Verizon’s new Free View lets FiOS customers preview premium channels on demand

By Kris Wouk February 2, 2016

Fios TV Package — Edw/Shutterstock

With more people cutting the cord, traditional cable providers are needing to step up their game to keep customers from jumping ship. Often, this means adding new features, like the latest addition to Verizon FiOS, which the company calls Free View.

Essentially a new take on an old cable staple, Free View allows customers to preview premium channels for 48 hours. All users need to do is select the channel like they would any other, and the 48-hour free trial begins.

The channels available as part of the program aren’t going to surprise anyone. HBO, Showtime, Starz, Epix, and Cinemax make up the entirety of the offering. Once the trial begins, the channels are available not just for live TV, but for on-demand content as well, and can also be viewed from the FiOS mobile app.

As Verizon admits, free previews have existed almost as long as cable TV. The difference here is that customers can choose when the preview period begins. Verizon compares Free View to test-driving a new car in the blog post announcing the new feature.

This is handy for a snowed-in weekend or sick day, but the preview period seems awfully short. A 48-hour preview can be activated once per channel per year, but several of the channels offer their own free trials that are much longer. HBO Now offers new users a free month, as does Showtime for those trying out its apps.

Whether or not the preview period is too short, this will undoubtedly be better received by Verizon’s partners than one of its previous attempts to woo would-be cord-cutters. Last year the company announcing Custom TV, which was as close to an a la carte offering as it had ever offered, but ESPN argued that the contracts it had with Verizon didn’t cover distributing its channels that way.

Other companies soon joined ESPN with similar claims, and earlier this month Verizon announced it would “refresh” the service in order to better comply with its contracts, FierceCable reports. Litigation with ESPN is still ongoing.

Free View launches this week. See the Verizon website for details.

Editors' Recommendations

Verizon now lets you mix and match on Fios

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

Audio / Video

You have until June 9 to save $500 off an 85-inch Samsung The Frame TV

A painting being displayed on a Samsung The Frame QLED.

Looking for great TV deals? You still have time to save $500 on the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV when you head over to Samsung. It usually costs $4,300, but right now the popular and stylish TV is down to $3,800, making it more affordable than before. If you’re keen to invest in a large TV but love to save money too, this is a good opportunity. Here’s what you need to know about the TV before you decide to buy.

Why you should buy the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV
One of the best QLED TVs around, the Samsung 85-inch The Frame QLED TV is a delight in so many ways. At its core, it’s a fantastic QLED TV with 100% Color Volume with Quantum Dot technology saturating the screen with a billion colors. QLED adds a layer of quantum dots to a TV’s LED backlight with these dots, once exposed to light, emitting their own light with a high level of efficiency to provide great picture quality.

Audio / Video

It’s your last chance to get up to $1,900 off a Samsung OLED TV

The Samsung S90C in a living room environment.

There’s still a little time left to snap up one of the best TV deals available today, with Samsung still selling the 83-inch S90C OLED TV for $3,500 instead of $5,400. The $1,900 discount is a pretty vast one and one that you certainly don’t want to skip. If you’re looking for a great new TV for your large living space, you’re going to love this deal. Let’s take a look at how great the Samsung S90C OLED TV is.

Why you should buy the Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV
Samsung makes some of the best TVs around and we’re huge fans of the Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV. It has an OLED panel so you get self-lit pixels which can light up independently of each other. That means that you can enjoy the deepest blacks and the brightest colors all on the same scene, ensuring you never miss a detail. The Samsung 83-inch S90C OLED TV uses a Neural Quantum Processor with 4K upscaling so its AI-powered processor can transform whatever you’re watching. There’s also HDR OLED which uses AI deep learning to analyze each scene, detecting areas that need to brighter, darker, or simply richer in color.

Audio / Video

This Sonos Bluetooth speaker has a discount in time for beach weather

Sonos Roam SL in black on a rainy rock outdoors.

A day out at the beach. Cooking outside using a discounted grill or smoker. Pool party madness. What do they all three have in common? A lot of fun, but also a great chance to get any sound equipment ruined by a sudden downpour or a splash of inevitable water. That's why there are models of waterproof Bluetooth speakers, of which the Sonos Roam SL is one. And the good news is that you can get yours at a discounted rate before summer officially gets here. Right now, the Sonos Roam SL is just $127, which is $33 down from its typical price of $160. To get yours, all you need to do is tap the button below. Consider also reading below, as we examine the speaker and see why it is considered an easy pick up.

Why you should buy the Sonos Roam SL
The Sonos Roam SL is an easy-to-use, compact speaker for wherever you roam. Connect to it easily over Wi-Fi at home or Bluetooth on the go, giving you easy options to control the sound in a way that makes sense for you and your location. If you're at home and connected to your Wi-Fi system and have other Sonos speakers, you can even get the Sonos multi-room experience, which syncs everything in a nice way. So, you can keep the Sonos Roam SL out on the patio (where it might get rained upon) and keep the best Sonos speakers indoors and have a really cool, worry-free party experience that not many others will be able to replicate.