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Comcast and Spectrum are trying new tactics to win back cord-cutters and keep their existing TV customers from jumping ship. Last week, Comcast retooled its TV plans and made them easier to understand. Instead of needing to provide a service address and scrutinize the fine print for hidden fees, you can now just go to an Xfinity web page to compare the actual prices up front. Spectrum, meanwhile, has focused on bundling streaming services with its main cable TV packages. (It also stopped doing sneaky fees last year.) The upshot is that it’s now a lot easier to decide whether cable TV is still worth it, or to determine whether your current cable TV plan is overpriced. Let’s walk through Comcast’s and Spectrum’s offerings to help you figure it out. Spectrum’s $100 cable TV deal vs. streaming Spectrum is currently offering a promo for its “TV Select Signature” plan, bringing the price to $100 per month for 12 months instead of the usual $120 per month. Spectrum’s “TV Select Plus” plan, which includes regional sports, costs an additional $10 per month. Both plans include cloud DVR for up to 50 shows, and you can use Spectrum’s streaming TV apps instead of a cable box. Jared Newman / Foundry On the surface, neither plan compares favorably to the likes of YouTube TV ($83 per month) or Hulu + Live TV ($90 per month). Spectrum’s big pitch, though, is that you get a bunch of streaming services at no extra cost, including Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, ESPN Unlimited, Paramount+, Peacock, AMC+, and Vix. (Tennis Channel is also included in Spectrum’s TV Select Plus and TV Platinum plans.) Spectrum says these the value of these services equals more than $100 per month, but that claim relies on some double-dipping. ESPN Unlimited and Fox One consist mainly of the same content that’s already on their respective cable channels, and Spectrum’s adding up the individual costs of Disney+ and Hulu instead of their bundled price with ESPN. When we look at the real value of these streaming freebies, it adds up to $63 or $73 per month: Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN Select (all with ads): a $20-per-month value HBO Max (with ads): an $11-per-month value Paramount+ (with ads): an $8-per-month value Peacock (with ads): an $11-per-month value AMC+ (with ads): a $7-per-month value Vix (with ads): a $6-per-month value Tennis Channel (TV Select Plus and TV Platinum only): a $10-per-month value So, is Spectrum’s TV plan a good deal? It depends on which services and channels you’d normally pay for year round. YouTube TV combined with just the first four streaming services listed above, for instance, would cost you a total $133 per month, versus $120 per month with Spectrum ($100 per month in year one). Hulu with Live TV combined with Peacock, Paramount+, and AMC+ would cost you $120 per month, same as Spectrum’s non-promotional rate. (Hulu’s service includes Disney+, Hulu on demand, and ESPN Select at no extra charge.) In those scenarios, Spectrum comes out ahead. But if you don’t need a full-sized pay TV package, or your streaming needs are more narrow, Spectrum’s TV plans could be a waste of money. As I’ve previously documented, cheaper bundles with fewer channels are starting to become available, some of which include free streaming services themselves. I encourage you to look at all those options before committing to a TV bill of $100 per month or more, because even when you factor in Spectrum’s freebies, the cost might not be worth it. (While Spectrum also offers a $40-per-month option called TV Stream, with dozens of entertainment channels along with CNN and Fox News, you won’t get local channels, live sports, or any streaming freebies.) Comcast’s updated packages vs. streaming Unlike Spectrum, Comcast isn’t bundling any free streaming services with its standard cable TV packages. That makes the comparison a lot simpler. Comcast’s main TV package is now called “Xfinity TV Plus,” and it costs $95 per month if you also have Xfinity home internet service. “Xfinity TV Premium” costs $125 per month for internet customers, and it includes regional sports networks and sports league channels. (Each is $10-per-month pricier without an Xfinity home internet service.) Comcast includes an X1 cable box and 300 hours of DVR with all plans, and you can use the Xfinity Stream app on connected smart TVs, PCs, and mobile devices as well. Jared Newman / Foundry Compared to YouTube TV at $83 per month or Hulu + Live TV at $90 per month, Comcast’s full-sized TV packages are still more expensive, though not by lot. You’d be paying a premium for the creature comforts of a cable box (and tying yourself to Comcast’s internet service if you want the $10-per-month discount). But Comcast is also wading into the skinny bundle business. Its Sports & News TV package includes local channels, major national sports networks, cable news channels, and Peacock for $80 per month. An $85-per-month World Soccer Ticket plan adds Spanish-language channels such as TUDN, Fox Deportes, and ESPN Deportes. (While these plans include Peacock, Comcast’s larger packages strangely do not.) Other sports bundles are still cheaper, including DirecTV MySports ($70 per month) and Fubo Sports ($56 per month), but as with Comcast’s full-sized packages, DirecTV’s sports offerings might be worthwhile if you want the cable-box experience. More to come Last week, YouTube announced that it will launch more than 10 of its own genre-specific packages early next year. It hasn’t revealed pricing or many details, except that one of the packages will focus on sports. All of which means that the cable companies will soon need to adapt once more. It’s great that they’ve finally embraced price transparency and are finding ways to deliver value, but without more flexible options for cord cutters, they’ll again find themselves behind the times. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more streaming TV advice. Read...

Over the past few years at LDShop, we’ve been watching something subtle but important happen in the background of the games industry. On the surface, it’s the same mix of new seasons, fresh banners, and limited-time events—but underneath, the way players pay, the tools they use, and the risks they face have all started to shift. Drawing on what we see in our own data, combined with public reports from payment providers and security researchers, we’ve identified a few key trends that are quietly reshaping how global top-ups actually work in 2025 and beyond. Shifting player spend patterns Players aren’t exactly tightening their belts; they’re just spending in a much more scattered way. That’s the clearest thing we see, looking at LDShop’s orders every day. On the surface, the market still looks healthy. In 2024, global games revenue sits at around $187.7 billion, up about 2.1% from the previous year. PC and console together make up roughly half of that, while mobile remains the single biggest slice of the pie. So the crowd of people willing to pay for games is still growing. The market hasn’t exploded, but it definitely hasn’t shrunk. LDShop What has really changed is how that money is sliced up. Not long ago, plenty of players had “one main game”. You’d lock into an MMO, a big gacha, or a favourite sports title, and most of your money went there: big bundles, expansions, season passes. Now it looks very different. One month of spending might be: a pity chase in a gacha RPG a battle pass in a competitive or sports game a couple of event packs in another title plus one or two ongoing subscriptions quietly renewing in the background Once spending is spread out like this, “Where do I top up?” stops being a one-off question. It turns into, “Which place am I okay using across all these games, all year?” That’s why aggregators like LDShop or Razer Gold keep showing up in comparison posts: one login covers multiple titles, regions, and denominations. Instead of rotating between four or five unfamiliar stores, people lean toward a single platform that fits into their existing routine. The thinking has shifted from “How much can I shave off this one order?” to “Over a whole year of small purchases, how do I keep costs and hassle under control?” When you look at it on that timescale, multi-game platforms naturally have an edge over the old model of “one official store plus a random mix of third-party sites”. Digital wallet shift The bigger change, though, is in how people pay. By 2022, digital wallets already handled close to half of global e-commerce transaction value. In China, mobile and digital wallets made up about 67.3% of e-commerce payments in 2023, with Alipay and WeChat Pay leading the charge. In the US, roughly 72% of consumers were using services like PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, or Cash App in 2023, and that share is still creeping up. If you think about your own day, it makes sense. Food delivery, ride-hailing, streaming, online shopping – it’s all wallet-based now. Pulling out a physical credit card for a small cross-border game top-up almost feels old-fashioned. Banks don’t love those transactions either: they’re low value, foreign, and often flagged as risky. People run into extra one-time passwords, random declines, or “please call the bank” moments. After that happens a few times, they simply stop using that card for games. LDShop has been built around that reality from the start. The goal is simple to say but tricky to execute: global game coverage, local payment habits. That doesn’t just mean pasting more logos on the checkout page. In Taiwan, for example, LDShop supports LINEPay, MyCard and can issue local e-invoices. In Russia, players can conveniently pay using ??? (SBP) and Tinkoff Pay. The point is that when a player reaches checkout, the experience should feel like any other familiar local e-commerce site, not like learning a new financial product from scratch. And that familiarity matters more than any “fast and secure” tagline. When people see payment options they already use for groceries or transport, the decision to reuse the same platform next time becomes almost automatic. Escalating account threats As volumes grow, risk has stopped being a niche concern and turned into a daily one. You don’t need insider data to see it. Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report mentioned blocking roughly 450 million cyber-attack attempts per day, with a notable share pointed at digital goods, small payments, and login credentials. For attackers, small game top-ups are ideal: frequent, cross-border, and historically lighter on verification — a pattern that also explains why even a few basic security tweaks can make a noticeable difference for everyday users. The problem is that the damage rarely stays small. A compromised payment method or account can link out into other games, platforms, and cards. So the question “Is this top-up channel safe?” is no longer a throwaway line. It has become a very real issue that can directly affect account reputation, virtual assets, and even the exposure risk of your payment methods. When users choose a platform now, they’re looking much more closely at how much information they have to hand over, how transparent the platform’s processes are, and whether real-world cases and resolution records exist for them to reference if something goes wrong. In this environment, LDShop’s strategy is to put itself in a position where it can be examined, rather than limiting users to one-way official messaging. We keep our Trustpilot page open and active, where the platform currently holds a 4.8/5 rating with around 2,800 reviews. The feedback isn’t a wall of perfection—it looks like a real operating business: Some users highlight stable pricing, fast delivery, and the fact that they don’t have to hand over their game passwords. Others point out that there can be slight delays during peak periods, or that extra checks may be needed when risk controls are triggered. To many players, that mix feels more like a real business than a sales brochure. Things mostly work; sometimes they don’t; and there’s a transparent history of both. Combined with LDShop’s connection to the LDPlayer ecosystem, it paints a picture of a long-term operation rather than a fly-by-night site that could vanish or rebrand overnight. Real trust doesn’t come from saying “we are safe” in a banner. It comes from giving people enough information to decide for themselves what level of risk they’re comfortable with. Choosing trusted platforms: LDShop LDShop So, what actually drives the choice of a top-up platform now? Most players are quietly managing a small personal bundle of games and launchers. Almost nobody wants to learn a new payment flow every time they chase a limited banner or renew a battle pass. Saving a small amount on one order feels less exciting if it comes with extra verification steps, dispute emails, and a nervous chat with the bank. From what we observe, people are effectively rating platforms on four broad axes: 1. CoverageDoes this place support the few games and regions I truly care about, all in one account, or only look impressive on a long list? 2. Fit with daily payment habitsCan I pay the same way I already pay for other online services, or do I have to dig out a rarely used card or method just for this? 3. Comfort around security and frictionAre the rules consistent? Is sensitive data kept to a minimum? Do I get hit by random checks every other purchase? 4. Outside reputationAre there public reviews, discussions, and past cases that I can look up in a few minutes, beyond whatever the platform says about itself? LDShop’s place in that landscape is fairly clear. We’re backed by the LDPlayer brand, we position ourselves as a global professional top-up platform with clear product lines (UID direct recharge, gift cards, game cards) on our official site, we work to make local payment and invoicing feel like normal e-commerce, and we put our reputation on public platforms knowing it will be scrutinized over time. For LDShop, the key has always been on the user’s side: everyone’s game library, payment habits, and risk tolerance are different. The more useful question is not “who is the cheapest for this one transaction,” but rather: “which platform can I rely on month after month without thinking twice?” LDShop’s aim is straightforward — to be the go-to top-up service players trust all year, no matter the game or device. Read...

A student has settled a sexual harassment case against her former employer JD Sports Fashion PLC for £65,000. Read...