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

Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

deadline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 86 posts

Re: Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

#2

Post by supernovae »

Youtube TV for those wondering, I don't think there is any concern for youtube app.

I don't do youtube tv since its way too expensive, but i'm curious what kind of additional data/software they're trying to impose that other digital cable carriers aren't...

Re: Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

#4

Post by gwbas1c »

Does Youtube TV still have commercials for on-demand content?

Back at the beginning, I signed up for a trial. The first thing I did was try some on-demand, and it made me sit through A LOT of commercials before the content started.

Considering that Youtube TV was 4-5x the cost of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and both are commercial-free, I canceled immediately. I watch so little TV that it's cheaper to just buy the shows I want to watch outright on Google Play... Commercial-free.

Re: Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

#5

Post by helipad »

The streaming landscape is frustrating as an end user. I have a Roku TV and have used YouTube TV, Hulu and Sling for live TV.

YouTube TV and Hulu seem to keep increasing their prices to the point where there's not much difference from traditional cable, other than it's easier to cancel.

But then there are so many caveats. Bally Sports doesn't appear to be available in my local market to stream our MLB team. I also need a separate Peacock subscription to watch some, but not all Premier League games. Also the channels available on Roku seem to change, presumably due to contract disputes like this.

Whatever promise TV over Internet once had over cable has long since gone away for me.

Re: Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

#7

Post by tcskeptic »

Interesting -- this weekend I finally gave up on YoutubeTV and ordered Spectrum cable again. Between the rising costs (now 69.95 a month) and the loss of both regional sports networks (I haven't been able to watch Texas Rangers baseball or Mavericks basketball in almost a year since they dropped the Fox Sports RSNs) and the Tennis channel the package is worth much less to me. The only real reason I want cable is for live sports. All the other network programming is of very little interest to me.

My total cost for a competitive package with CloudDVR (what used to be YoutubeTVs killer feature) and 400Mbps internet is now lower by about 30 bucks a month, which is not nothing.

I live in hope that one day I will be able to buy a cable/streaming package that consists of Sports plus Local Channels with cloud DVR and very high bitrate streaming. That is all that I want.

Re: Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

#8

Post by tcskeptic »

helipad wrote: post #5

The streaming landscape is frustrating as an end user. I have a Roku TV and have used YouTube TV, Hulu and Sling for live TV. YouTube TV and Hulu seem to keep increasing their prices to the point where there's not much difference from traditional cable, other than it's easier to cancel. But then there are so many caveats. Bally Sports doesn't appear to be available in my local market to stream our MLB team. I also ne…

The Bally Sports thing is a long standing YoutubeTV contract dispute carried over from the Fox Sports RSNs. Its ridiculous

Re: Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

#9

Post by e40 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #4

Does Youtube TV still have commercials for on-demand content? Back at the beginning, I signed up for a trial. The first thing I did was try some on-demand, and it made me sit through A LOT of commercials before the content started. Considering that Youtube TV was 4-5x the cost of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and both are commercial-free, I canceled immediately. I watch so little TV that it's cheaper to just buy the show…

Yes. Anything you didn’t explicitly ask to “record” has them, from what i’ve seen.

Re: Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

#10

Post by kschwab »

gwbas1c wrote: post #4

Does Youtube TV still have commercials for on-demand content? Back at the beginning, I signed up for a trial. The first thing I did was try some on-demand, and it made me sit through A LOT of commercials before the content started. Considering that Youtube TV was 4-5x the cost of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and both are commercial-free, I canceled immediately. I watch so little TV that it's cheaper to just buy the show…

It does, because it's essentially the same thing as old school cable TV. You're getting access to ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, Fox, FX, CNN, TNT, EPSN, BBC America, Food Network, HGTV, and so on. There's not really any service that offers (all of) that content without commercials.

You can use their cloud DVR to "record" something, and after that happens, you can fast forward through the commercials. Which is similar to what you would get with a old school cable and a real DVR.

I also hate commercials, and while you can find commercial free versions of some of the YouTube TV content, you can't find it for everything they air.

Streaming is so fragmented now, both in content and features, that you have to do quite a lot of research before buying.

Edit: The text of the email Roku is sending out: https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq

Post reply on HN