Christian
It's been a fun few weeks playing with the VidAngel service. In that time I've written three other in-depth articles, which I encourage you to check out if you haven't yet and are interested in knowing more.
Links to previous parts: VidAngel Review: Overview | VidAngel Review: Getting Started | VidAngel Review: My Experience
In this closing article, I'll share my final thoughts on the service and my opinion on whether or not you might want to spend your money on VidAngel.
Let's wrap this up.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
The overall performance of the VidAngel service is something that honestly surprised me.
VidAngel is basically a "wrapper" around the content that's being served from Amazon, Netflix, etc. Because of this, I was expecting that the service/software of VidAngel could possible cause playback of content to be a little choppy or that playback would stop all together.
After watching for many hours and sometimes just letting the content play while I did other things, I'm happy to report that I didn't have any issues in this category.
Everything worked very well.
CONTENT
The amount of content VidAngel has from its main connected services (Amazon/Netflix) is pretty beefy. While it's not everything these services offer, which would be a monumental task, it is a healthy supply. And it seemed to me that VidAngel hit all the popular stuff from each service.
For Amazon, VidAngel does include content for a couple of the Amazon "channels," such as Paramount, but it would be great if they could expand this to other channels, such as Acorn (British TV).
In the "wish it had" category, I really, really wish I could use this service on content I already owned.
For example, I'd love some sort of app or box that was a "middleman" between my TV screen and my blue-ray player.
Additionally, it would be very awesome if you could use content purchased through iTunes or the Google Play store with VidAngel. In case you missed it, you can use bought content through the Amazon video store, so that's very nice.
Finally, I wish VidAngel would expand their service to other service providers, such as Discovery+. Heck, just being able to mute Gordan Ramsey's excessive use of foul language on Kitchen Nightmares alone would be worth the $10 a month (granted he might not say anything for the whole episode now).
Legal hurdles aside, content moves like this would boost the services' appeal greatly.
As it stands, there's a boatload of content for the watching and I'd score it fairly high.
FILTERS
Not too much to say here.
VidAngel has a lot of great filter options. It was certainly more than I expected.
If I had one improvement, it might be to provide some top-level generalized filters that will auto-select the required individual filters for us.
For example, a filter called "No homosexual content." By selecting this option, the filters for men kissing men, women kissing women and so on would be auto-selected.
Another example might be something like "No demonic content." Rather than drilling down into some sub category ("OTHER ELEMENTS > OBJECTIONABLE / DISTURBING / SCARY") and then going through items, instance by instance, all the appropriate instances are blocked automatically.
To me, this would put the filter system on the next level.
But as it stands, it's very good and I liked it a lot.
IS VIDANGEL WORTH IT?
And now we get to the meat of the dish. Is VidAngel worth your $10?
The quick answer is: it depends.
If you have an Amazon and/or Netflix account and routinely watch content from there, then yes, I think VidAngel is more than worth the $10 per month. And let's hope they keep making it even better.
If you don't have either of these content services and don't plan to, then VidAngel wouldn't be something you could utilize. Instead, I'd recommend checking out Dry Bar Comedy+ (my review: Dry Bar Comedy+ Review) if you love good, clean comedy and of course getting The Chosen app in your iOS or Android app store (free), which allows you to watch all of the great The Chosen content.
I love the concept and purpose of the VidAngel service and believe it's worth it for many people, but for my house it's a pass solely because of our viewing habits.
Let me explain.
- We have Amazon because of shopping, but we almost never watch anything here—perhaps 1-2 items a year on average.
- We don't have Netflix. I only subscribed for 1 month for the purposes of this review.
- Our monthly TV budget allowance usually sits at about $25 ($11 YouTube Premium, $7 Discovery+, etc). A $10 service would be near half of that budget and thus would need to be used a good portion of the time. And since we don't use the 2 main content services, there's no reason to have VidAngel for us.
And as far as the content we generally watch, here's the general breakdown:
- Christian content (sermons, conferences, TV/movies, etc) on various services/apps.
- Cooking shows, tutorials, reviews, etc.
- Live sports.
- General random content (retro gaming, building homes off the grid, home improvements, etc).
For us, there really isn't much interest in anything being churned out by Netflix, Amazon or general Hollywood studios, which makes us fortunate I guess (easy to ignore questionable content).
I can think of a couple shows we'd watch from time to time that could use a little filtering, but we own these and VidAngel doesn't work with them. So if we chose to watch these again we'd have to manually skip through and ignore things. Or we will just not watch them.
But to friends, family and anyone I run into that does enjoy content on Amazon and/or Netflix, I can and will wholeheartedly recommend VidAngel to them. And this includes you.
So if you use Amazon and/or Netflix, give VidAngel a month and try them out!
I hope you've enjoyed this 4-part VidAngel review series. I've attempted to cover everything I could think of.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS!