Ever since Sling TV was first announced in January of 2015, Internet-based television streaming services have been steadily increasing in popularity. While Sling's been expanding its features and content library, we've also seen competitors in the form of YouTube TV, Hulu Live TV, PlayStation Vue, and DirecTV Now.
To go along with all of the current options out there, we now have a new contender in the form of Philo. Philo was founded by Facebook co-founder Andrew McCollum, and based on your TV-watching habits, it might be the best deal in this industry that we've seen yet.
Sports fans need not apply.
If you're someone that's a big sports fan, Philo isn't going to be for you. Unlike all of the other streaming options out there, you won't find channels for watching any of the games – big or small. Instead, Philo's main focus is on just about everything else.
Philo has two main plans that you can choose from, with the $16/month option granting you access to 37 channels and the $20/month one bumping the count up to 46. You can check out the full lineup below, but some of the highlights here include AMC, Animal Planet, BBC America, Comedy Central, Discovery, Food Network, HGTV, Nick, Sundance TV, History, TCL, and plenty more. If you upgrade to the 46 channel package, you'll get access to the likes of Cooking Channel, Discovery Family, Logo, and a few others.
No matter which plan you choose, you can stream in HD quality on up to three different devices at once and have access to a cloud DVR and on-demand titles. There's currently support for Roku, iOS, Android via the Chrome browser, and streaming on your desktop. A proper Android app will be coming soon, as will additional channels.
I've been using Philo for a few hours now, and I'm already impressed. For someone that doesn't care about sports, only paying $16/month for this variety of channels with support for DVR and on-demand shows is fantastic. Sling TV was previously the cheapest option out there, but trying to match Philo's offerings with it would cost you around $30 to $35/month.
Philo's still in its early days and is going up against a lot of stiff competition, but at least in my eyes, the service is already positioned to do exceedingly well.
