PBS’s video streaming service does what the channel itself does best: reflect the culture and history of our country and the wider world. The free service provides access to thousands of hours’ worth of on-demand programming from flagship PBS series, such as PBS NewsHour and Frontline, plus many of Ken Burns’ documentaries. PBS Video also features a live TV streaming component: Subscribers can watch feeds of local PBS broadcast channels. Note that the best PBS shows (and many episodes from top series) are locked behind a paid subscription—albeit a reasonably priced one. Our biggest issues with the service are that PBS Video places unskippable ads during programming and does not let you download titles for offline viewing on mobile devices.
PBS Videos vs. PBS Passport vs. PBS Documentaries
There are three ways for you to experience PBS programming outside of watching your local TV station. The PBS Video app allows users to watch live feeds from PBS stations around the United States as well as select on-demand entertainment, news, and documentary films and shows. PBS Video offers a premium tier called PBS Passport, available to donors who contribute at least $60 a year or $5 a month to their local PBS station. With PBS Passport, you can access new and additional episodes of PBS favorites from its vast catalog, such as Finding Your Roots, Masterpiece, Nature, Nova, plus additional Ken Burns documentaries.
PBS Documentaries, on the other hand, is an Amazon Prime Channel. That channel, which costs $3.99 per month, is home to popular PBS documentary series and films like Prince Philip: The Plot To Make A King and The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution. Note that there is some overlap in content between PBS Documentaries and PBS Passport, though the former focuses specifically on long-form features.
What Can You Watch on PBS Video?
The PBS Video app is home to over 4,000 news, culture, entertainment, science, and nature shows. Kanopy, another free service, may be more robust with its collection of over 30,000 films, but PBS has a lot of flagship programming with loyal followers.
If you love to see muslin gowns and elaborate headwear, the Masterpiece productions listed under the Winter Dramas category will be of particular interest. In the Masterpiece section, you can watch period dramas like All Creatures Great and Small, The Long Song, and Miss Scarlet and the Duke. Beloved miniseries like Pride and Prejudice, starring a young Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, and 2008’s BBC hit Sense and Sensibility, an adaption of Jane Austen’s classic novel, are available to you as well.
PBS Video hosts tons of great documentaries. You can watch selections from American Masters, America Reframed, NOVA, and PBS NewsHour, as well as some Ken Burns documentaries. The rest are on PBS Documentaries.
Live PBS Streams
Local news, sports, and culture shows broadcast by your local PBS affiliate are also available for streaming. For example, because I live in Atlanta, Georgia, the local station’s offerings were from the ATL PBA channel.
If you don’t like your local station’s programming, you can check out others. To change stations, visit the Settings tab, choose Change Station, and then enter the zip code for another area. When you return to the home menu on the PBS, you will see local shows from that location.
PBS Video allows you to watch livestreams from over 100 local PBS stations. Note that the live feed from your member station may not follow the same schedule as the on-air broadcast in that area and that you can watch livestreams from only those PBS channels near your location.
In a similar way, Paramount+ includes access to select local and national CBS broadcast streams. You can alternatively watch live local PBS programming with both YouTube TV and Locast.
How Much Does PBS Video Cost?
PBS Video is free to access and doesn’t even require you to sign up for an account, but sometimes accounts are useful for personalized streaming recommendations and account preferences. If you do choose to set up an account, you can either authenticate with an existing Google, Facebook, or Apple account, or sign up for PBS Video directly with an email address and password.
Some other free video streaming services don’t require you to create an account. Kanopy and Peacock, our top choices for the category, do require you to set up accounts, however.
If you are already a PBS donor, you can link the email address associated with your account to your PBS Video login. If you are not already a donor, simply click the Become a Member button to set up your recurring donation and then link your accounts afterward.
PBS Passport, at $5 per month, is cheaper than most mainstream video streaming services, but its price is in line with many documentary streaming services. For comparison, Netflix starts at $8.99 per month and Disney+ is $7.99 per month. CuriosityStream‘s cheapest tier is only $2.99 per month, while MagellanTV charges $6.99 per month.
The PBS Video app is available on the web, mobile platforms (Android and iOS), media streaming devices (Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Roku), and Samsung’s smart TVs. PBS Video does not offer apps for gaming consoles, however. I tested the service on an Apple TV and an iPhone.
PBS Video’s Apple TV Interface
PBS Video’s layout is very easy to navigate and features a dark blue background with bright, colorful thumbnails. Once you find something to watch, just click on the thumbnail to see a brief description, trailers and extras, and a list of related titles.
If you see something you’d like to watch later, add it to the My List section. To do this, you tap or hover your mouse over the video’s thumbnail, and click the My List button. If you don’t have time to finish watching something in one sitting, PBS Video adds the last video you watched to the Resume Watching category on the Home tab.
I would like PBS Video to add some kind of group-watching feature. Several mainstream video streaming services, including Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and Netflix offer this capability. Co-watching options make streaming more fun and interactive, and who wouldn’t want to gather the gang together to watch Antiques Roadshow on a Friday night?
PBS Video on Mobile
I downloaded the PBS Video app on my iPhone XS running iOS 14.4 to try out the mobile experience and didn’t encounter any performance issues with the app. The mobile app retains the same navy-blue background and vibrant thumbnails, but looks even more at home on my phone’s smaller screen size.
Streaming on-demand video and the live feed from a local PBS station is painless. Just tap the thumbnail of what you want to watch and the app takes you to the playback screen. You can use the Picture-in-Picture (PIP) function to watch videos while doing other things on your phone. Unlike indie and art-house streaming service Ovid.tv (and most every other video streaming service), you cannot download programming to watch offline. This is a serious limitation, and one that you don’t find in PBS Documentaries.
Playback Experience
One of the service’s drawbacks are the unskippable ads. When I watched a 52-minute episode of Antiques Roadshow on my mobile device, I encountered a 30-second ad to start the show, but didn’t run into any others. It’s nowhere near as bad as Hulu’s over-2-minute ads, and PBS ads don’t appear on every show or every movie, but their presence is noticeable. If you’re looking for no-cost, ad-free documentary programming, check out Kanopy.
PBS Videos’ playback interface is fairly straightforward. You get standard playback controls and the ability to scrub through the video’s timeline, along with a 10-second rewind button on the web player and 15-second rewind and fast forward controls on the mobile app. You can enable and customize closed captions from the playback screen on the web player and select the playback resolution. If you’re watching on Apple TV, you have the ability to reduce sudden loud sounds by going to the Video and Audio menu and toggling Reduce Loud Sounds.
I tested the app’s streaming performance over a Gigabit Ethernet connection and a Wi-Fi connection (450Mbps download) on mobile. I watched a short video called Only in Atlanta: Midtown on the Apple TV app without any problems, as well as an episode of Antiques Roadshow. I resumed playback on my mobile phone partway through the latter show without issue.
Accessibility and Parental Controls
You can adjust the closed captioning settings directly from the PBS Video’s playback screen as well as choose the language. Available adjustments include the font size, font family, font color, as well as the opacity of the text, window, and background. The service doesn’t support audio descriptions like Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV+. When enabled, this accessibility feature provides an audible narration of things happening on-screen that would not be discernible from the dialog alone.
PBS Video does not have any parental control functions, but its programming is generally suitable for all ages. You can download the separate PBS Kids Video app for Android and iOS, however, for a more targeted library. Disney+ also includes very kid-friendly shows and movies, but it lets you create specific profiles for younger viewers. Kanopy offers an entire section of kid-centric streaming content, too.
PBS Video and VPN
A VPN can help protect your privacy online and spoof your location, but some video streaming services block VPN traffic to enforce regional streaming rights. To test whether PBS Video works with a VPN, I connected my iPhone to a ProtonVPN server based in the Netherlands. While my phone was connected to the VPN, I was unable to play certain videos on the app, including Passport videos. The app simply said that video was not available in my region. When I switched to a US-based VPN server, I was able to watch everything that was unavailable over the other server connection.
Even if you do find a VPN that works with every one of your video streaming services, that harmony might not last. Video streaming services are constantly finding new ways to detect and restrict VPN traffic. We recommend you choose a VPN based on other factors, such as its value, features, and privacy stance.
The Best of PBS…for a Price
PBS Video offers both on-demand streaming shows and live feeds of local PBS stations for free and without requiring you to create an account. The premium Passport tier, which unlocks substantially more of PBS’s vast library, is very affordable. Drawbacks to the service include the inability to download titles for offline viewing and that the majority of the streaming catalog is only available for US residents.
Netflix continues to be our Editors’ Choice winner for on-demand video streaming because of its exceptional library of originals and movies. Hulu, another Editors’ Choice pick, is a flexible streaming option with both a robust on-demand library and an excellent live TV channel lineup. Editors’ Choice winner YouTube TV dominates the live TV market with an intuitive interface and top-notch features.
