YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99 • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#151

Post by judge2020 » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:43 AM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #78

Have they figured out how to play the show you click on yet? No. $50 a month and the basic functionality of the app doesn't even work. With a Chromecast, it's even worse. Eventually, after clicking back and forth, disconnecting and reconnecting, it may play. Then you have to turn off the closed captioning for every single show even though it's off in the settings. Then it randomly stops at times. The ui displays the…

Sounds like you have a generation 1 Chromecast™ and bad WiFi. We hope you'll try YouTube TV again with a Chromecast Ultra™ and a Nest Wifi™ 3 pack. Take care!

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#152

Post by Analemma_ » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

sutterbomb wrote: post #132

strangescript wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the services fault. These big tv conglomerates don't want their channels optional because they know no one wants them for the most part. Or, at the very least, you won't accidentally start watching something on their network if you don't even have the channel.

Everyone thinks they want a la carte, but (most) everyone is wrong. Bundling is generally better for consumers and producers. https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-... Stratechery also has written about this

Thank goodness I have economists around to tell me I'm wrong about my own buying preferences.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#153

Post by draz » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #130

strangescript wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the services fault. These big tv conglomerates don't want their channels optional because they know no one wants them for the most part. Or, at the very least, you won't accidentally start watching something on their network if you don't even have the channel.

You think Youtube is getting strongarmed by Comcast? That’s surprising. Google could easily hold out for a la carte if they wanted to.

You need to think about it more holistically - not just YouTube, but Google as a whole (think about all the various Google enterprise products, cloud, etc).

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#154

Post by roywiggins » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:46 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #42

keithwinstein wrote: post #12

ObShameless reminder that https://puffer.stanford.edu remains free of charge. The site streams San Francisco affiliates and local stations of NBC/CBS/ABC/PBS/FOX/CW as part of a university study on video streaming algorithms -- it's essentially a big A/B test to try to reproduce or clarify some of the findings in the research literature. We're now posting all our data and analysis each day. Research talk here: https:…

I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't exactly seem legal. Streaming free local network broadcasts was definitively ruled as illegal by the Supreme Court in 2014 -- remember that was Aereo's entire business model. [1] It seems like the Stanford service is trying to justify themselves by being an academic study and limiting to 500 concurrent participants... but it's telling they don't list any legal justification on the site,…

They're maybe trying to use the same law that Locast[1] is: there's a specific carve-out in the law about rebroadcasting for nonprofits: "an exception in U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. § 111) for retransmission of television programming by non-profits without charge or any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage (besides the costs needed to cover the operations and maintenance of the retransmitter), which was originally intended to cover over-the-air translator stations" [2]

[1] https://www.locast.org

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locast#Legal_challenge

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#155

Post by fmakunbound » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

Is it at least ad-free for that much?

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#156

Post by beezle » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

Started at the beginning but all things come to an end. What was once a sports centric + news service has become more and more bloated. Is the audience really cord cutters? As it is probably far cheaper to get a cable+internet package than just internet + yttv.

In honestly, was probably gone once baseball started as they recently dropped YES network. Same goes for many friends in the north east who were also using yttv.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#157

Post by mkhpalm » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:49 AM UTC

sutterbomb wrote: post #132

strangescript wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the services fault. These big tv conglomerates don't want their channels optional because they know no one wants them for the most part. Or, at the very least, you won't accidentally start watching something on their network if you don't even have the channel.

Everyone thinks they want a la carte, but (most) everyone is wrong. Bundling is generally better for consumers and producers. https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-... Stratechery also has written about this

I'm not sure about other people but I don't "think" I want a la carte, I absolutely know I do. So much so that I don't pay for anything because nobody offers what I'm willing to pay for.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#158

Post by catsarebetter » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:52 AM UTC

Think this may have an effect of pushing more people to get adblockers and Netflix subscriptions than anything else. Or they just want people to get free Youtube so that they have a wider audience of ad viewers to sell to advertisers.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#159

Post by CivBase » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:52 AM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #119

I love YoutubeTV, and I've been using it for years. This is probably enough to get me to cancel, though. It started at $40 when I signed up a couple years ago, they raised it to $50 last year, and now $65 for just a few more channels (and among them, only one I even want). I wish they'd offer a more a la carte option. I'd be willing to pay $10-15 per major broadcaster's channel collection, or $2-7 for individual chan…

I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too [edit: as in "sub to each channel a la cart"]. Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income and loosing potential subscription customers to Patreon. They could even offer higher priced, per-channel subscription tiers that add flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch.

Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy.

Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue.

Right now, every video that isn't "advertiser friendly" is dead weight and money on the table.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#160

Post by edoceo » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:53 AM UTC

kangaroozach wrote: post #144

sutterbomb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone thinks they want a la carte, but (most) everyone is wrong. Bundling is generally better for consumers and producers. https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-... Stratechery also has written about this

In aggregate sure, but individuals only care about optimizing their own purchase. Ie more choice more better. Personally I was pissed when my reward for early evangelization of YoutubeTV was a Hike from $35 to $50. But now that it’s $65, I’m donzo. This will take people back to the days of torrents and piracy.

Back to?