CBS All Access - 30 Day Challenge

[Overmind One]

Okay, I did this once when Star Trek Discovery (STD) premiered, but was so traumatized by the show that I canceled within hours of joining. Hundreds of thousands....maybe millions, did the same. The jarring disappointment of the show was unexpected from the standpoint of a Star Trek fan and also the experience of thinking about having to pay to see Star Trek for the first time ever. No way was I going to pay for Discovery! But that is a different topic.

I want to give CBS All Access a fair shake and I decided to take advantage of their 30-day free trial on commercial-free service.

What have I got to lose? That's what I told myself. There is now an entire season of Discovery on there, and all of the previous Star Trek shows are on there too which I found refreshing. All are the good remastered ones where available. There are the Short Treks on there, and there are a few other classics and near classics they have on there, right down to I Love Lucy. There are their newer shows on there too. But that is not what I want to talk about on this thread, I want to give my experience with the service itself. I want to answer these questions with this review thread:

1. Is CBS All Access worth subscribing to?
2. Is the service high quality and consistent?
3. Is there enough content to warrant that $9.99/mo cost for commercial free streaming from this service?

There are other questions I will be throwing at this service during the trial, and I will share them here.

 

[Overmind One]

Okay, right off the bat I have to say that CBS All Access has a very limited selection of stuff. This list is EVERYTHING they have right now. Of course, it isn't showing the individual episodes on the list, but it is showing the individual shows. This is the COMPLETE list:

Looking at it, I don't find it odd that the list is shorter than Amazon and Netflix because this is actually an attempt at a broadcast station trying to transition to streaming online with it's proprietary content and no outside content. And yeah, there are a few things on there I like other than the Star Trek shows. But I can also watch most of this on other online sources and services. Seeing this list shows me just how much CBS All Access NEEDS a "draw". A "flagship show" like Star Trek to anchor it much like the big stores at the ends of malls do. But Star Trek Discovery is not it! Not by a longshot.

Second thing, this collection of media somehow conveys the CBS "culture". Stuff they created and aired, it all sorta defines the values of CBS in a way that is hard to describe, but you notice it as you browse the selections.

 

[Overmind One]

Saturday, 12/15/2018:

I have experienced several service/streaming disconnects (at least 6) in the middle of watching while using the CBS All Access app on my FireTV. I have high speed internet (over 100mbs), and my test streaming services are running fine. I am using Netflix, Amazon Prime and an indie, ComeTV. Netflix bugged out once, but the others kept up continuous service. Using the Retry button on the disconnect screen does not work for me. I had to close the app and restart it. The computer based viewing is a bit better, but it dropped twice.

What am I watching? The Twilight Zone, and I am trying to watch Star Trek Discovery (still hate it).

 

[Overmind One]

Saturday, 12/15/2018

They redid The Odd Couple, Magnum P.I. and Hawaii Five-O? I would never have known this. They aren't that good. And, I watched some classic Brady Bunch. Marcia Marcia Marcia!

I am still not seeing a reason to consider keeping this service at $9.00/month commercial free ($5.99 with commercials). And there really isn't any price I would be willing to pay to watch commercials on a service that costs me money.

 

[Overmind One]

Sunday, 12/16/2018

It's late night/early morning and I am working my graveyard shift. We are allowed to watch stuff on our devices and I have fired up some Star Trek TOS. I will say that CBS's stream of TOS seems clearer and has better sound than the one on Amazon Prime. I think they might be the remastered ones? They are crispy and awesome. It makes me wonder why CBS All Access would air the old Trek along with TNG, Voy, DS9 and Enterprise, and then come up with Discovery which is utterly different and out of place. Sorta like this.



I am unable to watch Star Trek Discovery for longer than about 10 minutes straight. I watched the Short Trek "Calypso", and was not impressed. It wasn't because it was a horrible story, as much as it was supposed to be Star Trek. There is no canon connecting it with anything even in Discovery. And they NEVER explain most of why this guy "Craft" found himself on Discovery which was abandoned. It was awful. Watch it to see. And again, this thread is about the service not the shows, and the stream was solid and the sound was good.

 

[Overmind One]

Monday 12/17/2018

I watched some old Carol Burnett shows today, which was pleasantly nostalgic, and some more Brady Bunch. The streaming quality seems to have improved a little bit without dropping the stream. Maybe their system records the data from previous sessions and adjusts? I don't know, but it is noticeable. Still, at $9.99/mo for commercial free service, I am not seeing a long term relationship with this service. I am still seeing how important Star Trek was/is supposed to be for CBS All Access because of the rest of the content on the channel. If I had to guess, I would say that Star Trek Discovery was supposed to be the MUST HAVE show, and that CBS All Access thought that was going to be able to sell the service on Star Trek alone. I will also say that if they had come up with an actual Star Trek show which was good and worthy of the established fanbase, they might have pulled it off. Or, if they had another premium scifi show like The Expanse. They would even be able to do it with The Orville. But they are stuck with Discovery and Kurtzman who is never going to be able to deliver Star Trek. The rest of the content on there is just not worth paying $9.99/mo for.

 

[Overmind One]

Tuesday 12/18/2018

Watched a little of Limitless (interesting show), and Jerico. Once again, searching through the selections of shows I get a sense of the CBS "culture" by what they are offering. It feels like an older person came up with the show roster and decided what they thought younger people might like to see. Discovery is the freshest thing they have on there, and it does not meet the task. I tried to watch a bit more of it (episode 6), and it was just not happening. I lasted about 10 minutes.

 

[Overmind One]

Thursday 12/20/2018

I completely skipped yesterday watching CBS All Access, choosing to watch some stuff on Amazon Prime instead. Popcorn movie junk, you know. The sort of junk you find on CBS All Access is simply outdated in terms of tone and audience. Gunsmoke? The Odd Couple? Happy Days? I did love those shows, but in 2018? Not really. There are lots of things on this service that fall into the junk category. But the quality is there in terms of the media. The service has stopped dropping suddenly.

 

[Overmind One]

Thursday evening 12/20/2018

I am now trying to watch Discovery all the way through episodes. After all, Star Trek is the anchor for this service. All of the attention and most of the money is being sunk into Star Trek because it is known that there is a massive international audience for it. The problem is that they are using the wrong show. It should be a Star Trek show, but just not this one. It is just too much different, and it takes place at the wrong time in the timeline. They could have easily have gotten away with it if they had made it further into the future past Nemesis.

I made it to Season 1 Episode 10 when they found themselves in their version of the mirror universe. But everything is wrong about it. Instead of the primary mission being to get back to their original universe, they immediately start adapting to it, making uniforms to move within it, and pretty much moving into it without first trying to figure out a way to leave it. And there is a lot of assumption from the writers that the concept of this mirror universe is already known to viewers from TOS. But if you arent aware of it, then the feeling is "what just happened? They are in an alternate universe? It doesn't feel like it. They just say that the signatures of the ships are wrong and stuff like that. Michael Burnham does her Mary Sue thing the whole time.

If this form of Star Trek is what is supposed to be the main reason to subscribe to this service, I am still going to take a pass. But, this is free for now.

 

[Quetesh]

We have HULU plus Live TV and just DVR everything, so this way we get all of CBS stuff that we actually want and skip the shows we don't care about.

 

[Overmind One]

We have HULU plus Live TV and just DVR everything, so this way we get all of CBS stuff that we actually want and skip the shows we don't care about.

Yes, I did a little research on the CBS All Access roster, and it appears that 100% of it is available elsewhere. Perhaps not all in one place, but the shows are all licensed to others for distribution. For instance, all of the Star Trek shows except Discovery are on Amazon Prime and also Netflix. Only Discovery and the Short Treks and a dumb show called After Trek is exclusive to the service. They have less than 20 movies on the entire channel, and one of them is...TANK GIRL!

This is an experiment, and also a personal vetting promise I made to myself before I get back to bashing CBS All Access. I don't ever want to be accused of not giving it a try. I took this same approach with SGU, watching every single episode before lighting them on fire and tossing them in the barrel. So, that means watching Discovery. 30 days, then I will cancel. There is just nothing on the channel which is compelling enough to want to keep it.

 

[Tripler]

Oh you brave soul . Keep lots of tylenol extra strenght close at hand . Drink plenty of fluids . Stop if you get tired, eat if you get hungry .

 

[Overmind One]

Thursday 12/27/2018

Okay, I have gone until today before picking this challenge up again. And the problem that caused me to stop watching has returned. DROPPED CONNECTION. This service drops connections a LOT. I was watching Star Drek: Disappointery Season 1 episode 12, and it first froze then the whole app crashed (FireTV Stick). Fortunately, the app remembers where it dropped and you can try and resume. But twice, I had to restart the episode and fast forward to where I was, only to have it drop again. I am going to switch to my desktop computer and see if there is a difference...

 

[Overmind One]

Well, here we are at January 12 2019, and my 30 day challenge is supposed to end on January 14 (when the trial turns into a subscription). I have decided to end my trial a couple of days early. From Thursday 12/27/2019 till now, I have had no urge to watch anything on CBS All Access. In fact, if it weren't for my calendar reminding me that I have it, I would have forgotten all about it. I used it to watch the entire run of Star Trek Discovery and I have come away from that feeling even worse about the show than when I had only watched a few episodes. But this trial was not just about STD, it was to explore the rest of the service and enjoy the other content. The problem there is just that there isn't much content I could consider as being worth the $9.99 monthly cost. So, I decided to cancel a few moments ago. But when I clicked Cancel Subscription, this window popped up:

Bahahahaha!



It is just so....pathetic! Knowing that this service is failing so badly yet CBS All Access has to spin and conceal and lie to cover that fact up otherwise the process would accelerate. But, I am cancelling anyway. It just is not worth having.