Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube TV

tv.youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 292 posts

Re: YouTube TV

#131

Post by guyzero »

shaunol wrote: post #81

This is a cool idea but it still falls very short by not serving users outside of the US. To the point where the welcome page doesn't even acknowledge that there may be global interest: https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/ (enter your ZIP code, no country picker ... YouTube, you do realize you're on the internet, right?) Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the…

It's probably not even possible to offer US cable networks outside of the US. They only have licenses from the content creators to show inside the US.

Besides, all their competitors are US only as well - Sling TV, DirecTV Now.

Someday who knows, but for now live linear is very region-locked.

Re: YouTube TV

#132

Post by guyzero »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #38
vinylkey wrote: post #18

> Stream ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC & more. What's included in "& more"? I can get the listed channels from an antenna.

This really needs to beat PS Vue's selection to be competitive. SlingTV looks good but the lack of a DVR function is a non-starter. I'm not even sure why they bothered to even launch without that. Who watches live tv?

Sports fans watch live TV. Some people basically consider Sling to be a bunch of stuff you get with ESPN.

Re: YouTube TV

#134

Post by untog »

snuxoll wrote: post #127
untog wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by how much people currently pay for cable, there is more than $35/mo worth of programming there. Perhaps not to you, but that just means you aren't the customer for this product. > As proof, after watching an awesome trailer for some new sci-fi show you may be totally pumped up to watch it until at the end when they announce, "only on ABC!" Legion is pretty good. Legion is on FX. FX is on YouTube TV. To be h…

PlayStation Vue has packages for $35/mo that include FOX, ABC, etc plus a healthy selection of channels not available OTA (including FX, etc). YouTube's marketing here is pretty crappy, but if they're actually trying to just sell access to OTA network content for $35/mo they are insane.

> if they're actually trying to just sell access to OTA network content for $35/mo they are insane.

Which they aren't. It includes (probably) the exact same "healthy selection of channels not available OTA (including FX, etc)" as PlayStation.

Re: YouTube TV

#135

Post by geodel »

With $35/mo, it looks like another half-ass effort like Google phone hardware business. For 10 dollars extra over internet charges per month I get all the channels that this post explicitly mentions + some more I never watched.

Re: YouTube TV

#136

Post by kevincennis »

Former Aereo engineer here.

First off, there are really two main reasons for someone not to have a cable subscription:

1. They don't care about the content

2. Price sensitivity

At Aereo, we saw these sort of mix together to create hugely elastic demand.

For a while, we offered a $1 "day pass" that would give you access to live TV for 24 hours at a time.

During the Super Bowl and various award shows, we had crazy numbers of people sign up for these day passes. We actually had to stop offering them, because we literally couldn't build out the extra capacity in a cost-effective way (remember, we needed distinct physical antennas and transcoders for every user we served).

It was tough enough to get people to pay $8/month for access to live broadcast TV and a cloud-based DVR. I have no idea how YouTube will convince anyone to pay $35.

If they can work out the licenses, I'd imagine something like a day pass would work well with consumers – but it's probably hard to get the economics of that to work out.

Re: YouTube TV

#137

Post by frandroid »

guyzero wrote: post #131
shaunol wrote: post #81

This is a cool idea but it still falls very short by not serving users outside of the US. To the point where the welcome page doesn't even acknowledge that there may be global interest: https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/ (enter your ZIP code, no country picker ... YouTube, you do realize you're on the internet, right?) Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the…

It's probably not even possible to offer US cable networks outside of the US. They only have licenses from the content creators to show inside the US. Besides, all their competitors are US only as well - Sling TV, DirecTV Now. Someday who knows, but for now live linear is very region-locked.

Parent's point is still valid. There's another 3+ billion of internet users outside the U.S., it would be nice not to be an afterthought's afterthought. They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard?

Re: YouTube TV

#138

Post by divbit »

Wow - good job. Literally people (myself included) were commenting this morning in the saving twitter thread about how something like this is really needed.

Re: YouTube TV

#139

Post by kevincennis »

NeonVice wrote: post #24

Is this the same as Aereo, the service that was shutdown by the supreme court, only with a valid rebroadcast license?

From a consumer standpoint, yes – except 4x more expensive. From a technology standpoint, definitely not.

Disclosure: I'm a former Aereo engineer

Re: YouTube TV

#140

Post by chadgeidel »

atomicUpdate wrote: post #74
flycaliguy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm odd but Jeopardy and local news without a TV would be worth $35.

At $35/mo, after 1 year you'll have spent $420. You can get a decent sized TV and an antenna for less than that, and enjoy free news/Jeopardy for many years afterwards.

They say "no need for a DVR" so I assume that you will get time-shifted content. That's not free. Also, watching 3 shows simultaneously (on devices I already own) is useful.

And for those of us cord-cutters who have been missing live sports this is a nice option.

[EDIT: 3 simultaneous streams, not 6]

Post reply on HN