The 2025 Vergecast Streaming Draft

25:19Okay, please. What's your category? Guys, no, I'm locking on a Hulu. Forget this. We're holding to it. Okay. Hulu in 4K. Hulu and it's in 4K. I think Hulu is kind of underrated these days. There's a lot of good stuff on Hulu. The originals, although I've been watching Paradise, that's very good. Highly recommend. but there's just it's like Hulu is the one I go to where it's just like there's just a million 30 minute sitcoms that I'm going to enjoy yeah it's because it's Fox yeah fundamentally it's Fox right Hulu is the most boring pick nobody's ever like super hyped to open up Hulu and see the new thing but it has the thing that you're going to watch after a long day and you're just like I need to put something on like when the TV auto plays something it should be whatever is on Hulu you're picking catalog yes this is yeah I don't hate it I'm with it.

26:10It's a good one. Neelai, what's next? What do you got? I'm going to put Max in awards. That's my move. Okay. Because you get that HBO. I'm assuming the pit will be up for awards this year. They've got the movies. They've got the catalog of movies. It feels correct to me. It's a little, like, I don't think Max originals have won Oscars yet, but it's like. HBO. Yeah, it's, the line is straight enough that I'll give it to you. We'll allow it. Why Max? Are you sure? Yeah. Is Max going to still be here? Is America still going to be here, David? Like, this is a very nihilistic draft for me. Like, I'm thinking about tomorrow.

26:52I'm not thinking about next year. Okay, fair enough. But Max has the depth of content. It has, it's funny, I have to log into someone else's Max account to get 4K. It's like, I can't put it in 4K because I don't have it in 4K because I'm still grandfathered into my AT &T free Mac subscription, which AT &T knows about because I keep mentioning it on the show and they can't figure out how to stop giving me free Macs either. Perfect, but it's only in 1080p, which is just very weird. You know, I've got a daughter. The Harry Potter movies are on Macs. There's a lot here. We've been watching those together.

27:27They get a little too scary after four for a six-year-old. So we're just going to wait to watch the additional four movies. But we're going to watch those first four over and over again. Love it. Yeah, I mean, like, it's just, it has the catalog, and then it has HBO. So if that White Lotus, Righteous Gemstones moment, that's important to me. I'm not a, like, turn on any garbage TV watcher. I'm a very intentful TV watcher. Do you cancel services? Like, do you, like, watch your show and then bail for a while until you want to come back? I've been trying to cancel Max for, like, five years since he keeps giving it to me free.

27:59I want to cancel more. The challenge is, my wife watches tons and tons of comedy specials, and they're on every service. Right? And so you're just kind of like, well, I canceled the one you want today and then we just like started again. Including recently Hulu, which is deep into comedy all of a sudden. I think they've all figured out this is like a reliable source of cheap content that they can get at a cadence that people will watch. Yeah. And people will always watch. Yep. And then clip it and put it on TikTok. And that's where I live. Which is the other thing that is all over my TikTok all the time is just like stand up.

28:33Like Nate Bargetzi is two thirds of my TikTok at any given moment uh okay i worry i'm gonna run out of awards possibilities here so i'm gonna take uh amazon prime video in awards because otherwise i think there's a decent chance there's just not going to be anything left for me to pick before too long um i think prime is working it's like the the football thing is going very well they way overpaid they're gonna start doing bond stuff people seem to like Reacher, I guess. Sure. That's a show. Matt Bellany from Puck just recently described it to me as Guys With Guns shows, and Amazon's very good at Guys With Guns shows.

29:15So Prime is like, it's like the least interesting, totally mainstream service, but I'll take it. Have you been watching the Lord of the Rings show? No, I have not watched that one. And I have not watched Citadel, which are the ones that Amazon spent all of its money on. Yes. And maybe why they now have a new person in charge. Uh-huh. Yeah. But I did watch a bunch of like, whatever weird stuff Jeremy Clarkson is up to these days, I will always watch on Prime Video. So that works for me. He's like, we've done something irresponsible with a car. He bought a Lamborghini tractor and made like three episodes of a TV show about that.

29:53And I was like, yeah, I'll watch this. This sounds great. You are very much like whatever's on. You're like, that's why you just want the TV to start playing stuff at you. Sometimes. So like my parents used to make fun of me because I loved to take naps. I still do love to take naps, but I always nap with the TV on. It's just it's like I can turn my brain off when I'm halfway listening to a TV show I've seen before. And so there's like background television is a bigger part of my life than I'm proud of. I do a lot of like watching TV while I do other things. And that's where services like Prime Video where it's like a thing I've seen before.

30:29or something I haven't seen but don't really need to look at is very helpful. Can you write while you're listening to music with words? God, no. Absolutely not. I can't do anything creative in that headspace. The language center of my brain does not let me listen to music with lyrics while I'm writing or communicating. And it's the same for, I can't believe you can do it with TV. But I guess you're just like, passed out. No, I can't do any creative act while something like that is on. But it's like if I'm if I'm cooking or cleaning or napping or whatever, like I almost always will have like an episode of The Office on in the background.

31:03It's like it's basically a podcast. Like I listen to TV shows the way some people listen to podcasts. And I also listen to podcasts. This explains a lot of your picks over the years. All right. So just to recap, and then we're going to take a break. Jake so far has picked Netflix in awards and Hulu in 4K. Neelai so far has picked TikTok in cheap and Max in awards. And I have YouTube TV in live and Amazon Prime in awards. We're going to take a really quick break and then we're going to come back, do some more categories. We'll be right back.

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34:34All right, we're back. Round three.

34:40Jake Kastronakis, what do you got? Let's do it. I've been thinking very hard about this. Um, listen, my first two picks, they're pretty mainstream. They're pretty dead ahead. We've got Netflix. We've got Hulu. I've got options here to grab some more big hitters, but I got to get out there a little bit. I got to get a little more interesting. Um, I'm going into the cheap tier. I'm taking Tubi. I'm not paying another penny. I want that. Uh, I'm expanding my catalog of movies. They have some, some great films on there. it sounds terrible you gotta watch ads there's one ad up front and you watch like some Oscar winning movie from the 1970s also there's ads everywhere now like oh no there's ads it's like not a good case against a streaming service anymore right I think like genuinely this is not a problem for most people I mean I listen if they were interrupting the middle of the movie I would complain to the end of the earth that you would never hear the end of me but um it's not bad at all I've watched a handful of movies on it over the past year.

35:44I think, you know, we've seen these free streaming services continue to get more and more promotion. It feels like there is more attention on them than ever. I don't necessarily know that Tubi's in for a big breakout year, but I feel good about it as a cheap pick. Well, so, okay, this is the thing I was waiting until somebody picked Tubi to ask because I've been thinking about this ever since the Super Bowl, right? Tubi had the Super Bowl. Lots of people watched. Was a big hit. Did very well. The stream held up. Like, good job, Tubi. Do you feel like Tubi has held on to any of that right like the hope is you get this big giant spike of interest and then it comes back down but it doesn't come all the way down and it like resets a little higher but i don't feel like even slightly more people seem to be talking about tubi than they were before the super bowl i do think that's a challenge the the way i end up on tubi is that i go to look up where i can watch a certain movie and then i'm told that for whatever reason it is free on tubi or the only place it is available is on tubi but the actually actually i will say like the thing where it is only available on Tubi happens more often than I would expect.

36:46I think there is just this weird catalog of slightly less popular movies. You know, somebody wants Top Gun. That's going to end up on a major streaming service. I hope that's true. I haven't checked. I watched The Long Goodbye, a very famous movie. I think it maybe won an Oscar. Hopefully that's right. You know, this is like a big movie back in the day. It is only available, I think, on Tubi or something like that. And I think like there's a whole collection of films like that that are overlooked by these services that are extremely cutthroat on, you know, is this going to hook my mainstream subscriber base?

37:21And there's just stuff that you cannot find. And since we're looking for stuff that you can stream, I want Tubi. I want to have those options. I think the thing you said about, I just Google it and it clicks me to Tubi is like an underrated, powerful thing in Tubi's favor. And it has been the thing forever. In most cases, you don't even have to log in. You don't have to have an account. You just click the thing and it starts playing the movie. And there are almost no other entertainment experiences outside of like social platforms that work that way anymore. And that's kudos to Tubi for pulling that off.

37:54I am confused how they got the Super Bowl. That still is. Well, they're owned by Fox. And they chose Tubi. Because they wanted to drive Tubi installs. Yeah, because they don't have another streaming service. Yeah, Fox doesn't have an app. Fox has like Fox Nation Live or whatever. Like, you can't drive Americans to that app, right? So it's not a choice that Fox can make. So they're like, where can we stream the Super Bowl? It wasn't the Fox Sports app, which is like a cable login. It's our big mainstream fast competitor. Yeah. And I think they got all those logins that way. That works. It was very smart of them.

38:30Yeah. That Rupert Murdoch, Wiley. He knows what he's doing, yeah. Yeah. Fox now is apparently working on some other big streaming service that I'm sure is going to go super great for them. I think it's a good pick. I'm in favor. I had to be very high on my list here. Neal, what's next for you? What do you got? I've been making a lot of decisions here while you guys were talking. I've been working my board really hard. It's Motor Trend TV. I'm going back and forth between two of them. And I think what I've decided is that there's no chance that either of you will pick the thing that I'm worried about, so I'm going to go another way.

39:10And then when I make that pick, I reveal what it was. Does that work for you? Okay. Okay, so for 4K, I'm picking Disney+. Oh. That's what I was going to do next. Yeah, this is me working the board. Yeah. I'm a little surprised it lasted this long. Yeah, it's tough. If you have children, it's a requirement. 4K, we got to talk about the 4K category as it exists next year. Um, but it's in 4k. You get all the Disney movies in 4k. So it slots in here. Well, uh, bluey, obviously very important, but frozen to shockingly important in my household. Same. Like very important. Um, I don't know how to explain to Max that one song is basically just a Peter Cetera song from the eighties, but it is.

39:55A song is called lost in the woods and it's a banger. I'm like, you know, there's this band called Chicago and she's like, I don't care about this. and then I try to make everybody listen to Chicago which I don't even like listening to but I just have to make the point and everyone's like what is happening in this house so that's very important to us as just a weekend cycle that we go through and then you get all the Marvel stuff you get Andor it's all there for you Disney Plus the only other one I would say should have been a number one pick this is a shocking slide because you can make a good argument for number one yeah I agree I think it is that is going to be the thing I picked if you didn't so I buy it I will say I have one Bob Iger I know you're listening I have one complaint I would like to make about Disney Plus which is they just launched like 24 7 Simpsons stream it's basically a fast channel but it's all Simpsons very good idea except for some reason my two year old now every time I open the Disney Plus app it is right at like his pointing level and he runs over to it and goes Simpsons and it turns out that if you put on Simpsons, someone will say the word hell within six seconds.

41:05And so I can't watch it, but now every single morning he just runs over and he just goes, Simpsons. And I don't know how to tell him that this cartoon is illegal for him. We had the parental controls and ours messed up. We, I had them messed up. And for some reason I had set it so that unrated TV shows would show up on Max's profile. And so she opened it, and the first thing in front of her face was the UFC. And I was like, this isn't right. This doesn't go next to Moana. Oh, boy. Like, no, thank you. And you got to go dig through it. There's some real messy Disney brand stuff happening because the parental controls are so confusing.

41:48The gambling they've put next to Frozen is out of control. It's true. ESPN Bet is right there. will she pull it off this time? Like, you say that, but we're, like, rapidly veering towards that. And especially now that all the stuff is in there, right? Like, Hulu is now totally integrated and ESPN is totally integrated and all of the stuff is now just in Disney+. There's some pretty, like, racy stuff that shows up at the top of the page while I'm looking to start Frozen 2 for the 85th time. It's a little weird. Yeah. It's just a weird brand. And this is why they didn't do it. Right. This is why they had the other, this is why they had Hulu.

42:27And then they weren't getting, this is the same as why you go to Tubi. They're like, we'll just shove it on Disney+. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. But I feel confident with, especially as a third pick in the 4K category. It's a home run. It's a good pick. I'm winning so far. I just want to be very clear about this. Yeah, we're all really proud of you, Tee La.

42:47As much as I don't want to have two YouTube things, I feel like at this point, I have to pick YouTube Man. it is by a mile the most watched streaming service it is like it has won the internet yep I now have I now have Amazon Prime YouTube TV and YouTube which makes me like the least interesting American consumer of all time you know what that gets you though not only does that get you Mr. Beast's channel it gets you Amazon's Mr. Beast reality show that's true I get Mr. Beast and Beast games wait what category are you in I'm trying to decide um I think I'm going to put it in 4K because So you're paying for premium?

43:29On principle, I'm paying for premium. Okay. I seriously believe that no ads on YouTube is the best money I pay for entertainment every month. Wait, is premium 4K on TVs? Is that a thing on YouTube? Am I just making that up? It's not all, not everything is 4K but it is, you do get lots of 4K stuff. And you don't if you have ads? That I don't know. I'm truly just paying for no ads. I am happy. But why does that go in the 4K content? Because I get 4K content. I could put it in cheap if I was doing ads, is my point. Right. But I'm not doing that. I'm saying you might have to put this in wildcard. But I get 4K content.

44:08Because you're not buying it for 4K. Oh, interesting. Well, no, but it doesn't. I get 4K. There is 4K. We got to rethink this whole category. Marquez Brownlee is out here doing it in like 16K. I could have made that a category. So we're going to rename this Crispy? Yeah. I mean, yeah, we can do that. You want to do that? All right. I'm allowing it this year. Okay. And I think the 4K category is under a lot of pressure. Okay. That's fair. Maybe that is the one that needs a change. Because you're right that access to 4K content is increasingly just everywhere. No, it's gated. It's you have to pay for it everywhere.

44:46Right. I don't know. Send us your notes. But Jake picked Hulu and you just get it on Hulu. So we'll allow it this year, but fair. This is under reconsideration for 2026. And I would like to hear the feedback about it. Yeah, agreed. All right, so I'm picking YouTube main, or YouTube main, YouTube premium. I feel good about it. Jake, you're up. What do you got? All right, guys, I have a real problem here, which is at this point, David's got YouTube. Eli's got TikTok. I don't really have a social presence here. So I'm going to throw something out there. I need you to tell me if this fits if I'm combining too many things.

45:22The requirement for the live category is there needs to be some sort of live content. I don't need that live content to be any good. I just need this service. That's correct. It just needs to be live. Listen, hit me up with Instagram. Reels is a perfectly fine knockoff. And there's some live streams in there. I don't know what they're doing. They're selling some stuff. Whatever. I will watch all your TikToks two weeks later. And you know what? You're going with Instagram Live for your live? Yeah. Okay. Okay, so this is, Neelai makes the correct point. You can't have Instagram as a whole. Because Instagram as a whole is not a streaming service.

45:55Are reels and live one thing? No, which is your problem. You can have reels or you can have live, but you can't have both. You know what, guys? Because in classic Instagram fashion, they've made them two different products where there are one product on TikTok. They are two different features. Why are they two different features? Because YouTube hates you. Here's the thing. I'm locking it in. Instagram live. Wow. Listen, there's a big year ahead for Instagram. TikTok's getting banned. Instagram's gonna have to figure their product out. It's gonna be one thing. And this is a long play. It's just Jake and the decaying corpse of versus.

46:30Someone is gonna have a rock and roll Instagram live by the end of 2025. This is gonna pay off. It's gonna be more interesting than if I had chosen Sling Blue. So I feel good about this. So Jake, the thing that might work for you here is that you now have to actively root for TikTok to be banned. That is the main thing you need for this pic to pay off. Because now there's all this reporting and rumors out there about Instagram is once again trying to capitalize on TikTok going away and maybe they're going to do a separate app again. And there are people out there who are like, IGTV was a good idea, we just, you know, bad timing.

47:08They're finally making an iPad app. Maybe. It could happen. It really, it could happen. You have to know, like, Instagram's response to TikTok being banned his iPad app. Yeah. What's going on over there, guys? They can pull this off. They can get there. What are we doing? They're going to buy Meerkat or something. They're going to pull it all together. Love it. I'm excited for you. But yeah, you are now. This one, I'm buying low, trying to sell high here. Okay. Not for... Again, everyone's very confused by the stock market, and that might be us too. That's fine. Yeah. So I will say this means Instagram Reels is still available.

47:47You can still have it if you want it. You picked Instagram Live. Yeah. I feel absolutely fine about this. It's funny because my prediction is that Reels will not get picked over the course of this draft, but it's why I've got picked. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I agree with both of those assessments. What was your third place Live pick? Oh, it's my pick now. You're up. Go for it. This is what I was trying to game out against David. Okay. Because I know the NFL is important to both of us. So I'm just picking Sunday Ticket standalone, which you can just buy. Yeah, you can. You don't need YouTube TV. You can just buy it.

48:28It's a million dollars, but that's my live pick. Yeah, I don't even think you need YouTube Premium. You can truly buy it on its own. Yeah, and you just get it on the YouTube page, which is a weird way to watch football. like that's just we it's just that's a weird thing yeah but all of my games are out of market so this works for me so yeah i'm i'm just picking dead ahead sunday ticket interesting all right that's fair i was not gonna pick it only because god help me i cannot have another youtube product but it's a good pick and it seems to it seems to be working do you get if you buy sunday ticket on its own isn't it like 500 a season or something insane yeah it's like it's like 350 or something It's nuts.

49:09All to watch the Packers lose the wildcard round. It's nuts. Even if you buy it in the regular— I have a real playoffs problem here. I'm going to figure something out. But I'll go to the bar. It'll be fine. Okay. All right. So you got Sunday ticket. I feel good about it. Go to the bar as wildcard. And by the way, even if you have Sunday ticket, the NFL is like, here's a game on Amazon Prime. It's all bad. So there's a reason I was asking about that piracy backstop. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, it's good. All right, my next pick. I think I'm going cheap. I think I'm going to pick Peacock, which I just confirmed you can still get for$8 a month.

49:53We're not publishing this episode for a few days, so that's plenty of time for them to raise the price. But Peacock continues to be the place I watch The Office and Parks and Rec and New Girl. And it's increasingly getting like pretty good movies pretty quickly after they come out. It's just, it's kind of, it's doing a thing. I suppose this is where we should disclose that Comcast, NBCUniversal is a investor in our parent company, Vox Media. Round five. They do not pay for my - Peacock still exists, round five. Exactly. Disclosure. But yeah, I think I'm doing it just because I still haven't watched Wicked and at some point this year I am going to watch Wicked and I need Peacock to watch Wicked.

50:40So I think I'm doing it. Peacock. Eventually you'll watch Wicked. Dirty Comcast money well-spressed. And Poker Face, Jake. Like you said. Yeah, I know. It's real. It's real. Poker Face. They got something. They got that one show. There's a lot of like SNL 50 stuff I still have to watch. Like there's, I got stuff to do. Which, by the way, is also on your other pick, YouTube. Oh, crap. You're right. That's okay. I'm just SNL for life now. This is good. All right. I'm taking Peacock. All right. Let's do one more round before we take another break. Jake, you're up. What do you got? All right, guys.

51:18Are you ready for this? It's about to hit the niche category. Tell me, have you ever thought to yourself, I would love to watch a 14-hour documentary about the history of New York City by Ken Burns' brother. By Ken Burns' brother? Have you ever thought... Sven Burns? For these bootleg clips of Antique Roadshow that I'm seeing on TikTok, I would love to check out the entire series. PBS Passport. Yeah. I'm telling you this is a winner. All right. And if you need this specific genre, I'm going to say this is TV you can fall asleep to. I think this is going to be a big hit. you get to help support public access TV, which hopefully will exist by the end of this year.

52:05Yeah, will that be here next year? And you know what? Your subscription to PBS Passport will help. All right. I respect it. I feel good about this one. A big theme here is that everyone is falling asleep to the TV. Like, why are we all paying so much money for streaming services when mostly what we're doing is passing out? Oh, I've got more where that comes from. Just wait. That also appears to be how everyone watches TV. Like, do you guys ever see this thing that floats around every once in a while that one of the directives Netflix gives to people who are making a show is that everyone has to always say what they're thinking and what's happening out loud because most people aren't watching the show.

52:41So they have to, like, you can't, there can't be any unsaid important details in a Netflix show because they understand that lots of people are just sitting there looking at their phone. So they have to say everything out loud and it drives creatives absolutely insane. But like, this is the world we live in now. This is horrifying. There's also what you just described earlier, where you're just like, I have TV on in the background while I'm cooking all the time. And this is like how you watch everything. And it's just people doing exposition all day long in the background of David's house. Yeah.

53:09This apple is delicious. There's a reason that Hollywood is dying. And it's that and the frame TV, which we will come to. It's bleak out there. All right. PBS. Love it. No notes. Neelai, what do you got? All right. It's time. And it's time for Eli to do a niche pick as well. Okay. So I'm picking Kaleidoscape, which is an ultra high bit rate day and date movie server. Oh, God. What? You got to have one. You got to have one. So run Kaleidoscape. You have to buy a server called the Terra Prime, which you like put in a rack in your basement because obviously you have a rack in your basement. The Terra Prime for the 24 terabyte version is$10 ,500.

53:54And then you need to buy the Strato-C or Strato-V players for all the TV in your house. The Strato-C is the budget model. That's$3 ,000. The Strato-V, which is a player and with an integrated server, that's$4 ,000. And then you get day and date. You can buy full quality movies. How much is the movie? The movies are tremendously expensive. Is this a service that Tom Cruise uses to watch theatrical movies in his home theater? There's a little bit of that going on. It feels like they're a little later now than they used to be. There's this thing called the Bel Air circuit where all the houses in Bel Air have like screening rooms in them, like a day and date.

54:32They used to be the circuit because they run the physical reels around. Now there's digital distribution. But the movies are not always expensive. It depends, right? Like some of them are$30, but some of them are like$200 because they're day and date. Okay. I'm just, I'm on Kaleidoscape's webpage. And Jake, I just want to read you this paragraph, which is the most Neelai-coded thing I think I've ever heard. It says, Kaleidoscape movie experts annotate each movie with data such as screen size, end credit, and intermission cues. This allows our players to integrate with your home automation to dim lights, close shades, and adjust seating when the titles roll, and automatically screen mask to match the ratio of each film.

55:07Immersive experiences that streaming services simply can't achieve. Like, I guarantee you Neelai read this and just started just flinging money at his computer screen. The worst part about this is that Neelai's right. Like, this sounds awesome. Easily the sickest thing. This ends up incredible. Yeah, yeah. Like, easily the sickest possible movie. I have stared at a kaleidoscape so many times. I'm like, I should sell one of my cars. And I can't, I don't watch enough movies. One of us picked Tubi, the other picked, like,$30 ,000 set up to watch Wicked. Hell yes. Slightly early. I have a cousin who sent me a picture of the rack in his brother-in-law's house in Virginia with, like, five Strato-Vs in it.

55:48And I was like, I'm going to this house. Like, let's go. Like, I'm very excited about it. What screens do you play on? I've been waiting this entire time to make this pick. When do you do it? I could have done it at number one. I'd been on edge this whole. Some one of us could have gotten there first. It's easily the sickest movie experience you can have. It sounds great. It is ridiculous. And you watch it on the frame? You watch it on the garbage. No, you have to build. You don't have to. But you're supposed to build a theater so that the Strato-V can send 12-volt triggers to various home automation devices.

56:24I'm just imagining you being like, Max, I'm so sorry. You have to move out of your bedroom. I'm turning it into the kaleidoscope theater. It's very good. I'm very excited about this idea. I've never been more excited about anything, actually. That's good stuff. I think you might only need a Strato-V at this point. I don't know. It's just a lot of money. That's what I have for you. I honestly if you sell your car you will go fewer places so you'll have more time to watch movies uh it's true you'll just be alone in my house look if anybody is listening and you want to tell us about your kaleidoscape we will come to your house and watch movies I will be there yeah this is not a question and then you will wake up and you'll be like where did my kaleidoscape go uh all right I am gonna go content and I'm gonna pick stranger things season five which I think is going to be enormous and humongous and might win me this draft all by itself.

57:16I think in terms of like stuff that is going to be on streaming services in between now and next year, this one is the one that is like, if I can't have Netflix, at least I get to have Stranger Things. Yeah, I think that's a big win for you. The season might be awful. Like there's all these actors are like in their 40s now. they've been doing this for forever it's going to be insane but I kind of feel like everyone on earth is going to watch it it's like the biggest thing that Netflix will have maybe ever, right? this is the single biggest show they've had at least culturally this conclusion has been coming for years, I think a lot of people are very hyped about it, I'm very hyped for it I'm not even necessarily sure it's going to be amazing, but yeah, I'm excited so yeah, I think that's a good get for you I feel good about it I'm a little worried it's not going to come out this year because it has been like imminent for a very long time.

58:11But I have faith. Yeah. And I choose to believe that it's going to happen. I think. They can get it there. I almost picked Ted Lasso season four, but then I knew Neil would make fun of me for a really long time. Yeah. And I just don't need that in my life. I just want to tell you that Kaleidoscape streams in 65 megabits per second, which is higher than a 4K Blu-ray. I knew when you had not said anything in a minute, it was because you were reading about Kaleidoscape. We've lost Neil. In lossless audio, my man. Come on. It's just a$15 ,000 initiative. Look, I love this for you. All right, we're going to take one more break, and then we've got two more categories to do.

58:48We'll be right back.

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1:00:27All right, we're back. We're five categories in. We got two more to go. quick recap before we finish. Jake has picked Tubi, Netflix, Hulu, Instagram Live for some reason, and PBS Passport. Some choices in there. Nilay has picked TikTok, Max, Disney +, NFL Sunday Ticket, and Kaleidoscape and has ceased paying attention to this podcast since he picked Kaleidoscape. I've done everything I need to do. Nilay is finished. And I have Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and Stranger Things Season 5. We have Two more categories each. Jake, you're up. All right, guys. It's going to be a stressful year.

1:01:04We all need something to kind of chill out, relax to. Also note that, you know, we're talking about video here, but I don't know what this does for our ability to listen to music. So I've been thinking about that. I don't have YouTube. So I'm going to grab Lo-Fi Girl. Oh. Listen. All right. Lock that in. All right. While the world is burning, I'm going to be in my bedroom studying. skiing a little scarf around my neck, just sort of zenning out. I think this is going to be a good one for 2025. It's a strong pick, actually, because if if if the shtick here is these are the only things you're allowed to consume this year, you do need that.

1:01:44That's a that's a strong pick. I like that for you. I think it's not covered by anything else that I've got. You know, it's providing, I think, a very distinct service. So, yeah, I feel good about Lo-Fi Girl. Which Lo-Fi girl station do you listen to? There's like three or four of them now. We're just going to go with the main for this pick. I'm going to be honest, I'm not a consort. You can have the whole channel. I'll give you the whole channel. I'm just curious which one you listen to. Whichever one comes up. I mean, I'm going to be honest, not personally a big lo-fi girl listener, which maybe defeats the purpose of this draft, but I'm trying to think holistically here, right?

1:02:19I want to get some music in. This is, I think, the single hottest music channel on streaming services that I know of. I don't think I can pick the entire like channel for God doesn't even exist anymore. What was the YouTube music video service? Vivo? Vivo. That was it. Yeah, they broke it up into individual artists. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to pick like Billie Eilish Vivo. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Billie Eilish's YouTube channel is not a bad pick. I probably could just go with that. No, Lo-Fi Girl. Listen, It's not necessarily my constant jam, which maybe defeats the purpose of this pick, but I think it is the right tone for 2025.

1:03:04I like it. That's why I'm locking it in. I support it. I also, for anyone who spends all of their time on the regular lo-fi channel, which is very good, the Synthwave channel, also very good. Not nearly as popular. I'm looking at it now. It's like a tenth as many people on the channel right now. But it's called Synthwave Radio on Lo-Fi Girl. It's very good. Highly recommend. There's also a jazz one that I'm not nearly cool enough to listen to. But Jake, you could be. You wear good sweaters. You could listen to jazz. Listen, now that I have Lo-Fi Channel, I'm going to find out. I love this for you.

1:03:35All right, Neelai, what do you got? I'm realizing that I made an error in that I did not pick Clyde Escape for every one of these. So for content, could I have picked just NFL and gotten the out? No. Okay. Could I have picked, like, Reddit slash NFL livestreams and gotten the out? Can I pick that for wildcard? Do you see what I'm saying? Interesting. Because I made a very important pick for live. And I'm thinking, oh, I could have. There's only one reason I needed it. I'm going to say no, because I think Lo-Fi Girl qualifies as more or less a piece of content. Like, I think if you were to say under content, you're going to pick the Super Bowl, I'd give you the Super Bowl.

1:04:23But I don't think the NFL sees it. I think it's too big. Too big. Yeah. And the collected catalog of Lo-Fi Girl is not too big. That's a nonstop stream. That thing doesn't, she doesn't sleep. Sometimes she gets murdered, apparently. From what I understand. It's some sort of like a LARP situation. I don't know about the meta story of Lo-Fi Girl. Every now and again, she disappears and people have to do a quest. It's like a thing. Oh. It's usually a bridge. I've got gamification built in here, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the lore is so much deeper than you know, Jake. So the one thing I don't really have here is any kind of news content.

1:04:57True. Except for whatever extremely weird version of CNN they run on Macs, which is like not worth watching because it's not actually CNN. It's like, what if this was worse? You're like, I don't want this. So here's what I'm picking. I'm going to throw it in content. I'm going to throw, I got to put a news service here, right? That's what you need live television for, especially in this moment. And I feel like the regular cable news channels have just become weird podcasts unto themselves. So if I'm going to pick a weird news podcast, I'm picking my pals at CNBC. I'm just putting that here in content.

1:05:38Okay. Because if lines are going to go down and I'm going to panic with a bunch of weirdos, it's my buddies. Okay. So that's my content. I'm glad we got a podcast in here. Yeah, is it a CNBC podcast stream? Like what? CNBC literally, if you go onto their homepage right now, there's a button that says watch live stream, which is an incredible button for a cable channel to have. And then it says prefer audio because I think they've realized that it is just a weird podcast about a chart. Like what does CNBC make every day? A podcast about a chart. The hosts come and go, but they're making a podcast about a chart.

1:06:15And so there's a button where you can just listen to it And they put out all the shows as podcasts. I don't know if any of this is working strategically. And obviously they're being spun out of Comcast into their own. They're going to live whatever weird life in a company called Literally Spinco. I don't think it's going to happen. But I do know that if I want to listen to people panic about Line Go Down, I prefer that over the general interest news channels. I can get that for my bastardized CNN and Max. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, I like it. And I think CNBC is like, it's got to be weird to program a thing that you know many of your viewers are going to watch with no sound and many of your viewers are only going to listen to.

1:06:55It's like very few people seem to actively sit and listen and look at cable TV. It's one or the other. It's like you're in an airport with no sound. Oh, you put audio stream here. I'm just saying. Well, yeah, you can have the live stream. I don't care. You can have whatever you want. Yeah, I just want the live stream of CNBC. My point is all cable news broadcasts are now weird podcasts. like if you just look if you look at what we do every week it's like here's some people talking to each other for a while about stuff and you like watch any major cable news they're like here's 35 people in a grid talking about stuff and it's just a podcast and like everything is converging on this form but you do need the like live reactive to news in your content mix we need more charts on the VertCast is what I'm hearing here a live podcast where we panic about a chart is like, that's cable news in 2025.

1:07:46I'm ready for it. All right, that's a good one. I will be watching as little news as possible over the rest of this year, so I will skip on that one. All right, I'm up next. I have niche and wildcard left. I think I'm going to pick wildcard, and I'm going to go Paramount Plus with great sadness and trepidation, but I need sports. And Paramount Plus has a lot of very good sports. Paramount Plus is how I watch March Madness. It's how I watch the Masters. It's how I watch Champions League soccer. It is like, there's just this like steady drumbeat of very important sports to me on CBS that I can only get through Paramount Plus.

1:08:25And I don't love giving them my money because it's not a good service other times. Although they do also have the Mission Impossible movies. So that helps. Guy's gonna be big this year. They got another one coming up. You're gonna have a rewatch marathon. I think there's something there. Yeah. So I'm taking Paramount Plus. but like I will probably cancel it three separate times over the course of this year. That's right. But I want to have it available to me. Also, this is the Alex Kranz memorial pick. And you know what? Turned out to be a winner. So might be a strong option. Yeah. Whoever picks Paramount Plus.

1:09:00Yeah. Listen, if they finally make the great Star Trek show, I'm sitting pretty. It's going to be amazing. Yeah. All right. We got one round left. Jake, you have wildcard left. Neela, you have wildcard left, and I have Niche left. Jake, you're up. All right, folks. I'm going to pick a service that I do not believe has appeared in the Vergecast streaming draft to date. This is one of the greatest streaming services I've ever used. It is also not widely available, and that is Canopy. Oh. Canopy is the service that you can get through your library. This thing is free for you because your library pays for it.

1:09:39They have an excellent library of movies, including new stuff, old stuff. This is, once again, the library that you do not find on Netflix because Netflix doesn't want to pay for this because it's a bunch of weirdos who watch this stuff. The only downside to the service is your library has to be a partner of Canopy. But if your library is a partner of Canopy, just watch as much as you want for free, and it's great. What's the bit, right? uh, I don't know, like 480p probably? What are we talking about? Like, I don't know. You got a privatized library, Jake. That's why I did not check out the bitrate, uh, requirements in that.

1:10:16Um, I, I do, I'll be honest. Uh, the New York Public Library does not currently support Canopy. So I do need to pretend I live somewhere else and get another library card in order to take advantage of this pick. Um, however, there was a brief period of time when, uh, I had Canopy access and my God, It was a shining star. It was the best service I've ever used. I'm not saying I recommend this, but I'm also saying it's not very hard to get a library card somewhere you don't live. That's all I'll say. Wow. Have you ever been to Reddit.com or library cards? There we go. That's a good pick. Canopy is sneakily very good.

1:10:58And the whole sort of stuff you can get with your library card on the internet ecosystem is perpetually way better than it gets credit for. Canopy is great. Blibby is great. It's like there's a whole universe of good digital content out there that you can get with your library card. Please don't close all of our libraries. Support your libraries, people. That's a good pick. I think Canopy has come up before, but I don't think anyone has ever picked it. So you've done it. You've also really, between Canopy and PBS Passport and Lo-Fi Girl, you've really like Brooklynized your draft in a way that I very much approve of.

1:11:28There are some ups and downs in my selections, but I'm feeling good about a few of these. It's strong. I love it for you. All right, Neelai, last pick. What do you got? All right. Because I was not allowed to just pick an entire sports situation as content, this really changed my dynamic. So for my wild card, I'm picking F1 TV. That's good. It's good. And really, I've been inspired by how much sleeping we're all doing, and that's what I sleep. But those middle 15 laps, I'm out. Middle 30 even. I saved Niche for last because I was positive no one was going to pick F1 TV and I was going to pick it.

1:12:09Oof. Yeah. Rough. You and I have been dancing around the sports situation this whole time. David, can I tell you, Instagram Reels is still out there. F1 TV is also a very good streaming service. In the like, how should sports be broadcast? It's like, show me a million different angles. Show me all the data. Show me none of the data. just like make it chaotic in cool, interesting, sportsy ways. F1 TV does a very good job. I was looking in a Reddit thread for a bar around me that would like show races, which is a weird thing because it's either very early in the morning or you got to, everyone's got to agree to watch a replay.

1:12:42And there's a number of comments there that are like, I will never watch this in a bar because I need to be locked in with data from F1 TV. And it's like not, does anyone want to go to a bar? Everyone's like locked in with an Excel spreadsheet measuring tire degradation live from F1 TV. That's how I prefer to experience this sport. It's like, okay, so I'm going to be taking a nap at home. It's very good. Strong correlation, by the way, between people who love video games and F1 because they're just doing video game stuff. Like, they're just like min-maxing like European boys. It's very good. The Polygon people love F1.

1:13:21They're always like, is it a spreadsheet game? It's a lot of... It is. It is very much, it is like the nerdiest sport you could possibly imagine in all of the best ways. Well, this sucks because now I don't know what I'm going to pick. I want to say, by the way, this officially means Apple TV is going to go undrafted. I was wondering. I thought about taking it in wildcard, but I think I need, like Severance already happened. So, like, I'm good on Apple TV for a while. Did anything happen, David? I'm not doing this with you again same conversation about White Lotus by the way it appears Netflix has issued rules where everyone just has to be doing like bold faced exposition and Apple and Max have been like nothing happens for three episodes in the middle but it's beautiful so people can look at their phones huge gorgeous establishing shots the end of episode will this monkey murder someone no actually nothing nothing okay also ESPN plus undrafted and I think ESPN plus doesn't count as a streaming service that feels too mainstream right I don't think I can get away with that I'm gonna take Britbox as mine Britbox is just an unbelievable repository of I believe BBC specific British content A, a lot of good stuff.

1:14:53Like, oh boy, do you want people like quietly solving murders in beautiful countrysides? Brickbox has you covered forever. A lot of good house shows on Brickbox. But really I'm taking it because I think in a time where people are looking for less America in their lives, we're all going British. It's just going to be me and my Brickbox homies just checking it out. Is that what we're doing? That's what it's going to be. That's the bet I'm making here. I feel like you ought to pick a Russian streaming service. We want a thing again. Like, what's going on over there? Is it cool? Because it seems like we ought to know.

1:15:31Yeah, I'm just looking at this now. There's a show called Douglas is Canceled that I think I can watch. Anytime people tell me what they're watching on BritBox, truly just shows I've never known existed. I'm sure they're delightful, but it's just, it's very goofy names. they've been on for a decade. I've just never heard of them. Jake, there's a show on here called Gardener's World that I'm pretty excited about. Oh, you know what? That is a hit, though. Gardener's World is the number one worldwide gardening competition series. Monty and the team are back, full of the best practical tips and advice for gardeners.

1:16:07Five seasons. Yeah. Let's go. This is the cozy TV I'm looking for. There was a big contract negotiation issue with Monty, so that actually was a big deal. Monty actually got replaced in season three silently. Look, David, extremely weird pick. That's what I have to say. We really, really fizzled out here at the end where David just started googling cool streaming services and realized that both Canopy and Loci Girl were taken. In person, Neelah gave a very solemn sigh after you did Big Box. David just like, scooping up the bottom of the barrel. All right, that's fine. You picked this over Apple TV+.

1:16:47I think that's really saying something. Apple TV +, doesn't count in niche. If I had truly, if I had known you were going to pick F1 TV, I would have done it backwards. And then I would have had a real Paramount +, versus Apple TV +, debate to have. But I played myself. Only one of those has both Top Gun movies, David. That's not a debate. I don't know what you're talking about. Ted Lasso Season 4 is coming someday in the future. do you think he's going to be optimistic?

1:17:19Listen, do I every once in a while tap a wall and say believe to myself? Yeah, I do. That's who I am. Do I walk into a bar and just blow people out of the water at darts every couple days? Yeah. That's why. Be curious, not judgmental.

1:17:34All right. To recap the 2025 Vertecast streaming draft. Jake, in Cheap, you picked Tubi. In Awards, you picked Netflix. In 4K, you picked Hulu. In live... Let's pause there. Let's pause there. Iron the draft. A really winning selection right there. In live, you picked Instagram Live. What a choice. In niche, you picked PBS Passport. In content, you picked Lo-Fi Girl. And in wildcard, you picked Canopy. I think most of those are strong picks. David described this as very Brooklyn. I would describe this as guy who insists they don't watch TV. No, this is straight up. This is accurate. this is the cheapest slate right i'm paying for two of these pbs passport you just make a donation like once i mean it's good i i'm not saying i wasn't the kid but there's a real vibe here um no that's that's completely right i i want to watch a bunch of old movies that nobody else cares about that are only available with ads on tubi because nobody else wanted to pay for them.

1:18:40I'm going to the library because it's the only place you can check out, you know, the Peter Greenaway movies I want to watch. And then I don't know, I'm not in touch culturally. And so I'm like, what's happening? Let's check Instagram live. I just feel like you've also won the unofficial how many of these companies will send me a tote bag race in pretty handily. You get a lo-fi girl tote bag. That's the move. There we go. You're the winner. All right. So, Neelai in cheap. you pick TikTok. In Awards, you pick Max. In 4K, you pick Disney+. In Live, you pick Sunday Ticket. In Niche, you pick the Kaleidoscape.

1:19:15In Content, you pick CNBC. And in Wildcard, you pick F1 TV. This is a real, like, content monster lineup. Yeah, it's strong. I feel like I've outed myself as a dad in the worst possible way with this. This is like you have five TVs on a wall, and they've all got something going on. Yeah. It's a lot. And I... Yeah. I needed one cool one and I didn't pick one. Instead, I picked CAC. But I'm okay with it. F1's out there. F1's cool. F1 is cool. It is in its way. You're like, I'm a nerd who watches cars at three in the morning. That's me. It's deeply me. And you have TikTok, so you still get trucks jumping over stuff.

1:19:55So I think you've represented yourself fairly accurately here. Yeah, as a dad. That's my choice. And I have a CloudEscape server, which is sick. I've won on strength of streaming quality alone. In terms of number of bits delivered to the house, you've won and it's not close. No question about that. It's so many. You need an$11 ,000 server just to download them overnight. Do you understand what I'm saying? It pre-downloads a bunch of movies so you can buy them locally and watch them right away. They're just assuming you're going to give them another$200 every week. Yeah, they're just like, we're just going to preload your Terra Prime so you're ready to go.

1:20:34That's not bad. That's why you need the server in the basement. That's good service. Look, if you're out there, I'm guessing it's Steve Kaleidoscape, just give me a call. Let's work something out. I give it like 12 days before you reappear on the show. So let me tell you what I've been up to. All right. And then my picks were in cheap, I picked Peacock. In awards, I picked Amazon Prime. In 4K, I picked YouTube Premium, Live, YouTube TV, Niche, BritBox, Content, Stranger Things Season 5, and Wildcard Paramount+. I would call this the like basic parentheses derogatory set of picks. Yeah, this is David has passed out in the aisle of a Best Buy.

1:21:12Like stuff is just happening to you and you don't know why. There's a real like B tier selection to the streaming. I don't mean to criticize you as a person, David. You're great. No, I'm looking at this and I'm like, no, this is pure just like the algorithms get to decide. Like I don't care what I watch. Just put something on is like the energy I'm getting from my picks here. There's an argument that YouTube alone tops everything else. Like, if you have YouTube, you have access to the entire world of content in some ways. Frankly, the combo of YouTube Premium and Amazon Prime Video, like, who is going to run out of content last?

1:21:48It's me by lifetimes. So I'm good on that. Yeah. But, like, I don't know. The ceiling's pretty low on David's picks over here. The combo platter of Peacock and Paramount Plus ending up on your board, but not Apple TV Plus is perfect. You're like, I could have, but I did not choose the one that has won an Oscar. Yeah. It's good. There's that. You do get all of the weird Jurassic Park movies. And I'm not saying that they weren't successful. They've made billions of dollars. Super weird movies. Can you name the titles of any of them? It happened again. oh no more dinosaurs whoops all right we're done we got to get out of here uh tell us who you think won the draft i guess we have like a year to really figure this out right so like maybe we'll we'll ask a bunch of overtime but we should we should put a poll in the in the post on the site about who won the draft um spoiler alert it's it's me i won the draft but uh i i don't know i don't know that any of us did great this year but we'll see and we have 12 months to figure it out Maybe TikTok will still be here and maybe Instagram Live will have taken over the internet.

1:22:58We will see. I just feel like my choices are very good. I'm like, by rights in the winter, but I'm also wearing a quarter zip. You know what I mean? It's like, it's rough. Yeah, like the net worth of your picks is very high. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's what I, you know? Yeah. It's like I have a golf sponsorship now. Yeah. I won. I'm saying I won as, but you know. But you're sad about it. I'm caveating my own victory. Yeah. I'm saying I could have won in a cooler way. Yeah. All right. We got to get out of here. Jake, Neelai, thank you guys so much. This is really fun. All right. That's it.

1:23:32That's the show for today. Thank you to Jake and Neelai for doing that with me. And thank you, as always, for listening. For lots more on everything we talked about, if you want to see our picks again, if you want to see previous drafts, if you want to just yell at us in the comments about who won, head over to TheVerge.com. And seriously, I honestly do want to know who won. You can also send us an email, vergecast at TheVerge.com. Call the hotline, 866-VERGE-11. All of your feelings, everything about who we should have drafted sooner. If you think it's like nuts that Disney Plus didn't go first.

1:23:59If you think I'm a lunatic for picking BritBox, which I'm not. But if you think that I am, tell us. We want to hear from you. Leave us comments. Everything. We see it all. And we love hearing from you. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Will Poore. VergeCast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about AI news, politics news, tariffs, chaos, and everything else going on right now. We'll see you then. Rock and roll. Guys, I think this went poorly for most of us. And Doug. Here we have the Lemo Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

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