NBC’s Peacock Is Here: 5 Ways To Get The Most From TV Streaming Service

NBC’s New Free Streaming Service Peacock Launched on Wednesday with over 20,000 hours of shows, movies, news, sports, select channels, trending highlights, and exclusive originals, of which approximately two-thirds can be viewed completely free of charge. The platform hosts popular shows like Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock; classic movies like Jurassic Park and The Matrix trilogy; and a large catalog of programs and movies from a variety of networks and studios. (Unfortunately, you won’t find NBC’s most successful show The Office in Peacock until January.)

Read more: Peacock review: a ton of free NBC content with ads, but it doesn’t work on all devices

You can stream Peacock on Apple devices like iPhone and Apple TV, Google devices like Android and Chromecast phones, Xbox One consoles, PlayStation 4 consoles, Vizio SmartCast TVs, and LG smart TVs. But at launch, you can’t see popular Roku or Amazon Fire TV devices.

Whether you’re joining the Peacock free tier or subscribed to one of the premium tiers, check out the tips and tricks we’ve found so far to help you get the most out of the new streaming service.

Choose which price level is best for you

Peacock’s free tier includes approximately two-thirds of the entire catalog (approximately 13,000 hours of shows, movies, news and sports), with announcements. The Peacock Premium Tier costs $ 4.99 a month for the full catalog with ads. Paying $ 9.99 a month allows you to view the entire catalog without ads. If you want to upgrade to premium ad-supported or ad-free, Peacock makes it easy to compare plans on your account page.

Both premium levels are the same, except the ad-free plan, well, no ads. That plan will also give you the option to watch offline on mobile at some point in the future. Peacock also notes that due to broadcast rights, some titles, even if you have an ad-free premium, will still have ads. It’s easy to go back to the free version and you can still finish your free trial period.

If you sign up for the free tier, you can start looking right away and it’s easy to upgrade to one of the others. It was a seamless transition to premium advertising and there are only about 30 seconds of commercials that Peacock marks with a little orange dot. In an episode of Parks and Recreation, for example, I only saw three commercial breaks.

Read more: Peacock free vs. Premium vs. Premium Plus: Is an upgrade worth it?

Get the best deal

If you are interested in trying one of Peacock’s premium levels, you can get a longer free trial register with an Android device. Instead of the seven-day free trial, you’ll get three months of free Peacock Premium. Also, if you are already an Xfinity or Cox customer, you can also view the premium service for free.

Set up parental controls

Although Peacock doesn’t have the same reputation as HBO for adult shows, you may not want your kids to roam their library freely yet. While it doesn’t have the same children’s catalog size as Disney Plus or HBO Max, there are still plenty of options for kids. NBC’s streaming service has five different personalization options to make sure your family sees age-appropriate content.

Just click on the profile icon in the upper right corner and choose Settings. From there, scroll down to Parental Control and activate it. You can choose young children, older children, family, teenagers or adults. Peacock will give a brief description of each age section, for example Older Kids offers programming for children ages seven and up. Most of the show’s ratings will be TVY7, TVY7-FV, TVG, and G.

Make your selection and create a PIN. For example, if you choose to set your parental control settings to Family, which includes TVPG and PG, you will be prompted for the PIN before you can see anything with that rating or a higher rating.

Read more: Hulu vs Peacock: Which streaming service is best for you??

Navigation 101

Peacock’s browsing interface is configured like most streaming services. You can search for TV shows, movies, news, children, sports or Latinos. Free and Premium Content Mix: If you are using the free tier, you will see that the premium titles are marked with a purple tag. If you’re on the News tab and select Browse, you can view news segment clips and clip playlists from news shows like Morning Joe, The Rachel Maddow Show, and MSNBC.

In addition to Browse, you can also browse Channels, which allows you to browse a TV Guide-style menu of clips or some shows you can watch live. But note that these are not regular TV channels, for example an Office Shorts channel only shows clips from the show, not full episodes. The same goes for the Saturday Night Live Vault channel. It’s fun to flip through them if you want to watch something quickly, but it’s not the most effective way to find full episodes of shows.

Finally, the Trends tab allows you to scroll through 10 mosaic-shaped pages that automatically start playing news, night clips, or sports highlights. It’s like flipping through 10 preselected YouTube clips.

Rotten Tomato ratings

When looking for a good movie to watch (or one that is so bad, it is good), Peacock saves you a few steps by including Rotten Tomato’s ratings directly on the movie page. You can view the Tomatometer percentage by clicking on the movie or hovering over it on the desktop. When I examined the collection of free Peacock movies on my laptop, some movies did not show a rating when I hovered over it. It appears that Peacock only promotes the rating if it is above 60%.

For more information on NBC’s Peacock, see our guide to everything you need to know about pricing, free trials, devices, shows, and movies and which means Peacock launched without Roku and Amazon Fire TV.