If you miss basic cable (is life really complete without a daily dose of Chopped?) but don’t want to shell out $80-plus every month for the likes of DirecTV Stream or Hulu + Live TV, here’s good news: You can watch over 70 live channels — good ones, familiar ones — for just $28. That makes Philo the most affordable live-TV streaming service you can get, though it does lack three key elements many people want: local channels, news and sports.
But if you want A&E, AMC, Comedy Central, Food Network, History, Nickelodeon and lots more, you can get them here on the cheap. Even more surprising, the service provides unlimited DVR, an extensive catalog of on-demand content and the complete AMC+ library. There’s only one thing I don’t like — but I can live with it. Here’s my Philo review.
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Rick Broida/Yahoo
VERDICT: Philo scratches the basic-cable itch for a surprisingly low price, with over 70 live-streaming channels, unlimited DVR and AMC+ content to boot. But its interface needs work.
- Over 70 basic-cable channels
- AMC+ included at no extra charge
- Large library of on-demand movies and shows
- Unlimited DVR
- Optional totally free service with 100 thematic channels
- No local or sports channels, very little news
- Dated, unattractive channel guide
- No parental controls
Philo: What it costs and what’s included
As noted, a Philo subscription will run you $28 per month (plus any applicable local taxes). That nets you the aforementioned 70+ channels, without limits or restrictions. Philo has just one paid plan; it comes with everything.
That everything now includes AMC+ and the four channels under that service’s umbrella: IFC Films Unlimited, Shudder, Sundance Now and The Walking Dead. That’s a pretty good value, considering a standalone AMC+ subscription would cost you $7 per month. (Philo also offers a handful of add-ons, including MGM+ and Starz.)
For families, the Philo lineup features Animal Planet, Discovery Family, Hallmark Family and four Nickelodeon channels. (Unfortunately, Philo has no parental controls, something to consider if you’re hoping to keep kids away from the likes of horror channel Shudder.)
These are among the 70+ channels included with Philo. While there are a few notable omissions (Disney, FX, SyFy, etc.), you get a lot of basic-cable stalwarts. (Rick Broida/Yahoo)
But to repeat: no news, no sports, no local stations. (Actually, BBC News and Cheddar News are included in Philo’s freebie selection, detailed below, so although you’re not getting any of the major networks, Philo isn’t 100% news-less.) That would be a dealbreaker for some viewers, but it’s worth noting you may be able to tune in local stations by way of an antenna, and there are plenty of ways to stream news for free.
Speaking of free, Philo also offers zero-cost access to around 100 other channels, most of them thematic: AMC Thrillers, The Baywatch Channel, Comedy Dynamics, Nashville, Pickleball TV and so on. It’s not unlike the kind of ad-supported selection you see on free-TV streamer Pluto, but with some notable exclusives in the mix. For example, you can watch shows like Grace and Frankie, Mad Men, Party Down and Nurse Jackie. (In some cases you get all seasons; in others a partial selection.) At this writing, selections from the various movie channels included Boyhood, Limitless and The Cabin in the Woods.
Philo Free Channels even includes DVR, though only 30 days’ worth and only for select titles.
So, yeah, even if you don’t pay for a subscription, Philo is an app worth having on your TV and mobile devices. Just be prepared for an interface that’s a little rough around the edges.
Philo: Channel guide? More like bland-el guide…
I tested two versions of Philo: Google TV and Roku. As I’ve discovered with other streaming services, there are some subtle differences between the two. Alas, in both cases the only way to sign into your account is by manually entering your e-mail address via an onscreen keyboard, which requires your TV remote. I’d love to see Philo add a QR-code and/or web-based sign-in option.
When you scroll down the Home page, the interface cuts off the top and bottom rows. And that’s a problem given how few rows there are to begin with. (Rick Broida/Yahoo)
That’s not the only area that needs work. The Home page (above) is actually pretty good, with large, colorful thumbnails and useful quick-access sections like Keep Watching, Saved and Featured on AMC+. But as you can see, when you scroll your way down, the UI cuts both the top and bottom rows in half, leaving only the middle two fully visible. This is… bonkers. And it doesn’t get better from there.
For starters, the main menu — consisting of Home, Guide, Top, Saved and Search — spans the top of the screen. Pretty much every other streaming service uses a left-side menu, no doubt because it’s easier and more intuitive.
Here, that menu disappears when you scroll down. The only way back to it is by scrolling up again — inconvenient if you’ve made significant southward progress. If you press the back button on your remote, it jumps you to the Home page, where at least the menu is visible again. But! If you’re already on the Home page, no matter how far down you’ve scrolled, pressing the back button takes you out of the app altogether. This jump-back-home “shortcut” works only on the Guide and Top pages.
Speaking of which: Top? Top what? Turns out this is where you access the on-demand content for your channel lineup, all of it presented in a grid with colorful thumbnails for each show or movie. Why Philo designates this “Top,” I have no idea.
Philo’s drab channel guide uses unnecessarily large tiles that limit how much of the guide you can see at one time. (Rick Broida/Yahoo)
Just as confusing, the channel guide consists of a similar grid for everything that’s streaming live, but every tile is just text atop a drab gray (Google TV) or black (Roku). A live-preview snippet appears when your cursor lands on any individual tile, but why not make image thumbnails omnipresent, as on the Top page? The result is a channel guide that looks dull and lifeless. And those oversize tiles limit how much of the guide you can actually see at once. (Verdict: not very much.) Plan on doing a lot of scrolling.
When viewing the guide, there’s an icon in the upper left that says “All channels” — suggesting you could somehow filter the view. Try as I might, I couldn’t navigate to that icon, and therefore couldn’t access any filtering options. As it happens, there aren’t any: Even in the web interface, clicking that icon with my mouse did nothing. The only clue was further down the guide: a similar icon indicated “Free channels,” clearly designating that remaining portion of the guide. But why “All channels” at the top and not “Premium” or “Subscription”? Confusing.
There’s also this oddity: When you choose a program from the channel guide, it automatically starts from the beginning — even if you select “join live” from the show’s Watch Options menu (see below). As a longtime Philo user, I recall that in the past you could hold the OK/select button for a few seconds to jump straight to live, no menu visit required — but that option appears to have disappeared.
Even if you choose “Live Broadcast,” Philo will start you at the beginning of whatever show you select — unless you’ve toggled this feature off in the settings menu. (Rick Broida/Yahoo)
There is, however, a toggle in the main settings menu that dictates whether channel playback starts from the beginning or the current live position. I’m glad I found that, but still irritated about not having more direct, per-situation control.
Philo’s search feature works well enough, though it lacks support for voice input and doesn’t indicate what parameters you can enter. (Actor names? Movie genres?) I tried searching for “Tom Cruise” and got no results, but searching for Top Gun produced the Maverick sequel — so Cruise is in there somewhere.
Look, I get that it costs money to hire a good UX (user experience) team, and I can live with Philo the way it is in exchange for the low price. But most of these interface issues seem like they’d be pretty easy to remedy.
Philo: Should you subscribe?
Much as I’m irked by certain aspects of the interface, Philo is an undeniable bargain. With competitors like Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV charging $83 per month (and up) for a channel selection that’s not a whole lot larger, it’s nice to see an affordable alternative.
Granted, you’ll have to live without sports, local channels and mainstream news networks. But I’m in the group that consumes very little of that kind of content — and I’m guessing I’m not alone. Philo scratches the basic-cable itch in a way that won’t break the bank.
