# Cloud DVR Comparison



## techguy88 (Mar 19, 2015)

With AT&T increasing their True Cloud DVR and including 3 concurrent streams as standard on AT&T TV Now's current packages (Featured: Plus and Max / Others: Entertainment, Choice, Xtra, Ultimate and Optimo Mas) this really puts the service in a good place if you are looking only at the Cloud DVR options.









*YouTube TV *still takes the #1 spot as the most well-rounded Cloud DVR with its Unlimited storage. Would be nice to see the 9 Month expiration removed to match fuboTV, Hulu Live TV and Sling TV with no expiration (until deleted). If you want the most well rounded Cloud DVR then look no further than YouTube TV.
*AT&T TV Now* ties for the second spot for a well rounded Cloud DVR despite the 90 day retention limit. What would make this better is if they extended this option to their Legacy/Grandfathered customers and increased/removed the retention limitation.
*fuboTV *ties with *AT&T TV Now* for the second spot solely because their lowest package (fuboTV Standard) includes a limited Cloud DVR that requires add-ons to unlock its full potential. If the 500 hours and extra concurrent stream was included in for fuboTV Standard it would easily knock *AT&T TV Now *to third place and tie with *YouTube TV* for the #1 spot.
*Philo* and *Hulu Live TV* ties for 4th place. The requirement on *Hulu Live TV *to have the Enhanced Cloud DVR in order to fast forward during the commercials on any recorded program holds this one back meanwhile *Philo*'s measly 30 day retention of recordings holds their Cloud DVR back. I do commend *Philo* for offering Unlimited Storage out of the gate.
*Sling TV* now takes 6th place when compared to *AT&T TV Now*. I applaud the fact it has no retention limitation on recordings the storage is extremely low when compared to its rivals. What would make this better is if 50 hours was included as standard while the upgrade increased the storage to 100-200 hours at least.


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## DaRef (Jan 10, 2018)

Actually, I think Hulu+Live has a nine month retention policy (unless it has recently changed).


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

The other important factors are DVR UI and usability particularly trick play. I have found YTTV to be as close to, and IMO in some ways superior to, hardware/in house DVR. FF and REW is easy to use, fluid and accurate and the preview pane is nice and large and allows you to see exactly what you are REW/FF thru. The skip forward/back (15 secs per click) is also good. The functionality is much better, IMO, than PSVue which was pretty good.

One other item to note is that YTTV's ability to pause live TV is very good, does not rely on local storage, and is apparently unlimited (full disclosure I have only paused for at most an hour so their certainly could be a limit).


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## armchair (Jul 27, 2009)

mjwagner said:


> The other important factors are DVR UI and usability particularly trick play. I have found YTTV to be as close to, and IMO in some ways superior to, hardware/in house DVR. FF and REW is easy to use, fluid and accurate and the preview pane is nice and large and allows you to see exactly what you are REW/FF thru. The skip forward/back (15 secs per click) is also good. The functionality is much better, IMO, than PSVue which was pretty good.
> 
> One other item to note is that YTTV's ability to pause live TV is very good, does not rely on local storage, and is apparently unlimited (full disclosure I have only paused for at most an hour so their certainly could be a limit).


Hard to believe Sling has complaints going back its beginnings of not being able to pause live TV on most channels.

That has to be one of the leading reasons Sling continues its backward slide. If not then I'd call it an inability to adapt to market demand.

Seems silly to record what I'm watching to avoid the constant nag of inability to pause this station. I asked Sling for a list of channels that allows pause and they don't maintain one because they claim is always changing. Wow. Get. A. Clue.

I had always avoided Sling before but thought I'd try Blue to save a few bucks. Smacks of a service that's out of touch and basically as-is, take it or leave it.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk


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## techguy88 (Mar 19, 2015)

DaRef said:


> Actually, I think Hulu+Live has a nine month retention policy (unless it has recently changed).


When I was researching Cloud DVRs I believe it was changed. According to their help article recordings stay in your Cloud DVR for as long as your Hulu + Live TV account remains active. However if you fail to manage your Cloud DVR and it becomes full then the oldest programs will be deleted to make room for new programs.

However with Hulu if you want your Cloud DVR to act more like a true Hardware-based DVR (similar to AT&T TV Now or YouTube TV) you need the Enhanced Cloud DVR Add-On which bumps up the storage to 200 Hours and gives you the ability to FF through commercials.


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