Philo Review: A Surprisingly Good Service for the Low Price

Philo is a surprisingly good live TV streaming service for the price. Although the channel lineup isn’t going to suit everyone, if you find the selection of channels meets your specific needs, there’s no reason to look elsewhere for a live TV package.

Streaming Better Rating

★★★★☆

Philo offers good value overall, but it is worth understanding what you will get before signing up to the service as the channel lineup won’t suit everyone.

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With the price starting at $25 per month, Philo is designed to be an affordable live TV service. However, there’s no escaping that the low monthly price affects the channels, and the channel lineup is likely to be the biggest stumbling block for some.

For everyone else, the combination of a low price, decent app experience, and an unlimited cloud DVR, makes Philo a great choice for an affordable way to stream live TV.

Full Review

Key Features – What You Need to Know

Below is some key information on Philo.

Experience – What It’s Like to Use Philo

It would be fairly natural to assume the experience might not be up to par when considering the price, but the Philo apps are surprisingly good and certainly reliable.

Live TV streams in 720p, which is unfortunate, and especially considering there’s no option to improve the quality. In contrast, on-demand content is available to watch in 1080p.

Regardless of the quality, there were no major issues in terms of the consistency and reliability when streaming.

With support for Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV and Roku devices, as well as smart TVs from Samsung and LG, and the option to watch through a web browser, there’s also no major issues with device support.

Philo’s Interface and User Experience

Philo’s interface is fairly easy to use and surprisingly attractive. While the latter statement is highly subjective, the point is Philo does appear to have spent a good amount of time thinking about the user experience, and this is something we appreciate.

In terms of functionality, there are no major complaints to note, and generally speaking, the Philo app is easier to navigate.

On living room devices, the app opens up to the Home screen where users are presented with a row-based system.

Here subscribers will find a number of themed rows like Keep Watching, Saved (recordings), Trending Live and Recommended before then moving to genre and topic-related sections like DIY, Reality Roundup and Throwbacks.

The top-level menu options consist of Home, Guide, Top, Saved, Search and Settings, making it easy to jump between the main categories.

While nothing majorly wrong with the layout, it can be a little time-consuming to find content, unless it just happens to surface close to the beginning of a row or at the top of the screen.

Of course, users can manually search for content and the search feature works well. Although Philo doesn’t offer predictive text, results do update to reflect the most likely search terms as you type.

While predicted results will start to show from the very first letter of a search, unless the title you are looking for happens to be one of the first results shown, predictive text would be more helpful.

The live TV guide follows a similar pattern. It looks great overall, and is easy to use, but lacks some of the premium and advanced design elements found with more expensive services, such as YouTube TV.

On the Guide page, consumers can see what’s on now and next, and scroll forward to see what’s due to be shown live in the near future.

Last time we reviewed Philo, the live guide was not a full 7-day guide and tended to only show listings for the next couple of days. That’s changed, as we were easily able to scroll beyond a full week and even beyond a two-week period.

Each program is presented as a card in the guide and users can either click/tap to see program details or hold to immediately jump in and start watching.

If accessing the details page, the user is presented with multiple options, including playing the title (from live or the beginning), saving (recording) the title, viewing other episodes (if it’s a series), as well as checking out additional content from the same channel.

All of which makes each card a highly useful and easy-to-use navigation tool.

Depending on the platform and device, some subscribers may find the experience differs slightly from what’s described above.

That said, there should only be slight variations, as we found the Philo experience to be largely consistent across operating systems and across TV, mobile, and desktop.

Here’s a closer look at the mobile app.

One area of the experience that can be a little confusing is the playback option. Any content that a user has recorded is available to stream directly through any place the user finds the title.

For example, in Saved, by clicking on a series in the Shows section, or a movie in the Movies section.

While this is straightforward enough, users are prompted to choose whether they want to watch the DVR version or an on demand version.

Although these sound the same there is a very important difference between them – ads.

If choosing the on demand version, the viewer will encounter ad breaks during playback. Considering many will think of DVR copies as on demand copies this can be confusion and result in users selecting the wrong version.

As we’ve now dipped our toes into the DVR, it’s probably a good time to take a closer look at the recording experience in general.

DVR and Additional Streams

Philo provides all subscribers with access to an unlimited DVR, making it possible to record as many movies and shows as they want.

While Philo previously limited the storing of recordings to 30 days, that’s changed since the last time we reviewed the service.

Nowadays, Philo subscribers (except those locked to a legacy plan) can store DVR recordings for an entire year, with all of their recordings located under the Saved tab.

Depending on how long ago an episode or movie was shown live, subscribers may not even need to bother with recordings. This is due to Philo also offering a 72-hour “rewind” feature.

Essentially, subscribers can go back in time and watch anything shown within the previous 72 hours, regardless of whether it was recorded or not.

Technically, this is not a rewind feature, as you cannot rewind. Instead, there’s the ability to view what was shown during the last 72 hours and click on any of the listings to start watching.

As to be expected, there are some restrictions with the feature, but it is generally as described, and a useful addition for those that don’t want to unnecessarily add to their DVR library, or have missed a recent broadcast.

Simultaneous Streams

Unlike the price and channels, simultaneous streams can often be an area that’s overlooked by consumers – even though it is just as important.

Simultaneous streams directly impacts how many devices can access the service at the same time making it extremely important for households where multiple people will be sharing an account.

In Philo’s case, subscribers can stream on up to three devices at the same time. Although that’s not necessarily a lot, and especially as other services have started increasing this limit, it still should be sufficient for many homes.

Live TV — Designed for Entertainment

Philo provides subscribers with access to more than 70 paid channels. Paid is an important distinction here as the service also includes access to more than 100 FAST channels.

While these FAST channels are free to watch without a paid Philo subscription, they are still included in the paid package, adding additional value.

However, as they are free, we’ll skip over them in this review and focus on the channels you’ll actually be paying for.

The problem with Philo’s channel lineup has never been the quantity, but always the quality.

That’s not to say that the channel lineup is bad, it’s not. It’s just not quite as premium as some may want or expect from a live TV streaming service.

Philo’s main live TV product adopts a very clear ‘all or nothing’ approach where subscribers pay a low price and gain access to all the channels Philo has to offer.

While this will be fine for some, it won’t be for others. The lack of a true tiered subscription system (more on this later) means there is no real way to upgrade the selection of live TV channels.

If you don’t like the list, that’s it. That’s your lot, and Philo isn’t going to be the right live TV service for you.

Speaking of the list, it is mainly geared towards entertainment and lifestyle programming.

For example, you can expect access to the Discovery family of channels, including Food Network and HGTV, as well as all of the Hallmark channels, and popular Paramount networks like Comedy Central, Paramount, MTV, and Nickelodeon.

What you shouldn’t expect access to is live news and sports. Even though these are arguably the two main reasons many homes pay for a life TV package, they are completely missing from Philo.

If locals or live sports are a high priority for you then Philo is not going to be the right live TV service.

On Demand — Even More Content to Stream

Live TV access is only half of what Philo has to offer, with the other half being on-demand content, and this is where the service has seen a lot of improvement in recent years.

In general, the on-demand library is filled with plenty of movies, shows, and additional programming.

What’s more, those wanting even more on demand content have the option of upgrading to the Bundle+ plan.

While Philo doesn’t offer a traditional tiered subscription setup, it does offer a premium $33/mo package.

Bundle+ not only unlocks access to all of the channels and on demand content as the $25 plan, but it also includes AMC+, Discovery+, and HBO Max.

Considering Bundle+ is only $8 more each month, subscribers get access to a lot more on demand content, making it a pretty good deal.

All of this content is also accessible directly within the Philo app. Once subscribed, any content available with the premium subscriptions becomes instantly available and seamlessly woven throughout the experience.

Subscribers will find content from AMC+, Discovery+ and HBO Max mixed in with their recommendations on the Home screen and elsewhere in the app.

In addition, they can also access service-specific content directly through branded hub pages for each service.

For those that only sign up to the base Philo plan, the level of on demand content is fine, and adds value. However, upgrading to Bundle+ significantly increases the amount of on demand value.

Sports – What You Get and Don’t Get

One of the main downsides with Philo, and a clear reason NOT to sign up, is the complete lack of sports.

Technically, Philo does offer some sports content, as a live TV package does include access to a variety of FAST channels, including AXS TV, beIN Sports XTRA, MSG SportsZone, and Overtime. However, outside of these few FAST channels, Philo is completely lacking in the sports department.

For example, subscribers don’t get access to any of the major live sports channels like ESPN and FS1, and also don’t get any local broadcast networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.

All of which, makes Philo a no-go for sports fans. That’s unless they are able to get enough sports through standalone services (like HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock), and are just looking for a way to bolster the level of non-sports content they can watch.

While a clear disadvantage for Philo, this is also intentional. By design, Philo is an entertainment-focused live TV streaming service, and this means it does prioritize entertainment channels and programming over everything else.

Sports channels are notoriously expensive and adding them to Philo would likely result in the monthly cost of a subscription dramatically increasing.

In this sense, the lack of sports is something Philo actively embraces as a means to keep costs low rather than something that the live TV service is actively lacking.

Cost and Overall Value

Philo starts at $25 per month and this is both a positive and negative. For those that just want access to live TV, the service offers great value.

This is even more true when taking into account the unlimited DVR and the ability to stream on multiple devices at the same time. Both of which are likely to prove beneficial to larger families and busier households.

Here’s how the base plan compares to the cheapest packages offered by other live TV services.

For those wanting a richer live TV experience, the service lacks in comparison to others, and that’s a direct result of the lower cost.

The other problem with Philo is the lack of tiered plans. The only real option to expand the catalog is to bundle the few add-ons available, and this is where the Bundle+ plan comes in.

Bundle+ costs $33/mo and brings together the core Philo base plan, AMC+, Discovery+, and HBO Max. That’s a fair amount of extra content for an additional $8 a month, and an upgrade we think is definitely worth considering.

Overall, Philo does offer really good value but the exact degree of value depends on your needs. If primarily wanted a live TV package for entertainment, the value on offer is very high.

If, however, sports or news is important, the value on offer with Philo is significantly lower.

Is Philo Worth It? — What We Really Think

With access to many essential channels, an unlimited DVR, and a reliable app experience, consumers will be hard-pressed to find a better package for the price, and we do recommend giving Philo a try.

However, our recommendation comes with a major caveat. If the main reason you are considering a new live TV service is news and sports then skip Philo entirely.

While some sports and news channels are available, the selection is extremely limited and doesn’t include any of the mainstream channels viewers will be used to.

If you’re a sports fan, or in need of mainstream news channels, Philo simply isn’t for you.

Overall, we do think Philo is a service worth checking out. The price is great and so is the experience in general. The major issue, and what will ultimately decide whether Philo is the right service for you, is the channel selection.

If the channels included are enough for you and your household then Philo is easily worth the subscription cost.

★★★★☆

• 70+ channels
• AMC+
• HBO Max

$25/mo

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