Peacock TV was a marquee name in the new class of streaming providers last 12 months, and over time it added enough attention-grabbing and unique content material to earn a spot on our greatest streaming companies list.
While that’s to not say Peacock is perfect, we’re definitely at a degree the place many individuals now do not even think about canceling their Peacock subscriptions. This Peacock assessment will clarify why that’s, from Peacock’s wide range of live events (each sport and pseudo-sport) to its occasional SNL streams, unique originals and strong back catalogue of films. Oh, and it has live news, too.
We’ll also go over how Peacock might improve as it looks to remain necessary in 2022.
If you happen to’ve seen most modern streaming providers, you won’t be stunned by Peacock’s interface. You have obtained sections for Motion pictures and TV at the top, a home web page called Featured, the My Stuff section for things you’ve favorited, and different sections. Peacock, much like Paramount Plus, stands out by providing sports (which has its own section). This accommodates live occasions, documentaries and sports-based mostly TV shows. There’s additionally the WWE on Peacock part, because Peacock became the exclusive U.S. distributor of the WWE Network, which presents Vince McMahon’s sports entertainment live occasions and back catalogue.
Featured
The home web page is pretty easy: you’ve got a carousel of promoted content material, and beneath that a Continue Watching section for things you didn’t finish. Unfortunately, you may’t remove content from that list (a problem that other streaming services, corresponding to Netflix and HBO Max, have faced and fixed).
Then, you have received a row of more promoted items (Peacock Picks) after which a “just added” part to remind you that Peacock isn’t a static collection. Below that, you’ve got got more and more rows of thematically grouped content. At the very bottom, as when you’ve run out of content material, there is a Coming Quickly row the place you may preview what’s up next.
Channels
One of the distinctive parts of Peacock is its Channels part, which apes traditional cable with a series of linear and typically live sets of networks and picked up content. While you start out with NBC News Now, a channel for MSNBC’s daily content material and NBC Sports, plenty of the other content material is collections of beforehand aired programming (together with Beneath Deck, In It To Win It and Todd Chrisley-based mostly content), providing you with one other way to “browse” the Peacock library. The live news is much like what Paramount Plus offers you with CBS News and the rest feels like a sometimes-higher model of the content you get on Pluto TV.
Frustratingly, I’ve found that the Channels section could be difficult to click around and navigate on even among the best streaming devices (together with the Apple TV 4K). Attempting to navigate from live content to the grid-based guide would not always go too well.
The SNL Channel, Seth Meyers and The Office Channel don’t show full episodes, however reasonably clips and sketches from varied seasons. For example, as soon as after I was watching the SNL Channel, it went from an ’80s-period Eddie Murphy sketch to 1 with Adam Driver in a Del Taco audition. A few minutes later, it was showing Alec Baldwin’s Schwetty Balls sketch.
By not airing full episodes of SNL, Peacock presents a very good way to keep away from these late-in-the-show duds. But I wish the sketches have been organized, rather than just being aired randomly.
At the moment, these “live” channels don’t help pausing, fast-forward, or rewind, but Comcast is planning to add these options, as well as playlists and skipping ahead or back between shows in a channel.
There’s a seemingly ever-rising depth to the films library inside of Peacock. Opening the app proper now, I can see plenty of films I love and would watch, including Snowpiercer, Winter’s Bone (starring Jennifer Lawrence), The Replacements (starring Keanu Reeves), the trendy action classic Bad Boys II, Good Will Hunting, Goodfellas and Lost In Translation.
Peacock also knows there’s money in collections of movies. So it’s acquired the Harry Potter films and The Matrix motion pictures (save for Resurrections). It’s also got a number of the Scream motion pictures, as well because the Fifty Shades and Karate Kid films, which are odd to see side by side.