Based off the recommendation on this subreddit from another posted, I signed up for Team Orion and I think it's my new main service for the foreseeable future.

So right off the hop these guys have made security their number one priority. If you go through this subreddit the other poster touched on this quite a bit and it kind of high jacked the whole post so I'll just briefly summarize here, but this was all done BEFORE all hell broke loose with XC and damn I gotta tell you, it felt good when all that went down knowing I didn't have to worry about any of my info getting out there. So here's the basics and please leave it at that, I don't want a full comment section debating crypto and VPNs and all that.

- You must pay with crypto (BTC, USD coin, Litecoin are the options that stick out in my head but I think there's more). They've signed up anonymously with a merchant for this, the money gets transferred to a hardware wallet, converted to Monero, blah blah blah...basically they're not dumb and understand crypto isn't perfect but if it's in the right hands it's damn close.

- Their hosting account and domain was registered and paid for completely anonymously using crypto behind TOR from companies based in Iceland and Switzerland, ie it isn't a vulnerability (no one can go to the registrar or host and demand their info because even if they do, neither party actually has any of their info, meaning they can't really be hunted down)

- Everything on their site including support tickets and emails are 256 bit AES encrypted

- You register on their site with 100% fake info (for example I'm Ben Dover, nice to meet you)

Basically even if the provider gets investigated these guys really can't and therefore customer info is safe. You might not think it's that big a deal and prefer Paypal, that's fine, but I'll tell you what...when all that shit happened a couple months ago I felt safe as hell knowing all these measures had been taken.

Anyway onto the meat of it, the service itself.

- Pay-per-view events are near flawless, even the big fights and high traffic events, no buffering or skipping or anything like that. 60fps, beautiful pictures and they have every event you can think of, most providers don't have some of these

- Sports are of course 60fps and the coverage is great, everything is there and I'd say sports and PPVs are the bread and butter of this service

- US streams are near perfect as well, extensive, well organized, and everything is there. Lots of regional locals too (over 600) though with PS Vue going away in January I think these will eventually be gone...but for now anyway they're extensive.

- EPG is really good, it was the last thing to come back when they rebounded from last months situation but now it's back in almost full force and it's what you'd expect...accurate and up to date.

- Downsides, international section isn't great...they have a bunch of categories for Arabic and Chinese and all that, I don't watch any of it but a friend of mine wanted Arabic and got a sub. He said it works sporadically but if it goes down it takes a day or too for them to fix it because they just don't care about it that much. Definitely a North American service

- Support is great, seller is communicative and friendly. Usually quick to respond and honorable (used to sell a Euro server that died when XC went down, they gave people that got screwed out of their subs a North American server sub instead to compensate. Obviously with crypto they could've just taken it and run but they didn't).

- They have an app but it has a glitch so they're just recommending using stock Smarters or XCIPTV or whatever you prefer, but they say a new app is coming soon. Personally, don't care...stock apps are fine for me, they're the same thing.

- Not much VOD to speak of on the NA server but they do sell a separate VOD only service as an add on if you absolutely need it. I tried it and it's very deep. Also no catch up if that's your thing.

So for what I use this for, mainly US, Sports and PPV, I can't imagine anything really better. It's quick, sharp, has everything and is very reliable. 9/10 is my arbitrary, off the top of my head made up review score.

https://orionteam.net/