The new streaming platform Pluto TV is completely different from all the others: you don't need to register, you don't pay to watch movies and TV series
As promised at the end of September, Pluto TV, the new free streaming TV of ViacomCBS (MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network) has arrived in Italy. This is the free counterpart to the paid offer of Paramount+, also coming to our country.
The available sections, with different channels within them, are 8: Movies, Series, Crime, Entertainment, Music, Sports, Children and Documentaries. This content is both in Italian, most of them, and in English without subtitles. There are two ways to use Pluto TV: linear, that is, live, and on demand, similar to many other streaming platforms. In any case, however, all content is free: there are, in fact, advertisements. Pluto promises a maximum of four commercials every hour, but never at startup. Very interesting is the management of privacy, which deserves a separate investigation.
Pluto TV: where to watch it
Pluto TV was launched this morning, but the apps were not immediately available: it took a few hours. At the moment, you can download the Pluto TV app for Android, iOS, Chromecast (even Chromecast with Google TV) and Android TV, Amazon Fire Stick.
The app is still called "Pluto TV - Movies & TV Series" and it's not yet super stable on all platforms. Unfortunately, on the official Pluto TV website, there's very little information published: even the support site is barely sketched out.
In short, you get the impression that the service was launched in "beta", but it's free so no one will get too upset about that.
Pluto TV: the business model
Pluto TV is a very different platform from all the others: you don't even need to register to use it, you just need to connect to the site or download one of the apps to watch the content.
However, the app collects some data about the user's viewings and uses it to administer the commercials. The business model, then, is a mix of past and future: the old advertising in the middle of movies, but personalized as on the Internet.
In any case, there is an option to ask the company not to sell the collected viewing data. In short, it's a very interesting experiment, we'll see how much it will be appreciated in Italy where viewers are very focused on digital terrestrial to see free content.