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One tricky aspect of being in an underrepresented group is how complicated your relationship can be with the media that does represent you. As a Black guy, part of me is glad BET exists, while another part is extra critical of the way Black Entertainment Television cynically represents my community. That goes double for my thoughts on Tyler Perry, the prolific African-American auteur who ended his TV partnership with Oprah to co-create the new BET+ video streaming service. Even setting aside my thoughts on its role in the culture, BET+ left me with mixed feelings. While it has some of the most popular Black movies and shows from across ViacomCBS, it’s pricey and lacks basic functionality.
What Can You Watch on BET+?
While rivals Brown Sugar and KweliTV focus on their Blaxploitation and international African art film niches, respectively, BET+ offers 1,000 hours of the big mainstream Black movies and TV shows you would expect to see on the channel itself. Hit movies include Barbershop, Death at a Funeral, and Juwanna Mann. Every streaming service needs a classic 1990s sitcom to binge, so BET+ has Martin. Stand-up comedy specials come courtesy of D.L. Hughley, Eddie Griffin, and Lil Rel Howery.
BET+ also pulls relevant shows from fellow ViacomCBS channels, such as Comedy Central and VH1 to beef up its library. Watch reality shows like Black Ink Crew and Love & Hip Hop. Why With Hannibal Buress is the short-loved experimental comedy show from everyone’s favorite landlord. The cross-pollination cuts both ways. The BET original Real Husbands of Hollywood is both here and on the Editors’ Choice winning Peacock streaming service from NBC. Peacock is also the only place you’ll currently find The Game streaming, despite that show airing its last few seasons on BET.
BET+ also boasts original shows. Some BET network shows, such as American Soul and Being Mary Jane, you’ll see on live TV, too. But other online-only shows are made exclusively for BET+ subscribers. These shows include a remake of First Wives Club, Hollywood drama Dark Money, and the imported Canadian legal thriller Diggstown.
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And then there’s Tyler Perry. I could easily spend another thousand words trying to explain my thoughts on this hugely successful writer/director/producer and his bad, but ironically entertaining, body of work. The idea of a single streaming service for all of Perry’s material is exciting on the level of Disney+’s Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars libraries for some audiences. BET+’s Perry library isn’t comprehensive, and I assume that’s due to Perry working with so many partners in the past. You won’t find his old movies. His new movies are coming to Netflix. Many of his TV shows still belong to Oprah Winfrey’s OWN channel, which is only available as a streaming service to existing cable subscribers.
Fortunately, if there’s one thing Tyler Perry can do it’s crank out more content. BET+ has his TBS show House of Payne. You can watch his Madea stage plays, which are trickier to track down than you might think. Perry is also the main creative force behind the guiltiest pleasure BET+ original shows. The Oval and Ruthless are mind-blowing, “so bad, it’s good,” cheap fever dream soap opera takes on prestige TV dramas, such as House of Cards and The Handmaid’s Tale. I took a class at film school analyzing Perry’s Ed Wood-esque oeuvre, so trust me when I say BET+ gave me plenty to chew on in that department.
Cost and Platforms
After a seven-day free trial, BET+ costs $9.99 per month. There are no ads and no other tiers. That makes it by far the priciest option of the Black-focused streaming services we’ve tested. Brown Sugar costs $3.99, while KweliTV costs $5.99. This price puts BET+ closer to mainstream, Editors’ Choice services with much broader libraries, such as ad-free Hulu ($11.99 per month) and standard Netflix ($12.99 per month).
BET+’s potentially confusing sign-up process may also accidentally leave you spending more than you wanted. First off, BET+ is not the same thing as BET Now, the free streaming app you can access if you already have BET through your cable provider. You subscribe to BET+ separately. HBO Max users may already be familiar with this kind of distinction. However, if you subscribe to BET+ as a channel through a third-party service, such as Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV+, your paid membership doesn’t carry over to the standalone app. So, we recommend subscribing directly through the BET+ website just to give yourself the most flexibility.
Once you are a subscriber you can access BET+ on a variety of devices. Supported platforms include mobile (Android and iOS), media streaming devices (Amazon Kindle, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Roku), and web browsers. It does not support video game consoles.
BET+ on the Web and Mobile
BET+’s web layout is fairly standard, with an attractive black and purple color scheme. At the top of the screen is a rotating selection of highlighted movies and shows. Scrolling down the page you’ll see rows of shows separated into different categories genres such as Dramas, Reality, and Stand-Up Comedy. Your list of shows you’re already watching is also integrated into this menu.
Unfortunately, there’s not much to the user experience beyond this surface-level menu. You can’t favorite shows. There’s no way to access your watchlist beyond the main menu, which doesn’t even always stay current. There’s no comment or rating system. Search options are basic, with no way to filter by different criteria.
You can full-screen videos, but you can’t adjust video quality. The modern material at least appears to be HD and I experienced no playback issues over my home Wi-Fi connection (60Mbps download) on my 4K television.
The mobile app offers some slight improvements. On the website, pages for each show just present you with a list of episodes. On mobile you can browse through related shows and more easily access extras like trailers and bonus features. On mobile or on the web you can see more recommendations while watching a movie. The mobile app also lets you skip forward or back ten seconds.
BET+ doesn’t support offline mobile downloads like VRV or fellow ViacomCBS streaming app CBS All Access. However, CBS All Access limits simultaneously streams to two per account. I didn’t find a hard limit for BET+’s simultaneous streams, but I was able to stream concurrently on all four devices I used for testing (iPhone 11, Google Pixel 3, Windows laptop, Roku TV app) without issue.
Accessibility and Parental Controls
Considering BET+’s library includes everything from family-friendly sitcoms to religious films to adult dramas, we were disappointed by the lack of parental controls. Each listing just has a rating. All you can do under your account is manage your payment details.
At least closed captioning options are robust. On the video player, pressing the CC button turns subtitles on or off. Pressing the gear icon brings up a list of attributes to customize including font size, font color, type style, background color, and window opacity.
BET+ and VPN
Online safety and privacy have never been more important. So, if you haven’t yet gotten a VPN, what are you waiting for? One hurdle for streaming video users is the fact that many of these services don’t work with VPNs. Changing your virtual location to another country tends to mess with region-specific licensing deals.
This is the case with BET+. While using a Windows test device connected to a ProtonVPN server in Texas, I could watch videos just fine. However, switching to a server outside of the United States caused videos to stop loading. Also, when I tried to return to the BET+ homepage, it took me to the Twitter page instead. Keep in mind that even the success I did see while connected to a VPN may only be temporary as companies get better at blocking VPN traffic.
Bet on BET+?
As a Tyler Perry scholar, BET+ soon became vital viewing for me. Setting aside my bizarre personal fascination, the rest of the library is varied enough to keep different kinds of audiences interested, even if browsing through the library could use some improvement. However, BET+ is priced like a service meant to take on streaming juggernauts like our Editors’ Choice, Netflix, which has a strong library of its own original Black movies and TV shows. BET+ can’t do that. For live TV channels, which sometimes include BET, check out our other Editors’ Choice picks Hulu and YouTube TV.
BET+ packages plenty of mainstream African-American entertainment, but it costs too much and lacks too many features.
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