You might have hesitated on paying monthly for subscription-based OTT streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Who would not consider watching movies for free before paying bills?
Calling by this need, there are free streaming websites for TV shows and movies.
Peacock is one of the most popular ones. Are you familiar with it? Do you want to know how you can watch and keep movies on it? Through this brief Peacock Review, you will gain a basic understanding of this streaming service.
What is Peacock
Peacock, or Peacock TV, is an American OTT video streaming service owned and operated by Peacock TV LLC, a subsidiary of NBC Universal Media Group. It has a wide range of online streaming videos, including television series, films, news, and sport programming. By October 2023,the number of Peacock subscribers has reached approximately 30 million, not even taking the free viewers into account.
Features of Peacock
In this section, I will cover Peacock’s most concerned features: Device Availability, Price & Plans, Quantity & Quality of Content.
Device Availability
Peacock has both a browser version and an app version. As long as you have access to network of America, you can open peacock and start watching online content.
The Peacock app can be directly downloaded from Apple Store and Google Play. Apple users with iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV can install the app on their devices. General users of mobile phones, tablets, TVs can have also have access to the app. Unfortunately, it seems that Peacock app cannot be installed on desktops except chromebooks.
Users can download videos on Peacock only on mobile devices. The downloads will also expire within 48 hours if they are watched, or 30 days if they are not watched.
It is also worth mentioning that users can also watch Peacock on Roku Channel, which collects a lot of streaming platforms’ services. Downloading videos from Roku Channel may also be feasible.
Price & Plans
Though Peacock can be freely viewed, it still need methods to earn money to support its running. Therefore,a paid subscription is also recommended by Peacock.
For free viewers, the content they are available to is quite limited, and they will see the most commercials during watching.
Peacock has 2 paid plans: Premium and Premium Plus.
Premium Plan costs $5.99 monthly or $59.99 yearly as the most popular plan. Subscribers can stream more than 80,000 hours of TV shows, movies, and sports. Compared to free viewers, they can additionally watch new and hit movies, LIVE sport events such as WWE, current NBC & Bravo shows, and 50+ channels. HOWEVER, they still cannot escape ads or download the shows.
Premium Plus Plan costs $11.99 monthly or $119.99 yearly. Subscribers of this ultimate plan can not only enjoy all rights of a Premium Plan, but also can unlock extra features, namely, ads-removement, downloading selected titles for offline watching, and local NBC Channel LIVE 24/7.
It should be noticed that the price of these plans are cheaper than major international platforms such as Netflix, whose basic, standard-with-ads plan starts from $6.99/month.
Quality & Quantity of Content
To cater different tastes of viewers, Peacock offers original programmings and external ones in generally 1080p resolution. Original programmings cover genres such as drama, comedy, animation, etc. Viewers can have long-term access to them.
External content may be various and not limited to USA-limited shows or movies. For sport events, except for WWE as a regular local event, the coming international 2024 Paris Olymics will also be presented on Peacock. Peacock may also have rights to some worldwide popular movies due to signed deals. For instance, Harry Potter film series were once available for 1 year on Peacock until the deal ends. This can be a drawback, for viewers can only watch them when the license is valid.
Peacock may not keep pace with the new, potential big-hits. Those TV series may firstly sign deals with major platforms. This may mean that heated non-American TV shows cannot be watched on Peacock. In the past few years, some South Korean TV shows known as Squid Games in 2021 and The Glory (whose record seemed to have break the former American TV series YOU) in 2022, are only available on Netflix.
For Offline Watching: Download Shows on Peacock
Premium Plus Plan subscribers of Peacock can directly download on Peacock to their mobile devices. They can simply click “Download” button to start the process.
However, the number of downloadable videos on Peacock is small compared with other streaming TV services. Therefore, for viewers who have no access to downloading services, need to watch Peacock videos on PC, or just want to download them in bulk, they may need a third-party tool, such as a Peacock video downloader.
Final Words
In this Peacock review, I detailed the information of Peacock to give readers a general understanding. As a free service, Peacock offers a wide variety of movies and TV shows to meet different needs of its audience. However, it still have its shortcomings like commercials and limited device compatibility. Downloading services may be unsatisfied and need third-party tools as assistance. I hope readers can get information they need and feel free to enjoy Peacock in whichever way suits them.
