FuboTV Review: Live stream sports and much more

fuboTV used to be a quiet streaming service, mainly focusing on providing as much football (soccer) as you could stand to watch.

There’s nothing quiet about them anymore.

Just look at these major channels that fuboTV has added to their live TV streaming lineup recently:

• HGTV
• Food Network
• Travel Channel
• DIY Network
• Cooking Channel
• CBS Sports
• SHOWTIME
• The CW
• Pop
• CBSN

For a streaming service that just started in 2015, they’re making a lot of noise in the industry.

If this sounds good so far, here’s everything you need to know in my fuboTV review.

Features

All channels in 1080p HD: To me, it’s all about picture quality. If it doesn’t look great, I’m not interested. Every single channel in the lineup streams in full HD 1080p goodness.

Local stations: Not every local channel is available, but many are. You can enter your zip code on fubo.tv and find out exactly what is available in your area.

Digital Channel Guide: Just like your cable TV service, fuboTV has a digital channel guide to tell you what’s on. You’ll never go back to streaming live TV without it.

DVR: Sometimes life gets in the way. You can record up to 10 programs and keep them for ten days after they’ve aired.

Watch anywhere you want: Whether you want to watch on your TV, your PC or your mobile device, fuboTV has you covered with apps for most major devices.

Stream live sports: This is what most people are missing when they try to cut the cord. With a sports-centered lineup, including your local Fox Sports channels, you can keep track of your favourite team, even if you don’t live in the local market.

Free 7-day trial: If you’re not sure that fuboTV is right for you by now, check it out risk-free for 7 days.

fuboTV Channels

So what channels can you get? Well, as I mentioned earlier, fuboTV has been adding a lot of new channels lately. In fact, they’ve added an additional $55 million dollars in venture capital from such big name investors like Univision Communications, 21st Century Fox, Scripps Networks Interactive, the U.K.’s Sky, and former NBA commissioner David Stern.

We’ve already seen new channels added from Fox, the NBA and Scripps. My guess is that Sky channels can’t be that far behind.

Let’s look at what’s available now:

Sports Channels

• FOX Sports Networks
• Fox Soccer Plus
• FOX Sports One
• FOX Sports Two
• FOX Deportes
• NBCSN
• NBA TV
• Golf
• CBS Sports
• CSN
• beIN Sports
• beIN Sports Connect
• ONE World Sports
• Big Ten Network
• Univision UDN
• Football Report TV
• fuboTV Network
• GOLTV
• YES Network

TV Channels

• MSNBC
• CNBC
• CNBC World
• USA
• FOX
• FOX Business
• FOX News
• FXM
• Syfy
• E!
• FX
• FXX
• National Geographic Wild
• National Geographic
• The History Channel
• Hallmark Channel
• Hallmark Movie Channel
• The Weather Channel
• Sprout
• Oxygen
• Fuse
• Telemundo
• Univision
• Novelas de Univision
• Galavision
• Lifetime
• Lifetime Movie Network
• Local Now
• REVOLT
• RITMOSON
• Telehit
• A&E
• Bravo
• Unimas
• Viceland
• El Rey Network
• FYI,
• HGTV
• Food Network
• Travel Channel
• DIY Network
• Cooking Channel
• SHOWTIME
• The CW
• Pop
• CBSN

fuboTV Addon Channels

If that’s not enough, fuboTV has additional packages and add-on channels that might be what you’re looking for.

There are Spanish and Portuguese language packages that can be added. Fubo Latino costs $14.99 per month for 13 Spanish language channels. Fubo Português costs $19.99 per month for 6 channels in Portuguese. Or, if you’re adding those packages to an existing fubo Premiere subscription, there’s an additional discount.

Besides that, you can add Sports Plus for golf, fantasy sports and mixed martial arts content for an additional $5.99. If you’re a Chelsea supporter, you can get ChelseaTV for an additional $5.99. Or if cycling is more your thing, you can add the fubo Cycling channel for $8.99 a month.

What soccer leagues can you watch?

fuboTV’s core market is the football fanatic. If that’s you, then you won’t be disappointed.

According to their website, fuboTV carries club-level games from the UEFA Champions League, Europa League, Copa Libertadores, Copa Sudamericana, CONCACAF Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup. There are also league games for the English Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Liga MX, MLS, Liga Portugal, Argentina Primera Division, Brasileirão, Scottish Premiership, among others.

If national games are more your thing, fuboTV carries UEFA, CONMEBOL, CONCACAF and CAF World Cup Qualifying matches for Russia 2018, and regular CONMEBOL, CONCACAF, and CAF tournaments.

fuboTV Review

I’m going to be showing screenshots of the NVIDIA Shield Android TV app in this review. But the layout is extremely similar, no matter which app you’ve installed.

User Interface

fuboTV is going to feel instantly familiar to any one that’s ever watched cable TV before. The app pulls up quickly and automatically signed me in.

From there you’ve got four tabs along the top of the screen that direct you to where you want to go: Matches, Channels, Schedule and My DVR.

• Matches: If you want a particular sport, league or event, then you’ll want to start off here. According to Wired Golfers everything is listed down the left hand side of the screen. Just scroll down to the sport that you want to see and the different options will populate on the right side. You can watch something live or set it up to record for future viewing.
• Channels: If channel surfing is more your style, you can do that too. Here you’ll find a listing of all of the fuboTV channels available. The sports channels are prioritized toward the top of the screen, so you can always find them first.
• Schedule: This is just like the channel guide you get with your cable TV or DirecTV service. You can quickly scroll through all of the channels and see what’s on right now, and what’s coming up in the next few hours.
• My DVR: Here you’ll find a list of things you’ve scheduled for later viewing. You get 10 recording slots and it doesn’t matter how long the shows are. One of the nice features is that even if you’re not at home, you can schedule things from the website or mobile app.

Speed

One of the first things that struck me about fuboTV was how fast the channels loaded. You know how usually if you live in an apartment, perhaps in an expensive city like Chicago with a ton of residents nearby,you load speed is slow? Not here. I’m used to watching that status dial spin for a few seconds before my video plays, even on YouTube. More often than I’d like, I’m waiting for ten to fifteen seconds just staring at a blank screen.

That didn’t happen with fuboTV. Every channel loaded and started playing within 2-3 seconds after selecting it. Every. Single. Time. It didn’t mater what time of day, or what channel I was watching.

Everything played right away.

Picture quality

I’m used to 4K streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, so it’s always a little disappointing when I look at live TV. It’s still broadcast in HD, so there’s a visible quality difference. That’s nothing against fuboTV. They can only do so much, and if nobody is broadcasting in 4K, there’s not much they can do about it.

When I changed to a different channel, it was fairly common for the site to load in standard definition (SD) and then switch to high-definition (HD) a few seconds later. If you’ve used any streaming service, this is par-for-the-course, so I won’t ding them for that.

Overall, the streaming experience was exactly what you’d expect for a cable TV replacement.

Come for the sports..stay for the extra stuff

If everything else wasn’t enough, then here are a couple of other benefits that fuboTV throws in.

• TV Everywhere Authentication : I hate passwords. TV Everywhere is a system that works with many different apps so that you only have to sign-in once.
• DVR : You can record up to ten different programs and store them for later use. Your shows are stored on fuboTV’s cloud  servers so you can access them on any device, any time.
• fuboTV App : There are dedicated apps for Android, Android TV, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV as well as being able to cast through Chromecast and watching on your PC.

fuboTV Price

The core of fuboTV’s streaming service is the fubo Premier package. That will set you back about $34.99 per month for over sixty channels – all in HD. There’s also a Spanish and Portuguese channel option at either $14.99 or $19.99, respectively.

This isn’t as great a deal as it used to be, but it puts it in line with many of the other streaming services.

The Verdict

It feels instantly familiar. There’s no wondering what to do next or where to go. The four main headings are easy to understand and easy to use. Personally, I’ve never been much of a channel surfer. I’ve always had specific things to watch, and that’s it. So I spend most of my time in the Matches tab. I find things that I don’t normally follow, but enjoy watching when they’re on – like F1 racing. This makes it easy to do that.

But it also lets me channel surf if I want to. I wish the channels were grouped a bit better. I don’t see any rhyme or reason to the way they have them sorted. For right now, it’s not bad. There aren’t enough channels that I ever felt lost, but I think it would make it easier if there was some more organization.

The bottom line is that fuboTV isn’t trying to be different. They’re trying to give the familiar look and feel to your cable TV box, but at a fraction of the cost.

I think they nailed it.

If you’ve been wanting to stream live sports, then try fuboTV risk-free for 7 days.