Wonder how many commercial breaks you'll get the privilege of watching for your 35 bucks
I wonder if they'll insert their own commercials instead, maybe you'll get some lower price at the end of the month.
YouTube TV
251–260 of 292 posts
Re: YouTube TV
#252OK, one question I have is how am I supposed to view this content on the various TVs throughout my house? Will this be a new Roku app? Will I just use the old Roku YouTube app? Will I have to stream it from my laptop/phone? I think the answer to this question will determine how much traction they get. My parents, my wife, nor any other non technical folks are going to stream anything from their phone. I can't see how this will win.
Re: YouTube TV
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd actually be surprised how good bittorrent live video streaming has got. I checked it out and it was pixel perfect 720p HD - absolutely fine for sports. But yes, it's still niche, but wow it has moved on a lot. The program I used was called acestream.
This is still only true if you have the pipe. Attempting this from Melbourne and the streams still fall on their face.
It worked fine on 10meg/1meg ADSL2+. I think most people have access to that (at least in the UK, >95% of population).
Re: YouTube TV
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can watch iPlayer via a VPN or DNS service like unblock.us (do not know if they have service in Japan). Note to the BBC - I would be to pay 3x the license fee to be able to watch on the internet with a subscription from outside the U.K. I bet if you opened it up world wide you would make more money then you do on the all the U.K license fees.
Even the BBC isn't powerful enough to do this. I can't remember who it was but one of the heads of the BBC said for a long time that content on BBC should be available for free everywhere. He reasoned that it was already paid for. It's one of the reason that they do so much free software development. One of the shows that I want to watch is Match of the Day. Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I was in…
For freeview UK channels, you can watch some of them on FilmOn[1]
I'm a rugby fan and it's possible to watch high quality, BBC or ITV coverage of the Six Nations from abroad (BBC Scotland on Wales/Scotland has the higher quality for free). I'm pretty sure that Americans can't watch it though judging by comments on Reddit.
Re: YouTube TV
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can watch iPlayer via a VPN or DNS service like unblock.us (do not know if they have service in Japan). Note to the BBC - I would be to pay 3x the license fee to be able to watch on the internet with a subscription from outside the U.K. I bet if you opened it up world wide you would make more money then you do on the all the U.K license fees.
Even the BBC isn't powerful enough to do this. I can't remember who it was but one of the heads of the BBC said for a long time that content on BBC should be available for free everywhere. He reasoned that it was already paid for. It's one of the reason that they do so much free software development. One of the shows that I want to watch is Match of the Day. Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I was in…
Both Match of the Day's are now available on the iPlayer every week - I think from the Tuesday after airing. Still a bunch of asinine restrictions, but it's there. I remember it was like you say when they first started it.
Re: YouTube TV
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to clarify a bit: I do think OTT is going to win out in the long run. But that's really just the underlying technology. The tough part is getting rid of the bundle. I'm not so sure that'll happen, although I really hope it does. All of these giant media companies would much rather sell you 10 channels for $20 than a single channel for $5. If a la carte starts happening in a serious way, it's going to be a huge w…
Bundling is actually win-win in practice. The economics work pretty well, which is why it's so persistent. It's a bit complex, take a look: http://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-a...
Bundling results in me having to pay Fox "news." That's a lose.
Re: YouTube TV
#257$35? What is this 1990? The fundamental problem I think is that this is yet another offering of packaged channels, 90% of which I don't want. Okay, maybe not 90%, but in their initial channel offering I count at least 25 of the 46 channels I'm not even remotely interested in. Once you drop sports, Spanish language content, kids content and some of the more useless news channels I'd be paying effectively paying $35/mo…
You omitted AMC from your list, or are you not a fan of The Walking Dead and Into The Badlands? Regardless, yeah, my wife likes Nebraska Football and I like Purdue Basketball so a service without BTN would be a deal breaker. And If I dropped my 200+ channel cable package (smallest I could get and get all of the things we both watch) and picked up either this or the $35 tier of Playstation Vue I'd save about $100 a mo…
Was AMC on the list? I must have lost it in the disinterest cloud that surrounded the four ESPNs.
In all seriousness, I believe that we may be approaching a tipping point where sports franchises are going to have to come to terms about offering other ways to watch their games. Lots of people I know who do watch sports grumble about having to pay for 400 other channels they don't watch. So I know the feeling is mutual in some ways.
Re: YouTube TV
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to clarify a bit: I do think OTT is going to win out in the long run. But that's really just the underlying technology. The tough part is getting rid of the bundle. I'm not so sure that'll happen, although I really hope it does. All of these giant media companies would much rather sell you 10 channels for $20 than a single channel for $5. If a la carte starts happening in a serious way, it's going to be a huge w…
Bundling is actually win-win in practice. The economics work pretty well, which is why it's so persistent. It's a bit complex, take a look: http://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-a...
It's only a win-win if in aggregate, people put a value on everything that is bundled. By that I mean that enough singular people put a value on a large subset of all channels.
If too many people put a value 0 on too many bundled items, it's most definitely a consumer loss. The author admits this, but claims that collectively it is a win. There's no basis provided for this assumption though, other than that it is the market. I have no problem believing the cable market is flawed though (local monopolies).
This is anecdata, but if true hits the core:
Traditionally people I know always bought (happy meal or) big mac/quarterpounder & co (this could be inaccurate dollars, because it's not the local currency) for $6, because the sandwich was $4 a la carte, and the fries an additional $2. So sure, even if my value on soda was as low as $0.1 I would still make out ahead.
But then the previously unavailable double cheeseburger arrived, which had as much meat and tasted about the same as a quarterpounder, for $2. And the Big Mac sandwich occassionally sold for $2.5.
And me who genuinelly always put a negative value on soda (really, I did however trade it for a smaller milkshake) and always drink water, would now instead save 67% since I generally could do without the fries as well.
I'm sure I'm an aberration in wanting just a double cheeseburger with water, but I'm not so sure I'm an aberration in getting a raw deal out of bundling.
The analogy with a buffét is interesting in both its similarities and its differences. People eat different amounts, sure, but there is a finite amount one could eat, and it's not everything at the buffét. Some will eat more expensive stuff (HBO, ESPN), and some will eat cheaper stuff, but the cost to the restaurant is a finite amount of food.
The analogy fails when in bundling TV it would be like sending every buffét customer 10 full dishes, of which they can only eat 1-2 full ones.
Another issue is viewer count and measurement. In traditional TV you've got the Nielsen box and all its flaws, as well as scheduled TV giving a LOT of power to broadcasters to dictate popularity by air time (and ads).
When I pay for a Netflix bundle, in aggregate with every other customer, our money is directly mapped to exactly what shows we watch, and while they can try to push some shows, they have a lot less power in dictating what people watch. This means that shows no one wants no one pays for, because they will simply not produce it. In traditional TV this was different for a myriad of reasons, including less consumer choice in the bundle (you choose a channel, not a program), no control over air times, etc.
TL;DR: I don't disagree with the economics/maths in that link, but I disagree with the premise of the input consumer value, and available choices.
Re: YouTube TV
#259I don't really understand what's the point of this. YouTube is already my TV. With a little streamlining and a little bit more intelligence, I wouldn't have to even click the links and just switch on autoplay to stream all the interesting content I want to see for the day. That vision is not far away.
Is Google purposefully sabotaging their subscription integration in order to leave space for paid services?
Re: YouTube TV
#260Former 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 numb…
There is a third reason. I have always had cable till last year. Then I moved and went through the experience of getting cable from a big cable provider. I wanted them to give my money (typically around $75/month). But it ended with series of very frustrated phone calls and me deciding that sacrificing sports and news is well worth not having to deal with that company.
It's unbelievable isn't it? I live in the UK and had the same experience with a big telecom company. I'm calling them up to become a customer and give them money and I'm treated with rudeness and indifference. As someone running a startup it feels totally insane and I wonder if all big companies end up like this. Then when something like this new service comes about the incumbents are up in arms, how do they possibly expect any sympathy.