall with even crappier customer service and more anti-fan rhetorics from the TPTB?

Because that's what you're voting for, when you're paying for CBS All Access.

And the same, by the way, goes to all those who say "I don't like how they are ignoring continuity and dumbing-down the content, but it's Trek so I have no choice but to supprt it". Anybody who does *this* is voting for irreverence and dumbing-down to continue.

To emphasize: I am not saying that people should automatically say no to CBS-AA.

I *am* saying that people should be intelligent customers, and think of the larger implications beyond "getting my fix NOW". Because that is ALSO a part of capitalism: We have the power of voting with their wallets.

I'm sorry Jammer, but you really dropped the ball on this one.

A word of apology:

I was quick to respond before reading the entire post.

It seems that Jammer is aware of all the issues I've raised, so I guess my wording was too harsh and I apologize for that.

I still maintain that "complaining about it and then paying up" is a silly thing to do, though. CBS couldn't care less about our complaints. And really, why should they? Why should we expect them to care about our needs and wants more than we do?

...Confessions of a 21st Century Privileged American

I have a Samsung 4K Smart TV. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video Apps are all installed and running perfect; and I pay for them.

CBS All Access does not have an App for Samsung TVs. Samsung has the most TV market share and CBS did not pay to develop and license an App for Samsung.

I have a Samsung 1080 Dumb TV in another room; I bought a Roku for that TV; the CBS App is on Roku...

CBS do you want new people to watch Star Trek?
No.

Do you want Star Trek Fans to pay for beta testing your service?
Yes.

CBS please be honest in the future.

Thank you from a hot blooded tech savvy consumer who has disposable cash and who attached a 4K Roku to a 4K TV that does not need a Roku to work. :(

If DIS had a normal Sunday night slot on CBS, it would be appointment viewing for my family. As it stands, CBS won't be getting a cent from me, either through an All Access subscription or with ad views on broadcast television.

Unfortunately, Star Trek fans have proven over the years that they are the most-milkable fanbase in existence, and I fear that there will be plenty of rabid Trekkers signing up for All Access in spite of its deficiencies.

I feel most of the posters here are a little too hard on CBS for exploiting, not viewers, but a new business model for distributing content that is becoming more and more commonplace.

I can see people back in the early days of TV or radio complaining about how advertisements interrupting the entertainment of the day ruining forever the experience of that entertainment. When did advertisements ever interrupt a book, or a movie in the cinema, or a play?

TV is what it is...whether you get it over the air, by paying companies like Comcast, or by paying to view content online.

This thread is a textbook example of a first world problem. Compared to real world problems, I will gladly take this one. May it be the worst thing to happen to me this year.

Todd, the main problem here is not what CBS is doing.

The main problem here is that way too many people are willing to be exploited in this manner, for the sillies of reasons. We've become mindless junkies who are willing to do anything for our entertainment fix (or "Star Trek fix")

And that, my friend, *is* a huge problem. We've already lost much of our privacy and personal freedom to this crazy addiction for entertainment. You're right that the CBS Access thing is rather trivial in the grand scheme of things, but it is a symptom of a much bigger problem in our society.

Here's a revolutionary idea to consider:

If all the entertainment packages you're offered suck, then turn off the TV and go for a walk outside. Or read a good book. Or pop in a DVD of your favorite classic Trek show.

And if everything else fail, you can catch "the Orville" on Fox. :-)
(I don't believe I'm saying this, but the first 3 episodes of the Orville definitely have more depth and intelligence and personality in them than the first 2 episodes of Discovery)

@Jammer

I experienced some of the same problems you did, as I streamed the show (HDMI connection from computer to HDTV) from All-Access. In the second episode, the subtitles, in white, were difficult to read. Some breaks had more commercials than others (a mild annoyance, I guess, considering that both twice of nothing and half of nothing are both zero), and the stream buffered and froze as you describe.

Then again, this article brings a mild smile to my face (and probably puts a scowl on the face of my childhood hero, Leslie Moonves): http://fortune.com/2017/09/26/star-trek-discovery-pirated/

P.S. IMO, "The Orville" just isn't all there. I keep expecting the MacFarlane character to say, 'What the hell is anti-mattah?" The show has already induldged MacFarlane's pee-pee and poo-poo brand of humor too much.

I don't really relate to the complaints. I bought the ad-free version; $4 more a month to eliminate all ads from Star Trek, and anything else I might want to watch from CBS? Hell yeah! Either way, it's comparable, or cheaper, per hour of television actually watched, than any of the cable or satellite packages I've had in the past. Same for the HBO-only streaming service that I watched Thrones on. Weren't people clamoring for disaggregated, a la carte TV channels a few years ago?

I signed up Sunday night but am waiting until tonight to watch the 2nd episode with my daughter when she's over. It took me a while to sign up through my 360 as well- It kept giving me that code and by the time I was ready to enter it the TV said the connection was lost.

Hopefully the actual STREAMING part works. I don't like the business practice either but if I'm honest I spend $10 on lots of stuff a month that means a whole lot less to me than a new Trek series.

"Weren’t people clamoring for disaggregated, a la carte TV channels a few years ago?"

In my opinion, those people were mistaken. A la carte will end up costing us more, not less, unless you truly have a small amount of content and are able to cut the cord. The subsidation of content via cable packages has been wrongly villified. Sure, there are tons of channels I don't watch, but to have individual subscriptions to the ones I do want would end up costing more, and I will get far less overall.

"The main problem here is that way too many people are willing to be exploited in this manner, for the sillies of reasons. We’ve become mindless junkies who are willing to do anything for our entertainment fix (or “Star Trek fix”)"

That's too harsh. If the cost were unreasonable that would be one thing. And some people aren't going to pony up, so the market will speak to that. But you are essentially talking about making a protest vote rather than buying something we want. Forgive us if we are not quite so angry.

I am annoyed that this isn't on CBS broadcast, sure. And the presentation was not quite up to my standards. But I am not *that* mad and it is not *that* much money. So I did a calculation and paid the money. Life goes on. I don't think it speaks to a larger theme of us as mindless lemmings.

Peremensoe I totally agree .. guys, if you haven't signed up for a trial already, do the ad-free trial. Jammer is totally right, the ads are infuriating.

On another note, I agree that it is CBS' right to market their this way. Capitalism is a good thing. But, I already know that I won't be paying after my free trial. There are other ways to watch, or will be eventually. I want to support CBS and their intellectual property, but to pay for one show? I'm not convinced, no matter how much I love Star Trek.

I enjoyed the show and signed up for CBS All Access. But then I saw the cast of Discovery took a knee. So I cancelled and won't watch anymore with the response of cancellation to CBS as: "The cast of Discovery took a knee, so I'm taking a knee on Discovery and CBS All Access"

Pretty dumb move to alienate a large portion of the fanbase right as the show is premiering.

Cut that cord! At least do the calculation for your needs and circumstances.

For myself, given that I'm maintaining internet service anyway (and I get MLB.TV with my mobile service), I don't see how I would ever again justify a general TV package.

"Sure, there are tons of channels I don’t watch, but to have individual subscriptions to the ones I do want would end up costing more, and I will get far less overall."

If I get individual subscriptions to each channel I'm interested in, in practice that means I'm 'getting' exactly the same as if I had a general package that included all of them. I don't care how many channels my system receives that I never watch anyway, right? So, assuming the transmission quality is there either way, the issue is price. I also don't care whether I'm getting a channel during the months of the year when they're not running any particular shows I care about. If I pick up a streaming subscription only when they have new stuff coming, and drop it when they don't, I end up carrying one to three at a time, for a cost of $9 to $34 monthly. And I basically never watch commercials.

I am willing to pay for convenience and ease of control. That is why I have a cable package with a DVR that I can watch on any TV, and why I may upgrade to the ad-free version of CBSAA. I don't watch commercials either. But the streaming world is just too fragmented in terms of user experience and apps and device availability to make that easy for me and all the users in my home. It just isn't practical, at least in my experience. Until it is, I will cling to my old ways while shouting "Get off my lawn!"

Besides, all you cord cutters are just going to make the cost of Internet service go up anyway, because the provider is in many cases the same, and if they don't get your money from a TV package, they will get it from your Internet access charge.

@Jammer

"But I am not *that* mad and it is not *that* much money. So I did a calculation and paid the money. Life goes on. I don’t think it speaks to a larger theme of us as mindless lemmings."

You did the calculation and that's perfectly fine.

The problem is with what you said in the beginning of your blog post:

"Should you pay for CBS All Access to watch it? If you’re in the United States, the answer to that question depends one thing: Do you want to see Star Trek: Discovery as it is released?"

To which I'm saying: No sir. There are other factors involved in this decision.

"You are essentially talking about making a protest vote rather than buying something we want."

You're telling me that you WANT that crappy experience you've just had with CBS-AA?

What I'm saying is that people should think twice before they pay for a package they DON'T WANT, just because it happens to also contain something they do want.

Let me put it this way: When you've subscribed to CBS-AA, you didn't just pay 6 (or 10) dollars a month. All your complaints, from the technical inconviniences to the fact that you are "white-hot with fury", are personal costs you're paying to get the thing you really want, which is "watching Discovery in real time". We could even convert these hidden costs to actual dollars, by asking ourselves "how much money would someone need to pay me in order for me to willingly deal with bad thing XYZ".

So, is it worth it? Maybe, maybe not. But either way, saying "it's just a few bucks so why not?" is a silly way of doing this cost/benifit analysis. And personally, I would never buy something whose everyday usage will be determinal to my blood pressure.

Hmmm well the STDd server is down but the other CBS shows work....

Best $10 I ever spent, wtf they didn't plan so well I mean it was only delayed a year plus.

Nope. Won't pay. Won't watch. Don't feel like I'm missing a thing.

Taking an iconic story focused on the betterment of humanity through a set of optimistic moral ideals, set in a post-scarcity society which no longer values the acquisition of wealth.....and then putting that story behind a paywall that requires people spend $6/month to even get access to it in the hopes that the popularity of the story drives up subscription rates.....is definitely solid Ferengi move.

Well played, Grand Nagus Moonves.

:)

-- I am willing to pay for convenience and ease of control. That is why I have a cable package with a DVR that I can watch on any TV, and why I may upgrade to the ad-free version of CBSAA. I don’t watch commercials either. But the streaming world is just too fragmented in terms of user experience and apps and device availability to make that easy for me and all the users in my home. It just isn’t practical, at least in my experience. Until it is, I will cling to my old ways while shouting “Get off my lawn!” --

Great paragraph Jammer.

This is why I won't give up on my cable package.

I know where the channels are, I can DVR, I can avoid commercials, and I don't spend one single second on clicking on things, waiting for a load, wasting time connecting to xyz, dealing with occasional loading/connection problems and other technical/compatibility issues, dealing with the possibility that my stream is seconds behind broadcast (this is a serious issue in sports events), etc.

Pure convenience.

I don't even want to spend one single extra second more than punching the channel number on my remote.

@Mertov -- This is why I continue to doubt this notion that streaming will definitely kill cable. It might be part of the future, but we are essentially talking about replacing an established service/technology with something that requires buffering and download delays to start watching a show. And a different app for every channel, unless you can package them and put them on your TV with some aggregator.

So maybe you go with something like Roku, which packages a bunch of streaming apps/services into one interface. But now you are essentially just duplicating the cable experience with different channels. Because that's what Netflix is at this point -- a cable channel.

Cable has streaming too -- it's called on demand. And now my cable provider has partnered with Netflix and I can get Netflix through the cable box and it is fully integrated with the cable UI. And cable has all those other dozens/hundreds of channels that you may or may not want, but you also get packaged in there live news and sports and broadcast TV and all the cable networks. Now, maybe you don't want all that. (I do.) But if you want options and don't want to have to deal with a million apps and want your kids to be able to turn on a TV and watch a show you recorded for them -- well, the streaming world is just not there yet, in my opinion.

Geez, now I sound like an ad for cable.

Who knows -- in a few years when I don't have to endure "PJ Masks" anymore, maybe my tune will change. But I kind of doubt it.

I signed up for the add-free version that begins with a two-day free trial, then immediately canceled and was offered the service at $4.99 per month. If the series hasn’t shown promise by late October, I will cancel. I agree that the app sucks. In addition to the issues that have already been mentioned, the audio isn’t even in 5.1. Given Trek‘s Rich sound mix, that’s a major disappointment. It’s absolutely absurd that these nut buckets couldn’t get the service right after all this time. I feel like I’m paying for a product I would’ve expected eight or nine years ago.

$5.99 per month is not unreasonable, to be fair. If I buy an episode to keep it will cost me £2.49 (via Amazon in the UK.) Four episodes for that price is okay. I know you don't get to keep them but it's the same as renting them. The show costs 8 million an episode and CBS has to recoup that somehow.

That’s how I justified buying the DVDs back in 2002. Even at $100 per season, it was cheaper than buying the episodes on VHS. However when shows like 24 and The Sopranos cost only $40 per season, I began to realize that Paramount really was gouging the fans. And frankly, The Sopranos and 24 (in it’s early seasons) are better shows than TMG.

Everything drops in price eventually. TNG on Blu Ray cost £60 - £70 per season upon release. Now season 1 - 7 on Blu Ray can be had for £42. They used to charge £12.99 for four episodes of Friends on VHS. Looking back, that's scanderlous!

Yeah, I remember when Suncoast Video had a big wall of Star Trek VHS tapes. They were $14.95 per episode. I bought a few of those. Tempted to buy TNG on Blu-ray, but I just have no interest in physical media at this point. DS9 and Babylon 5 on Blu-ray I would probably buy though, particularly if they had a really good 5.1 mix. Both Siris have 5.1 mixes on DVD that were just basically stereo.

It’s true that discovery will eventually be available for next to nothing, but by that point who will be talking about it? If the first season is not well received, it will likely be forgotten quickly. That’s pretty much what has happened to JJ’s Trek movies.

I think people still like JJ's Trek movies. I do anyway. I'd take them over the original movies any day of the week. $14.95 per episode is crazy expensive. With you on physical media, I stream almost everything now. Streaming has its advantages and disadvantages but it's just so convenient.

You‘d take Into Darkness over TWoK? You should wrestle Jammer over who is the bigger JJ fan.

Wrath of Khan is very dated and slow. My opinion of course. I've never seen the original Trek series. I haven't seen Voyager or Enterprise either (bar, a few episodes.) I like TNG (for the most part) and DS9 (the same.) Plus Discovery, so far.

@SC
"The show costs 8 million an episode and CBS has to recoup that somehow."

Didn't they boast that their agreement with netflix "already paid for the production costs of the entire season"?

Greedy bastards...

@SC (sorry for the double post, but I forget I also wanted to reply to this:)

"$5.99 per month is not unreasonable, to be fair. If I buy an episode to keep it will cost me £2.49 (via Amazon in the UK.) Four episodes for that price is okay. I know you don’t get to keep them but it’s the same as renting them."

Renting something for about half its retail price is "reasonable"?

I can't stand all this modern crap--streaming, 500+ channels(who needs that many channels). I'm old school all the way. Somebody bought me for Christmas a flat screen I didn't want it. I still use my 1980s/1990s big, gloriously bulky television sets. Tv is meant to be watched on tv--not on a laptop, not on your phone, not on a kindel.

I miss the days of just a handful of cable channels

I can't speak for CBS Access. In Canada, there are two ways to watch the show legally. Either get a cable subscription and watch it on SPACE (with commercials), or subscribe to CraveTV, Bell's streaming service for $7.99. Since I don't already have cable, the latter was cheaper for me so I went with that, even though I think Bell is a terrible company. My love for Trek trumps my hatred of Bell.

The biggest drawback of CraveTV for me is that the episodes are released on Monday, a day later than in the US. I did not have any problems with playback and there were no commercials, though it took a 30-minute phonecall to get the service to work on my AppleTV and the visual quality seemed (subjectively) inferior to Netflix. I will definitely be unsubscribing at the end of the season.

@OmicronThetaDeltaPhi

"Renting something for about half its retail price is “reasonable”?"

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

If you're paying $5.99 a month for Trek, this isn't breaking the bank for most people. Each episode is approx $1.50 (to rent.) A film costs £4.49 to rent in the UK (which is $5.99.) You're sorta getting two films per month for $5.99.

Week two update: I had an improved experience, probably because I didn't do any rewinding or navigation during the show, and the video only stuttered once or twice (for less than a couple seconds).

Startrekwatcher: "Tv is meant to be watched on tv–not on a laptop, not on your phone, not on a kindel."

My desktop computer has an HDMI output to my TV. I can watch a streaming program on my actual TV set as easily as anyone with a cable box can. I can also see any other content from anywhere on the internet.

Paying for an additional data service, to supply content for *only* my TV screen, now seems as odd as... I don't know, paying two monthly electric bills, to supply 120V/60Hz and 220V/50Hz in side-by-side systems, just so I can plug in one European appliance without an adapter.

Cable providers know this, which is why they also have apps that allow you to get their content on your other devices. So it is not "TV only" that you are buying. It is the packaged content (which is piecemeal through most streaming services), along with the ease of use through set top boxes, as well as apps for your mobile device.

This comment brought to you by Big Cable.

FYI just met one of the cameramen on the Toronto crew and he says based on some things he couldn't talk about, the producers now thing Discovery has what it takes to go up to and perhaps even beyond 8 seasons

Good grief - You poor saps in the U.S. Everyone else on Earth is getting Discovery basically for free. In Canada, we just watch it on Space (the Canadian equivalent of the SciFy channel) and apparently everyone else just watches it on Netflix

It's been greatly amusing to see the gnashing of teeth, rending of garments and general lamentations of DSC's U.S. audience regarding having to pay to watch Star Trek on an inferior service, while we international fans get to enjoy it on Netflix.

You see, here in Australia, Star Trek on TV was a shitty experience. It was several seasons behind and only ever shown late at night, when it was shown at all. The only way for us to stay current was to head down to the video rental store and (gasp!) pay to rent the latest two-episode VHS of the show, and that was it for the entire runs of TNG, DS9 and VOY. By the time ENT rolled around, broadband internet had finally started to become a thing in Oz and we finally had an alternative, but geez it was tough. I must have spent at least nearly $1000 on VHS rentals over the years. (well, my parents must have when I begged them for it ;)

So I see the complaints about All Access, and it's hard to see them as anything more than massively entitled whining. Like Jammer said: you wanna watch Star Trek? Then pay the money. Which is not very much, mind you (certainly works out cheaper than new-release VHS rental in Australia ever was!) Hell, you could even pay the fee and just download some high quality torrents of the show if the All Access app is truly that bad. Then you can enjoy it on whatever device you like and support the creation of new Star Trek directly.

Of course the common response to this observation from many on the Internet is "Discovery sucks and is not real Star Trek anyway". In which case the answer is twofold: (1) then what do you care if it's behind a paywall? and (2) how can you possibly make such a statement about a show that's just three chapters in to a (13?) part serialised story?

Intro2001 and Tim C,

I am not sure those comparisons are fair. I have access to the show so I am not speaking for me, but millions in the US already pay for CBS (through cable) and Netflix and still can't get the show unless they pay more. Imagine paying for HBO but being told you have to pay separately for Game of Thrones. Or Intro2001, imagine Space Channel saying you have to pay separately for Star Trek: Discovery on top of what you already pay for cable. That would be a better comparison.

On a separate note, I think CBS is short-changing its own hand (and possibly Star Trek) by not having it accessible to millions of fans in the US who already pay for CBS and/or Netflix.

I absolutely get that it sucks having to pay for a bunch of different streaming services. I myself refuse to pay for more than one. *But*, that fact that it sucks doesn't change anything. CBS would have done their own internal calculations on this, and clearly believe it's worth paywalling Discovery on their own service in the States. Time will tell if they've gambled correctly, but in the meantime it leaves USA fans with no other option. I mean you could always just pirate it, but I reckon Star Trek is worth a few bucks a month.

So the reviewer is stuck with a service that doesn't work, paying for a show that judging from his reviews doesn't seem to enjoy. So why does he do that? If you don't like something the logical thing to do is stop paying for it and reviewing it altogether. If CBS sees the fan base pulling out from the show they will cancel it or change direction or medium.

I personally started watching the new show partly because of the controversy and loved it so much I even bought the first novel but I would never spend hours watching it on a broken service and then reviewing it if I didn't like it. It just seems illogical.

I am reading on all kinds of Star Trek fan pages that the streaming had major issues in this evening's episode (Ep.6). Many (and I mean...many, as in close to a hundred posts I saw) were complainng that they didn't even get it to work to watch it and gave up. Ton of others kept freezing. You would think CBS All-Access would at least treat the paying curtomers adequately, but not so, not tonight at least.

It was bad. You can add my site to the list of complainers, as I definitely thought the streaming service tonight was just downright awful.

Imagine a different timeline where CBS created a new Star Trek series. In this timeline, the well written show would be set 10 or 20 years after Voyager returned to Earth. Therefore, the show could have some of the actors from TNG, DS9 or Voyager, who now look about 10 or 20 years older, appear on this new show from time to time. This would keep the Trekkies who loved those shows interested in watching this new show.
Those that grew up watching TOS aren't getting any younger so this series would be shown on CBS TV so that a wider and also a new generation of viewers could enjoy a new ST series.


Instead, we got another prequel with creepy looking Klingons, who BTW should not look too different from the TOS Klingons.
Also, instead of creating a new generation of Trekkies, CBS decided to charge you a monthly fee to make sure the viewing audience is kept as small as possible with only existing Trekkies paying for this.
What 10 to 20 year old kids who did not grow up with with TNG, DS9 or Voyager would pay for this??

When I first read that CBS was creating a new ST series, set, incredibly again, as a prequel and would charge you a monthly fee - I couldn't believe it. Also, Americans would be the only people on this Federation planet who would not be able to see this show on Netflix. I thought that this must be an April Fools joke. Or that a Star Wars fan was in charge at CBS and wanted to cause irreparable damage to the ST franchise.

I have decided not to pay for this show and will instead "miss out" for now until I can watch it almost for free. However, I did see the 1st episode for free (minus the costs already paid to my cable company). I saw what they did to the Klingons and am now watching reruns of Voyager and TNG and have "Discovered" that I can enjoy my life without Discovery.

As an aside. Not sure if this has been mentioned already and I'm sure this was not planned but naming the new show's starship "Discovery" will make those that want to reference this new show as we now reference TOS or TNG by the letters "STD" (sexually transmitted disease) . Or maybe the Star Wars fan now running CBS found calling this show STD funny and it was planned.

The Star Trek universe deserves better.

I began watching the Star Trek Original series in 1966 and have seen every incarnation since then. The movie reboots were okay beginning with Star Trek 2009 being my favorite and completely HATING Star Trek Into Darkness. It bugs me to no end that Star Wars has been rebooted (but I do really enjoy it) and doing so well. Paramount/CBS does not seem to know how to forge ahead. Every Star Trek movie after Star Trek 2009 was/is junk. I watched them all, but very disappointed. When Star Trek Discovery was announced, I was not really looking forward to it. I will not pay to see Discovery. So I exist by watching all the previous series/movies ( I will also gladly watch The Orville with all it's flaws) and will probably die before Star Trek is given it's due. This is no way to treat Star Trek . . .