On January 5, 2021, Discovery Plus joined the constantly growing streaming video content market. If you haven’t decided on whether this new streaming channel is for you, here’s a quick review of the content, user experience, and price, to help you make up your mind.
What it Delivers
Like many streaming video channels, Discovery+ brings together content from a bunch of cable TV channels that cord-cutters may be missing. In this case, we’re talking about content from Discovery, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, ID, OWN, Animal Planet, The Travel Channel, and the upcoming Magnolia Network. It’s not every single show from all these channels, but definitely delivers quite a few, broken down into a bunch of categories: Relationships, True Crime, Home, Food, Paranormal & Unexplained, Lifestyle, Adventure & Exploration, Documentaries, Nature and Animals, Science & Technology, and Automotive.
While the station does take a lot of content from what you can already find on the cable channels, there are also a variety of original shows that are only on the new streaming service.
Content Highlights
For HGTV fans, you’ll find all the seasons of shows like Property Brothers (and its various offshoots), Flip or Flop, Good Bones, Home Town, and Love it or List it, among many others. They are also teasing some upcoming content from every HGTV fan’s favorite Chip and Joanna Gaines on their new Magnolia Network ventures.
It’s a smaller niche audience, but fans of True Crime shows love their content. Viewers will get access to shows like Disappeared, The First 48, Forensic Files, and new originals like American Detective.
Fans of the Food Network will recognize mainstays like Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives, Restaurant Impossible, Worst Cooks in America, Kitchen Nightmares, and new content like Magnolia Table. You aren’t likely to run out of food shows to watch anytime soon with Discovery+.
For Adventure style shows, you can find Expedition Unknown, Gold Rush, Dirty Jobs, Deadliest Catch, and Forged in Fire among the many options. But, one show that didn’t make it to the streaming service is The Curse of Oak Island, as that is on the History Channel, which isn’t a major part of the service’s lineup.
User Experience - Roku
I can only speak to the experience through the Roku app, but on that service, you’ll find a UI that is very similar to Netflix. You can scroll by category, search for specific content, and add shows to “My List” to find them more easily in the future.
On the downside, there appears to be a small bug in the Roku app currently that is causing shows to freeze up briefly before coming back a second or two later. We have it happen fairly regularly in our viewing, but it wasn’t so annoying as to create a real issue. I assume it will be addressed in an upgrade to the app in the near future.
Pricing
There is a free 7-day trial running right now, and longer-term subscriptions are available at $4.99 per month for ad-supported content and $6.99 a month to go commercial-free. Subscriptions are month-to-month, making it easy to dip in and try out the channel for a month and then move on if there isn’t enough content to make it worthwhile.
The Verdict
For the price, Discovery+ delivers a lot of content, but only if you really love the shows from the included channels. It’s also good to note that Hulu already delivers some of the same content from HGTV, Discovery, ID, etc. But, if you’ve already run through all the home, true crime, and adventure shows on Hulu then Discovery+ gives you access to a larger library of shows to keep binging.
