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Grand National live stream 2024: how to watch Aintree racing online and from anywhere

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Having been run for almost 200 years, the Grand National remains the UK’s most famous and well-watched spectacle on the horse racing calendar. And, in this year’s 176th running, history could well be made as Irish thoroughbred Corach Rambler pursues a lesser spotted second consecutive victory. Here’s how to watch 2024 Grand National live streams online for FREE – and from anywhere.

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As the Derek Fox-ridden Corach Rambler took the lead over the final fence of the 2023 race last year, nobody else in the field was ever going to stop the gelding as it powered on to the finishing post.

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How to watch Masters 2024: live stream Augusta golf online from anywhere

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The 88th Masters Tournament gets underway at Augusta National on Thursday as Jon Rahm aims to successfully defend his title. You can live stream all fours rounds of the 2024 Masters FREE on 9Now in Australia. The tournament is CBS and ESPN in the States, and Sky Sports in the UK. Use a VPN watch your local stream from anywhere.

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It’s been the Scottie Scheffler show lately, with the 2022 Masters champion securing seven top-10 finishes including back-to-back wins in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship. Top of the world rankings by some distance, the American is the form player and is seen as an overwhelming favorite in Georgia. 

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Galaxy AI: Break language barriers with One UI 6.1 Live Translate and Interpreter

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With the Galaxy S24, Samsung introduced Galaxy AI, a suite of AI-powered features useful in everyday tasks. Some of its features allow you to converse freely with people who don’t speak your language. It is handy when traveling outside your country or having international meetings.

This article will explain how you can use Galaxy AI’s Interpreter and Live Translate features to break language barriers and communicate without major issues.

How to use Interpreter and Live Translate on Galaxy phones

You can watch our in-depth video below to see how the Interpreter Mode and Live Translate features work on Galaxy phones running One UI 6.1.

However, not all languages are supported in these modes. Supported languages include Chinese, English (India, US, UK), French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Mexico, Spain, US), Thai, and Vietnamese.

Use Interpreter mode when talking to someone face-to-face who doesn’t understand your language

When you’re talking to someone face to face, and the other person doesn’t understand your language, you should use the Interpreter Mode on your Galaxy device. Here is how you can use it:

1. Swipe down from the top of the screen on your Galaxy phone. Now, swipe down again to reveal the full Quick Panel screen.

2. Now, find the Interpreter Mode toggle and click on it.

3. The Interpreter Mode will open in full-screen mode. Select your language by tapping the language drop-down menu beside the microphone icon. Now, select the other person’s language by tapping the drop-down menu beside the microphone icon at the top. You can tap the button on the left side of the three-dot menu at the top of the screen to make the phone’s UI face the other person.

4. You can now start talking with the other person, and the voices will be transcribed and translated in real time. You can view the recorded and translated text on the phone’s screen.

This is great when you travel to a different country or city where people don’t speak your language.

Use Live Translate during voice calls

You can use the Live Translate feature to talk on a voice call to someone who doesn’t speak your language. To use it, follow the steps listed below.

1. Open the Phone app on your Galaxy device. Tap the three-dot menu on the top-right part of the screen.

2. Click on Live Translate and turn on the toggle.

3. Scroll down, tap on Language in the Me section, and select your language. In this section, you must choose the language that best suits your preferences. In the Voice section, you can choose the voice option and the speed of the speech using the Speech Rate slider. You can enable the Mute My Voice option if you want the other person to hear your translated voice only.

4. Now, scroll down further. In the Other Person section, select the language of the other person. In the Voice section, you can choose the voice option and the speed of the speech using the Speech Rate slider. You can enable the Mute Other Person’s Voice option if you only want to hear the other person’s voice translated into your language.

5. You can even find the option to select a language for each person in your contact list.

Once you are done, you can make or receive calls from people who don’t speak your language. You can see live-translated text on your phone’s screen during the call.

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How to watch Paris–Roubaix 2024: live stream men’s cycling online

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Bring on the mud, the tears and, best of all, the cobblestones. Nicknamed the ‘Hell of the North’, the Paris–Roubaix is the third Monument of the year and, for many, the greatest cycling race on the calendar. Here’s where to watch 2024 Paris–Roubaix live streams online for free – from anywhere.

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Whether you prefer to call them cobblestones, pavé or setts, there are 29 sections of them on the 2024 Paris–Roubaix, covering 55.7km of the 259.5km route. Not only do they hurt like hell to ride over, but they cause pandemonium too, perforating tyres, rattling frames and joints alike, and defying tread come rain or shine.

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How to watch WrestleMania XL 2024: live stream The Rock, Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns from anywhere

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The biggest weekend in wrestling has been amped up to 11, as The Rock himself is returning to the squared circle for the first time in eight years. The Most Electrifying Man in All of Entertainment is joining forces with The Head of the Table for a Saturday night tag team match that will shape Roman Reigns’ Undisputed WWE Universal Championship showdown with Cody Rhodes on Sunday. Here’s where to watch WrestleMania XL live streams where you are.

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That means Reigns and Rhodes are essentially headlining both nights at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia and if, as speculated, this is the end for the long-serving champion, WWE are leaving nothing to chance. 

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How Uber and the gig economy changed the way we live and work

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Gig work predates the internet. Besides traditional forms of self-employment, like plumbing, offers for ad-hoc services have long been found in the Yellow Pages and newspaper classified ads, and later Craigslist and Backpage which supplanted them. Low-cost broadband internet allowed for the proliferation of computer-based gig platforms like Mechanical Turk, Fiverr and Elance, which offered just about anyone some extra pocket change. But once smartphones took off, everywhere could be an office, and everything could be a gig — and thus the gig economy was born.

Maybe it was a confluence of technological advancement and broad financial anxiety from the 2008 recession, but prospects were bad, people needed money and many had no freedom to be picky about how. This was the same era in which the phrase “the sharing economy” proliferated — at once sold as an antidote to overconsumption, but that freedom from ownership belied the more worrying commoditization of any skill or asset. Of all the companies to take advantage of this climate, none went further or have held on harder than Uber.

Uber became infamous for railroading its way into new markets without getting approval from regulators. It cemented its reputation as a corporate ne’er-do-well through a byzantine scandal to avoid regulatory scrutiny, several smaller ones over user privacy and minimally-beneficial surcharges as well as, in its infancy, an internal reputation for sexual harassment and discrimination. Early on, the company used its deep reserves of venture capital to subsidize its own rides, eating away at the traditional cab industry in a given market, only to eventually increase prices and try to minimize driver pay once it reached a dominant position. Those same reserves were spent aggressively recruiting drivers with signup bonuses and convincing them they could be their own boss.

Self-employment has a whiff of something liberatory, but Uber effectively turned a traditionally employee-based industry into one that was contractor-based. This meant that one of the first casualties of the ride-sharing boom were taxi medallions. For decades, cab drivers in many locales effectively saw these licenses as retirement plans, as they’d be able to sell them on to newcomers when it was time to hang up their flat cap. But in large part due to the influx of ride-sharing services, the value of medallions has plummeted over the last decade or so — in New York, for instance, the value of a medallion dropped from around $1 million in 2014 to $100,000 in 2021. That’s in tandem with a drop in earnings, leaving many struggling to pay off enormous loans they took out to buy a medallion.

Some jurisdictions have sought to offset that collapse in medallion value. Quebec pledged $250 million CAD in 2018 to compensate cab drivers. Other regulators, particularly in Australia, applied a per-ride fee to ride-sharing services as part of efforts to replace taxi licenses and compensate medallion holders. In each of those cases, taxpayers and riders, not rideshare companies, bore the brunt of the impact on medallion holders.

At first it was just cab drivers that were hurting, but over the years, compensation for this new class of non-employee app drivers dried up too. In 2017, Uber paid $20 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that it used false promises about potential earnings to entice drivers to join its platform. Late last year, Uber and Lyft agreed to pay $328 million to New York drivers after the state conducted a wage theft investigation. The settlement also guaranteed a minimum hourly rate for drivers outside of New York City, where drivers were already subject to minimum rates under Taxi & Limousine Commission rules.

Many rideshare drivers have also sought recognition as employees rather than contractors, so they can have a consistent hourly wage, overtime pay and benefits — efforts that the likes of Uber and rival Lyft have been fighting against. In January, the Department of Labor issued a final rule that aims to make it more difficult for gig economy companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees. The EU is also weighing a provisional deal to reclassify millions of app workers as employees.

Of course, the partial erosion of an entire industry’s labor market wasn’t always the end goal. At one point, Uber wanted to zero out labor costs by getting rid of drivers entirely. It planned to do so by rolling out a fleet of self-driving vehicles and flying taxis.

“The reason Uber could be expensive is because you’re not just paying for the car — you’re paying for the other dude in the car,” former CEO Travis Kalanick said in 2014, a day after Uber suggested drivers could make $90,000 per year on the platform. “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away.”

Uber’s grand automation plans didn’t work out as intended, however. The company, under current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, sold its self-driving car and flying taxi units in late 2020.

Uber’s success had second-order effects too: despite a business model best described as “set money on fire until (fingers crossed!) a monopoly is established” a whole slew of startups were born, taking their cues from Uber or explicitly pitching themselves as “Uber for X.” Sure, you might find a place to stay on Airbnb or Vrbo that’s nicer and less expensive than a hotel room. But studies have shown that such companies have harmed the affordability and availability of housing in some markets, as many landlords and real-estate developers opt for more profitable short-term rentals instead of offering units for long-term rentals or sale. Airbnb has faced plenty of other issues over the years, from a string of lawsuits to a mass shooting at a rental home.

Increasingly, this is becoming the blueprint. Goods and services are exchanged by third parties, facilitated by a semi-automated platform rather than a human being. The platform’s algorithm creates the thinnest veneer between choice and control for the workers who perform identical labor to the industry that platform came to replace, but that veneer allows the platform to avoid traditionally pesky things like legal liability and labor laws. Meanwhile, customers with fewer alternative options find themselves held captive by these once-cheap platforms that are now coming to collect their dues. Dazzled by the promise of innovation, regulators rolled over or signed a deal with the devil. It’s everyone else who’s paying the cost.

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To celebrate Engadget’s 20th anniversary, we’re taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.

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The best live TV streaming services to cut cable in 2024

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The major players in live TV streaming are YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, FuboTV, Sling and DirecTV Stream, with Philo rounding things out as a good budget option. Each one purports to replicate cable with vast channel offerings, local news, sports and linear programming — and most services promise to be cheaper than cable, too. That’s true in some cases, but depending on which and how many add-ons and packages you get in addition to the base service, it can also end up being far more expensive than basic cable. To help you get the most bang for your buck, we break down just what live TV services offer and suggest the best ones for different viewers.

What to look for in a live TV streaming service

How to stream live TV

Streaming live TV is a lot like using Netflix. You get access through apps on your phone, tablet, smart TV or streaming device and the signal arrives over the internet. A faster and more stable connection tends to give you a better experience. Most live TV apps require you to sign up and pay via a web browser. After that, you can activate the app on your device.

Price

When I started my cord-cutting research, I was struck by the price difference between live TV and a standard streaming app like Netflix or Peacock. Where the latter cost between $5 and $20 per month, many live TV services hit the $75 mark and can go higher than $200 with additional perks, channel packages and premium extras. The higher starting price is mostly due to the cost of providing multiple networks – particularly sports and local stations. And, in the past year or so, every service except Philo and Sling has raised base plan prices.

Local channels

Only two of the services we tried don’t include full local channel coverage for subscribers and one of those makes no effort at carrying sports. That would be Philo and, as you might guess, it’s the cheapest. The next most affordable option, Sling, only carries three local stations, and only in larger markets, but it still manages to include some of the top sports channels.

When you sign up with any provider that handles local TV, you’ll enter your zip code, ensuring you get your area’s broadcast affiliates for ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. Of course, you can also get those stations for free. Nearly all modern television sets support a radio frequency (RF) connection, also known as the coaxial port, which means if you buy an HD antenna, you’ll receive locally broadcast stations like ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. And since the signal is digital, reception is much improved over the staticky rabbit-ears era.

Sports

One reality that spun my head was the sheer number and iterations of sports networks in existence. Trying to figure out which network will carry the match-up you want to see can be tricky. Google makes it a little easier for sports fans by listing out upcoming games (just swap in NFL, MLB, NHL and so on in the search bar). When you click an event, the “TV & streaming” button will tell you which network is covering it.

That just leaves figuring out if your chosen service carries that regional sports network. Unfortunately, even with add-ons and extra packages, some providers simply don’t have certain channel lineups. It would take a lawyer to understand the ins and outs of streaming rights negotiations, and networks leave and return to live TV carriers all the time. That said, most major sporting events in the US are covered by ESPN, Fox Sports, TNT, USA and local affiliates.

It’s also worth noting that traditional streaming services have started adding live sports to their lineups. Peacock carries live Premier League matches and Sunday Night Football. Max now airs select, regular season games from the NHL, MLB, NCAA and NBA with a $10-per-month add-on. You can watch MLS games with an add-on through the Apple TV app, and Apple TV+ includes some MLB games. And finally, if you subscribe to Paramount Plus, you can see many of the matches you’d see on CBS Sports. While these options won’t cover as much ground as live TV streamers, they could scratch a sports itch without too much added cost.

A TV displaying the logos for Philo, Sling, Hulu, DirecTV stream, fuboTV, and YouTube TV apps. A TV displaying the logos for Philo, Sling, Hulu, DirecTV stream, fuboTV, and YouTube TV apps.

Amy Skorheim / Engadget

Traditional cable networks

Dozens of linear programming networks were once only available with cable TV, like Bravo, BET, Food Network, HGTV, CNN, Lifetime, SYFY and MTV. If you only subscribe to, say, Netflix or Apple TV+, you won’t have access to those. But as with sports, standard streamers are starting to incorporate this content into their offerings. After the Warner Bros. merger, Max incorporated some content from HGTV, Discovery and TLC. Peacock has Bravo and Hallmark shows, and Paramount+ has material from Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central.

Other channels like AMC+ have stand-alone apps. The Discovery+ app gives you 15 channels add-free for $9 per month. And a service called Frndly TV costs a mere $7 per month and streams A&E, Lifetime, Game Show Network, Vice and about 35 others. Of course, most live TV streaming options will deliver more sizable lists of cable networks, but just note that you may already be paying for some of them — and if all you need is a certain channel, you could get it cheaper by subscribing directly.

How to stream live TV for free

We also tested a few apps that offer free ad-supported TV (FAST) including Freevee, Tubi, PlutoTV and Sling Freestream. They let you drop in and watch a more limited selection of live networks at zero cost. Most don’t even require an email address, let alone a credit card. And if you have a Roku device, an Amazon Fire TV Stick or a Samsung TV, you already have access to hundreds of live channels via the Roku Channel, the live tab in Fire TV or through the Samsung TV Plus app.

Digital video recordings (DVR)

Every option we’ve included offers cloud DVR storage, so you don’t need a separate physical device like you often do with traditional cable. You’ll either get unlimited storage for recordings that expires after nine months or a year, or you’ll get a set number of hours (between 50 and 1,000) that you can keep indefinitely. Typically, all you need to do is designate what you want to record and the DVR component will do all the hard work of saving subsequent episodes for you to watch later.

Aside from being able to watch whenever it’s most convenient, you can also fast-forward through commercials in recorded content. In contrast, you can’t skip them on live TV or video-on-demand (VOD).

Most live TV subscriptions include access to a selection of VOD content including movies and shows that are currently airing on your subscribed networks. This typically doesn’t cover live events, local shows and news programming. But it does let you watch specific episodes of ongoing shows like Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives or BET’s Sistas. Just search the on-demand library for the program, pick an episode and hit play.

Tiers, packages and add-ons

Comparing price-to-offering ratios is a task for a spreadsheet. I… made three. The base plans range from $25 to $80 per month. From there, you can add packages, which are usually groups of live TV channels bundled by themes like news, sports, entertainment or international content. Premium VOD extras like Max, AMC+ and Starz are also available. Add-ons cost an extra $5 to $20 each per month and simply show up in the guide where you find the rest of your live TV. This is where streaming can quickly get expensive, pushing an $80 subscription to $200 monthly, depending on what you choose.

How we tested

When I begin testing for a guide, I research the most popular and well-reviewed players in the category and narrow down which are worth trying. For the paid plans, just six services dominate so I tried them all. There are considerably more free live TV contenders so I tested the four most popular. After getting accounts set up using my laptop, I downloaded the apps on a Samsung smart TV running the latest version of Tizen OS. I counted the local stations and regional sports coverage, and noted how many of last year’s top cable networks were available. I then weighed the prices, base packages and available add-ons.

I then looked at how the programming was organized in each app’s UI and judged how easy everything was to navigate, from the top navigation to the settings. To test the search function, I searched for the same few TV shows on BET, Food Network, HGTV and Comedy Central, since all six providers carry those channels. I noted how helpful the searches were and how quickly they got me to season 6, episode 13 of Home Town.

I used DVR to record entire series and single movies and watched VOD shows, making sure to test the pause and scan functions. On each service with sports, I searched for the same four upcoming NHL, NBA, MLS and NCAA basketball matches and used the record option to save the games and play them back a day or two later. Finally, I noted any extra perks or irritating quirks.

Here’s the full list of everything we tried:

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YouTube TV

Base plan: $73/mo. | Local channels: Yes | DVR limits: Unlimited, 9 mo. expiration | Profiles per account: 6 | Simultaneous at-home streams: 3 | Picture in picture mode: Yes  

Google’s option makes a strong case for delivering the best streaming service for live TV. Compared to our top pick for sports, YouTube TV covers major and minor teams, regional games and national matchups almost as well. It gives you clear navigation, a great search function, unlimited DVR and broad network coverage. It’s not quite as affordable as it once was, as YouTube recently raised the price to $73 per month – and it’s even more financially precarious if you’re not great at resisting temptation.

Upon signup, you’re presented with nearly 50 different add-ons, including 4K resolution, premium channels and themed packages. Even if you fight the urge to roll Max, Shudder and AcornTV into the mix at signup, the enticement remains as it’s dangerously easy to add more to your subscription. If you search for a program on a network you don’t have, you’re prompted to add it. And of course, you can also rent or buy movies that aren’t currently showing on any channels, just like you can via YouTube. While it’s convenient to be able to order up anything you might want on a whim, I imagine this pushes many users’ bills far above Google’s listed $73 per month.

Still, it’s nice to have all your entertainment in one place. And if you only want the add-ons, you can actually subscribe to most of the standalone networks without paying for the base plan. Either way, you get a familiar user experience, with navigation you’ll recognize if you’ve spent any time on regular ol’ YouTube. Unsurprisingly, Google’s search function was the best of the bunch, finding the shows and games I searched for quickly and giving me clear choices for how to watch and record.

At signup, you’ll also pick the shows, networks and teams you like, which are added to your library. YouTube TV then automatically records them. You get unlimited cloud DVR space (though recordings expire after nine months) and it’s dead simple to add programming to your library. Like a real cable experience, YouTube TV autoplays your last-watched program upon startup by default, but it was the only service that allowed me to turn that feature off by heading to the settings.

Searching for and recording an upcoming game was easy. Once the game was recorded, I had to hunt a little to find it in my library (turns out single games are listed under the Events heading, not Sports). But after that, playback was simple and included a fascinating extra feature: You can either play a recorded game from the beginning or hit Watch Key Plays. The latter gives you between 12 and 20 highlight snippets, each about 10 seconds long. It focuses on the most impressive shots in an NBA bout and includes every goal in an MLS matchup. The feature was available for NCAA basketball and in-season major American leagues (hockey, soccer and basketball at the time of testing). Foreign and more minor games didn’t have the feature.

Sports fans will also appreciate the new multiview feature that YouTube TV added last year that lets you pick up to four sports, news and weather channels from a select list and view them all at the same time on your screen. If you find yourself constantly flipping back and forth between games, this could save you some hassle.

YouTube TV also gives you the most in-app settings. You can add parental controls to a profile or pull up a stats menu that shows your buffer health and connection speeds. You can lower playback resolution for slow connections and even send feedback to YouTube. It was also the best at integrating VOD and live programming. For example, if you search for a show that happens to be playing live, a red badge in the corner of the show’s image lets you know it’s on right now. Other services didn’t display this info as clearly.

Pros

  • Intuitive and smooth interface
  • Accurate search functions
  • Cool multiview feature
  • Good coverage of sports, news and linear programming networks
Cons

  • Very easy to overspend on extras
  • The price keeps going up

$73 at YouTube TV

Hulu

Base plan: $77/mo | Local channels: Yes | DVR limits: Unlimited, 9-month expiration | Profiles per account: 6 | Simultaneous at-home streams: 2 | Picture in picture mode: No

After YouTube TV went up to $73 per month, Hulu + Live TV shot to $77. But if you already or plan to subscribe to the regular Hulu app and/or Disney+, Hulu’s live component still makes better financial sense. It gives you live TV streaming, plus all the content from Hulu, ESPN+ and Disney+, much of which you can’t get elsewhere. Note that $77 gets you the content with ads — for ad-free Disney+ and Hulu components, it’s $90 monthly.

Hulu + Live TV carries your local affiliates and most of the top cable channels. For sports, you get all available ESPN iterations plus FS1, FS2, TBS, USA, TNT, NBC Golf and the NFL Network. You can also add on premium VOD channels like Max and Showtime, and it’s the only provider that includes Disney+ at no extra cost.

Navigation on Hulu + Live TV isn’t as smooth as most of the other options – it felt like the live component had been shoehorned into the standard Hulu app. But if you’re already comfortable with (and paying for) Hulu, upgrading to the live TV bundle might be worthwhile.

Pros

  • Includes Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ progrmming

$77 at Hulu

DirecTV

Base plan: $80/mo. | Local channels: Yes | DVR limits: Unlimited, 9-month expiration (maximum of 30 episodes per series) | Profiles per account: 1 | Simultaneous at-home streams: Unlimited | Picture in picture mode: No 

gives you the most cable-like experience without a contract — and that’s both a good and a bad thing. Probably the worst part of cable is the binding contract that’s hard to cancel, but like all streaming services, there’s no contract here. The service also gives you the serendipity of flipping from one channel to the “next” (yes, DirecTV Stream numbers its channels) with your remote just like the good old days. But like cable, DirecTV has started to make it more difficult to buy only what you want, instead bundling packages together at a higher price. As of this writing, the lowest-priced tier, the Entertainment Pack, is only available bundled with the Sports Pack, making the cheapest non-promotional pricing $95 per month.

You’ll get nearly all of the most popular cable networks and can add multiple packages and premiums like Showtime, Starz, AMC+ and Discovery+. You can also add Max, just like on YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV, but DirecTV is the only one we tried that also lets you add Peacock. Of course, you can just add those apps separately to your smart TV, but for anyone who wants to approximate the all-in-one convenience of cable, it’s a nice perk.

When you fire up DirecTV Stream, whichever network you last watched automatically starts playing. It continues when you switch over to the guide or other menu pages. If you’re used to the quieter experience of traditional streaming apps (after you turn off autoplay), you might find that a little distracting.

The navigation didn’t feel intuitive, partly because the menu options overlay the currently playing show and because there are so many ways to browse, access and control live, recorded and on-demand content. The search function found the shows and movies I searched for and accurately presented the upcoming games I wanted just from typing in one of the teams.

You can’t add new channels or packages through the app, which might be a relief to anyone worried about succumbing to subscription overload. Everyone else may just find it annoying.

Pros

  • Cable-like experience without a contract
  • Broad channel coverage
Cons

  • Somewhat complicated interface

$95 at DirecTV

Fubo

Base plan: $80/mo. | Local channels: Yes | DVR limits: 1000 hours, no expiration | Profiles per account: 6 | Simultaneous at-home streams: 10 | Picture in picture mode: Yes (Apple TV only)

If you want to stream live sports, you should probably opt for Fubo. When you first sign up, it asks which teams you follow across all kinds of associations. Pick teams from in-season leagues and you’ll quickly have DVR content to watch. That’s because Fubo records every game your chosen teams play as long as it’s aired on a supported channel – and its sports coverage is vast.

I tested out a premium subscription and the guide said there were 118 sports networks to choose from. In addition to the usual suspects from ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS, you can watch motorsports, international leagues, adventure sports and even poker. Add-ons give you NBA TV, NHL Network, NFL Red Zone and MLB Network. And if you need access to all one thousand games the NBA plays in a season, you can add the NBA League Pass to your lineup for $15 per month. Fubo even has its own sports channels.

Yes, the coverage is comprehensive, but Fubo also made finding and recording specific games very easy. Searching for an upcoming game was simple, as was sifting through the ample amount of recorded games I ended up with. I particularly liked FanView for live games, which inserts the video into a smaller window and surrounds that window with continually updating stats plus a clickable list of other games currently airing.

Fubo has made an obvious effort to win at sports, but recently it’s tried to deliver on the live TV experience as well. Based on what I’ve seen so far, it’s certainly made strides. The guide was impressive in the number of ways it let you organize live TV, yet everything felt clean and uncluttered. The Home, Sports, Shows and Movies pages were filled with recommendations and many iterations of categories, with almost all suggestions being live TV.

Where Fubo falls short is in VOD access and DVR playback. It wasn’t the best at finding the shows I searched for, and navigating available VOD content wasn’t as breezy as browsing through live programming. The lack of a pop-up preview window as you fast forward or rewind through recordings makes it tough to gauge where you are in a show. As for price, Fubo ties with DirecTV Stream for the most expensive base package at $80. But if you need all the sports – and want some nicely organized live TV during the few moments when there’s not a game on – this is the way to go.

Pros

  • Best coverage of sports networks
  • Automatically records your favorite teams
  • Informative FanView feature
  • Uncluttered live TV interface
Cons

  • DVR and VOD experience is inferior to the live component

$80 at Fubo

Sling TV

Base plan: Starting at $40/mo | Local channels: ABC, FOX, NBC in limited markets | DVR limits: 50 hours, no expiration | Profiles per account: 4 | Simultaneous at-home streams: 1 or 3 | Picture in picture mode: Yes

To me, the idea of spending time fine-tuning channel choices sounds exhausting. But if you’re the type who wants to get exactly what you want without paying for too much of what you don’t, Sling TV may be your best bet. It breaks its base plan into two packages, Blue and Orange, with different channels on each. Blue, which costs $45 a month, carries a larger number of networks, while Orange seems to have spent its lineup dollars on ESPN and ESPN 2. But at $40 monthly, Sling Orange is the cheapest way to get those two sports outlets.

After picking a plan, you can choose from a stable of add-on packages, with monthly prices ranging from $6 to $11. These include blocks of sports or lifestyle channels, kid-friendly fare, the Discovery+ bundle and a news package. There are 41 individual premium offerings, including Showtime, Starz, MGM+, Shudder and Acorn, which go for between $2 and $10 per month. Sling has pay-per-view movies, too.

As far as local coverage, Sling Blue grants access to ABC, Fox and NBC local affiliates in about 20 of the larger US markets including Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, NYC, Miami and DC. ABC coverage began in March 2023, but unfortunately, that raised the price of Sling Blue in supported markets from $40 to $45. For people not in those areas (or who opt for Orange) Sling is currently running a promotion for a free HD antenna to catch local stations.

Navigation is speedy and the interface is nicely organized, putting an emphasis on what you like to watch, with recommendations that are pretty accurate. The UI also makes the add-ons you’ve chosen easy to find. In my tests, though, the app froze a number of times as I navigated. While most services froze once or twice, it happened enough times with Sling to frustrate me. I had to force quit or back out of the app and start over five or six times during the three weeks of testing. Compared to others, Sling’s DVR allowance is on the stingy side, only giving you 50 hours of recordings, though they won’t expire. You can pay for more DVR storage, but that will increase your overall costs.

I tried not to wander too far off-path during testing, but I feel it’s my duty to inform you that Sling has an Elvis channel, a Bob Ross channel and ALF TV (yes, an entire station devoted to the ‘80s sitcom starring a puppet). There’s also a Dog TV network intended to be played for your dogs when you leave the house, which you can add to Sling or get as a standalone app.

Pros

  • More affordable than most live services
  • Orange plan is the cheapest way to get ESPN
  • Highly customizable packages
Cons

  • Only 50 hours of DVR allowance
  • Local channels only in major metro areas

$40 at Sling TV

Philo

Base plan: $25/mo. | Local channels: No | DVR limits: Unlimited, one year expiration | Profiles per account: 10 | Simultaneous streams: 3 | Picture in picture mode: Yes (browser only)

At just $25 per month, Philo is one of the cheapest ways to get a cordless live TV experience. The biggest caveat is that you won’t find any local stations or sports programming on it. If that’s not an issue, Philo is great, with a clean, streamlined interface and generous DVR limits.

I’m a fan of minimalist design, so I appreciated the way Philo presented its menus and guide. There are just four top navigation headings: Home, Guide, Saved and Search. And instead of the usual guide layout that stretches out or shortens a show’s listing to represent its air time, Philo’s guide features monospaced squares in chronological order with the duration of the program inside the square. Another nice touch is when you navigate to a square, it fills with a live video of the show or movie.

Philo doesn’t limit the amount of programming you can DVR and lets you keep recordings for a full year, which is more than the nine months other providers allow. Like all live TV streamers, Philo won’t let you fast forward VOD programming. If skipping commercials is important to you, I recommend taking advantage of that unlimited DVR policy and hitting “Save” on any show or movie you think you may want to watch, then fast forwarding it on playback (you can do this with all the services we tried).

As far as channels, Philo covers many of the top cable networks, with notable exceptions including Fox News, CNN, ESPN and MSNBC. Anyone looking for great news coverage should look elsewhere anyway, but the lack of a few must-have entertainment outlets like Bravo and Freeform was a little disappointing.

Pros

  • Affordable
  • Minimalist and easy interface
  • Unlimited DVR allowance that lasts for a year
Cons

  • No sports or local access
  • Limited news coverage

$25 at Philo

Best free live TV streaming services

Many standard streaming apps have added live components to their lineups. You’re paying for the service, so it’s not technically “free,” but you can get a dose of live TV without spending more than necessary. Peacock includes some regional NBC stations and Paramount+ subscribers can watch on-air CBS programming. The standard Hulu app has a live ABC news channel and Max now includes a live CNN outlet with its service.

Amazon Prime Video contains a live TV tab, as does the Fire TV interface. And, if you use Roku or Samsung as your smart OS of choice, their built-in, proprietary services include hundreds of live channels at no extra cost. Plus there are free apps from Plex and PBS — even NASA has a free streaming service.

But if you want a full suite of live TV networks, and don’t want to sign up for any paid service, there are a number of free ad-supported TV services that have live TV. Here’s the best of what we tried:

Pluto TV

Pluto TV has the most attractive interface of the free apps. It’s granularly organized, even including a kids and a gaming/anime section among the live categories. Pluto has a number of its own stations such as Pluto Sports, Pluto News, Pluto Movies, and Pluto Pixel which appears to be mostly Let’s Play Minecraft videos. The service’s (also free) on-demand content is shuffled into the live TV menu, so the service feels even bigger than its 250 live channels would otherwise.

A series of mergers and acquisitions put Pluto under the ownership of Paramount, which also owns CBS and MTV brands, so your selection of what to watch includes channels built around Star Trek, MTV and Comedy Central. Regional news options are limited to about a dozen CBS stations, and live news-stream channels include NBC News Live, Bloomberg Television, Cheddar News and others. As for sports, you get CBS Sports HQ, a version of Fox Sports and league-specific programming from the NFL, MLB, and Golf Channels.

Free at Pluto TV

Tubi

You also don’t need to give Tubi any of your information to start watching live content. In many areas, it’ll grant access to your local ABC and Fox station and also includes the news-stream channels that other similar services carry, like NBC News Now, Fox Live Now and ABC News Live. Fox is Tubi’s parent company so you get picks like Fox Sports, Fox Soul and over a dozen regional Fox networks.

The live TV component lives within the Home menu and, from there, the stations are organized by category, making it easy to browse the more than 200 live channels. Navigation is speedy and, along with a good library of on-demand movies, shows and kids’ stuff, Tubi has the most regional news stations of any free service we tried.

Free at Tubi

Amazon

It was first called IMDbTV, but Amazon changed the name of its free streaming option to Freevee to better hint at its price. What’s available is pretty similar to the Live TV menu option you’ll find within the Prime Video app — in fact, the interface on that app is actually better organized, with listings by category. Freevee’s live TV menu is just a long, single list of channels. Prime’s version is speedier, too.

However, Freevee is, true to its name, completely free. You don’t even have to sign in, though you’ll be prompted to do so when you first open the app (just select “Watch as a guest” in the lower corner to bypass that). There are currently around 350 channels with news networks like ABC News Live, Fox Live Now and NBC News Now. Sports showcases include the MLB Channel, NBC Sports and Fubo Sports. Tons of reality, true crime and current and classic TV avenues round out the offerings, including entire stations playing 24/7 rotations of single shows, like Top Gear and Unsolved Mysteries. Do you need a channel that plays the 1960s Addams Family non-stop? If so, you can find it on Freevee.

Free at Amazon

Sling

At first, I thought Freestream was a browser-only service. It was easy enough to find it through the web, but not as easy on my TV. Freestream uses the same app as the paid Sling service, and when you first get the app on your TV you’re prompted to sign in on your phone. I created an account, but then couldn’t find the Freestream option, only the paid ones. Thinking I was doing something wrong, I exited the browser on my phone then backed out of the Sling app on my TV. Only then was I offered the Freestream version, as sort of a “Wait, don’t go” tactic.

Once you’re in, you can access more than 250 channels, though finding them is a little tough as the only categories to pick from are news, sports, movies and kids. There’s an “All” menu choice, which seems to arrange things by popularity, but a little more organization would be nice. Despite that, Freestream does have a fascinating array of channels, including magazine channels from Vogue, GQ and Wired, lots of live movie channels and more than 100 foreign and foreign language news, music, sports and lifestyle networks. And despite the hard-to-navigate interface, I did appreciate the picture-in-picture that pops up when you’re surfing the guide.

Free at Sling

Frequently asked questions

What streaming service is best for live TV?

FuboTV does the best job of letting you organize live channels to help you find just what you want to watch. The interface is uncluttered and when you search for something, the UI clearly tells you whether something is live now or on-demand. YouTube TV also does a good job making that info clear. Both have just over 100 live channels on offer.

What is the most cost effective TV streaming service?

Free TV streaming services like PlutoTV, Plex, Tubi and FreeVee show plenty of ad-supported TV shows and movies without charging you anything. Of course, they won’t have the same channels or content that more premium subscriptions have. Ultimately it depends on what you want to watch and finding the service that can supply that to you in the most streamlined form so you’re not paying for stuff you don’t need.

Is it cheaper to have cable or streaming?

A basic cable package used to be more expensive than the base-level live TV streaming service. But now that nearly all major providers have raised their prices to over $75 per month, that’s no longer the case. And with add-ons and other premiums, you can easily pay over $200 a month for either cable or a live TV streaming service.

What streaming service has all the TV channels?

No service that we tested had every available channel. Hulu + Live TV and DirecTV Stream carry the highest number of the top rated channels, according to Neilsen. Hulu’s service will also get you Disney+ fare, which you can’t get elsewhere. FuboTV has the most sports channels and YouTube TV gives you the widest selection of add-ons.

What is the most popular live TV streaming platform?

YouTube TV has the most paying customers. According to this year’s letter from the company’s CEO, the service has over eight million subscribers. Disney’s 2023 fourth quarter earnings put the Hulu + Live TV viewer count at 4.6 million. Sling reported two million patrons and FuboTV claimed 1.1 million, both in respective year-end reports.

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After the US, Galaxy S23 One UI 6.1 update is live in Europe

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Just a few hours after the Galaxy S23 One UI 6.1 update went live in the USA, Samsung has started rolling it out in Europe. Galaxy S23, S23+, and S23 Ultra owners should be able to download the update in most countries in the region by the end of the day.

The Galaxy S23 FE doesn’t seem to be getting One UI 6.1 yet, but that could change in a few hours as Samsung confirmed that all four Galaxy S23 models will get One UI 6.1 from March 28.

To check if One UI 6.1 is available for your S23 series phone, navigate to its Settings » Software update menu and hit the Download and install button. Thanks to the Galaxy AI features that are included with One UI 6.1, the update is a 3GB download, so you may want to use a Wi-Fi connection or make sure your data plan has sufficient bandwidth.

This story is developing…

Galaxy S23 One UI 6.1 update Europe

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The Galaxy Z Fold 5 and most of Samsung’s best phones and Tabs get Live Translate and more Galaxy AI features

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Samsung is expanding the availability of OneUI 6.1 to multiple devices across the Galaxy ecosystem. With the latest roll out, AI features that had been exclusive to the Galaxy S24 series will find a home on the best Samsung phones and tablets from 2023. 

The full list of supported devices includes the entire Galaxy S23 family, with the mid-range Galaxy S23 FE, the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Z Flip 5, and the Galaxy Tab S9 series.

The update will encompass multiple tools to help people tackle a variety of tasks. Chief among these is Circle to Search. Made in collaboration with Google, this AI tool lets you learn about a subject on screen either by circling what you see. Doing so brings up Google Search results on that subject down at the bottom.

Circle to Search feature

(Image credit: Google/Samsung)

Real-time translation

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Scotland vs Northern Ireland live stream: how to watch 2024 international friendly online

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The Scotland vs Northern Ireland live stream takes place on Tuesday, March 26. It might be a friendly, but these teams haven’t met for nine years. Expect there to be plenty of passion on and off the pitch in this 2024 international derby.

Best of all, you can watch the game for FREE in some places. Read on to get full details of how to catch the action.

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