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 numb…
YouTube TV
271–280 of 292 posts
Re: YouTube TV
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. [1] https://www.filmon.com/tv/bbc-news
Initially I bought a NowTV subscription, with a home-made proxy setup. That worked for a long time, but then they caught on, and most of the VPN-providers became blacklisted too.
Nowadays I'm using FilmOn with a Roku box. I've slowly weaned myself off UK TV, but there are afternoons where I just want to sit on a sofa and watch two hours of "Come Dine With Me" for the snarking. I wish I could pay for it ..
Re: YouTube TV
#273Why would I do this when a dtv antenna is a one-time charge of $35? Kodi + prime + dtv = never paying for TV again. Ever.
because many if not most people live in an area without good OTA coverage
Re: YouTube TV
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
because many if not most people live in an area without good OTA coverage
I didn't think of this. Wouldn't that be a matter of purchasing a better, stronger antenna?
Re: YouTube TV
#275¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: YouTube TV
#276Being asked for a zip code shows that not even youtube is able to change the old broadcasting business model. The day will come when TV streaming businesses takes over and removes the virtual location barriers set by the industry.
It's written in the law too, mind you, so i'd be curious if online advertising ends up with some standards that providers have to adhere to. Ie, allowing regional ads, knowing the reach, etc.
Re: YouTube TV
#277As usual only for Americans.
This time they didn't even pretend otherwise.
Re: YouTube TV
#278"Unlimited cloud DVR" seems really pointless. Why not just save everything, as it airs, in a central archive that the users can browse at their leisure instead? It also seems to mean that you can't rewind channels you weren't watching, that you manually have to record stuff yourself. Really backwards of Google if my assumptions are correct. It seems weird that Google aren't able to create/negotiate something relevant…
If it lets you view a program guide, and watch anything that "aired" earlier than now, it sounds like it's basically a different interface but otherwise the same as current YouTube or Netflix. YouTube even has live streams.
However the way it's described makes it sound like there's probably some limitations to make it "seem like TV". The worst of this would be to totally emulate the normal TV+DVR model:
* You only get access to recordings if you picked them to "record" prior to when they "air"
* You have some arbitrary limit of number of "concurrent" recordings (eg: you can't just record every show on every channel at the same time, despite being 'unlimited DVR')
* If you want to watch/record a show and it's already started, you can only watch/record it from the current point forward
* Everything has commercials, at 31% rate, with the same commercial repeating multiple times like current TV.
They can also do some really awful things with it being a cloud DVR:
* Delete your recordings, or 'expire' them after some time. For example, you have 3 seasons of some show 'recorded' and are working your way through, but then they lose the license for that network and poof, all your 'recordings' are gone.
* Make commercials unskippable
Re: YouTube TV
#279Wonder 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.
I almost never watch cable/broadcast TV (don't have it at home, and haven't for 12+ years) so one of the things I notice when I do watch it is there are some commercials that are genuinely entertaining (well produced, funny, etc).
The issue is, after watching TV for an hour, when I see that 'entertaining' commercial for the 3rd time it is no longer entertaining.
Google can actually track what they are showing, and have an idea of who's watching. Don't show me the same commercial more than once per day (or every few hours), and definitely don't repeat the same one in a single show. Don't show me ads that are completely irrelevant. Track metrics on ads, and eliminate genuinely bad ads.
I'm not sure I'd ever come to a service where I both paid and watched ads, but this is basically the minimum necessary for me personally to watch content with ads at all.
Of the companies that would be able to pull this off, Google is definitely at the top of a very short list.
Re: YouTube TV
#280This fucking sucks, especially because baseball is as American as you can get. But then, charging people for stuff that used to be free is also as American as you can get.