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Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

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Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV manufacturers have mostly chosen to create and maintain their own ecosystems. This is actually a declining trend. LG and Samsung do but Moore's law has gotten it to a point where Android TV and, in fact Roku's platform are becoming much more prevalent on TVs, particularly some of the newer lower end devices. There's a large cost to maintaining your own HTML based platform (which is what most 3rd parties are) and t…

> There's a large cost to maintaining your own HTML based platform (which is what most 3rd parties are) and the HTML platforms pretty radically under-perform these days. I'm struggling to understand the claim made by this statement. Maybe I missed something? What does HTML have to do with serving video over the wire? Underperforming on which metrics? What's the time value of "these days"?

Most smart TV platforms that aren't Android TV or Tizen explicitly are HTML5 based, in that their UI is HTML5 based. But smart TV platforms are never write once run anywhere - remote control button patterns, OS weirdness and shoestring amounts of RAM mean you've got to do whole suites of testing and bespoke code for at best every manufacturer, and in practice every set.

LG is the only one that could be said to have sufficient marketshare to justify that investment for any but the largest VOD providers now. The revenue generated from those platforms once rights holders are paid is a fraction of what it costs to maintain them simply through testing overhead. Android TV and Tizen's marketshare has increased rapidly over the last few (read three-ish) years, and when you often need to account for international rollout or repurposing in your cost analysis it's even stronger (Roku has zero marketshare outside of the US, many large cable companies outside of the US have Android TV based set-top boxes with multiple million installations).

This generally also applies to browser based streaming, with the added bonus that is where a bunch of piracy comes from.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#362
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My TV has Roku built-in and it’s extremely frustrating. It’s super slow, it uses some surround sound virtualization (or something) for the stereo speakers with no option to turn it off despite being terrible (you can barely hear speech, but music and effects are extremely loud), the remote has shortcut buttons for things I don’t even use (google play and sling), there’s advertisements every time I turn on my tv and o…

Chromecast video quality is atrocious though. I have a Chromecast Ultra on my Roku TV (TCL 6-series QLED) considered to be a mid-range panel and has decent color accuracy, but on Chromecast all of it is out the window, the same video on the YouTube TV (native app) on Roku is so much better looking and accurate. Not sure who’s to blame here.

Hard to tell (probably both), but it's worth noting for most of these OSes (at least Roku or Android TV) the playback is generally being handed to the hardware native decoder rather than having anything to do with the OS.

Indeed, one of the nice things about Android TV is that from a content protection point of view you don't really need to trust the OS at all as it's all abstracted down to the hardware.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#363

HBO Max was delayed in appearing on Roku because of negotiation breakdowns. In the case HBO it was Roku that seemed to have the demands. They are looking at revenue anywhere they can, but if their position weakens look for Google, ATT, and others to simply forgo working with them. I think Roku is in a perilous position in general. They generated a lot of buzz on Wallstreet with their high user counts. They also purch…

The reason I picked and stay with Roku is that they aren't married to a single Big Tech co. I already suffer the lack of a proper YouTube app on my Echo Show because Amazon and Google are having a tiff. I don't want to pick an ecosystem and live exclusively inside of it. As it is, I'm already in a mixed household (Me with iOS and my wife with Android) and it's a pain to deal with the lack of cross-platform playing to…

This whole thing where you have to sacrifice everything to big corps and buy new devices every year makes me not want to bother consuming any media at all to be honest. When I see people wrestle with all kinds of devices, services, and subscriptions I just get sad and start thinking if the juice is actually worth the squeeze and coming to the conclusion it really isn't.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Youtube music is crap It's good enough for a lot of people. I pay for YouTube Premium, so I get YouTube music (formerly Google Play Music) included, and it works well enough that I'm not going to pay for a separate music app.

Google: Look, you can buy a device with less storage, and store all your MP3s in the cloud! Me: This sounds terrible… but ok, let’s give it a go. Google: Now that you have all your music in the cloud, wouldn’t it be nice if you paid us monthly for access to a lot more music? Me: No. Google: I see you switched to another app while watching a YouTube video. If you paid us extra, you could keep playing that in the backg…

The VLC app for Android still works though.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV manufacturers have mostly chosen to create and maintain their own ecosystems. This is actually a declining trend. LG and Samsung do but Moore's law has gotten it to a point where Android TV and, in fact Roku's platform are becoming much more prevalent on TVs, particularly some of the newer lower end devices. There's a large cost to maintaining your own HTML based platform (which is what most 3rd parties are) and t…

AppleTV, AndroidTV, FireTV, Roku, WebOS, Tizen, Comcast X1, ATT TV, Xbox, PlayStation, etc—the space is incredibly fractured. Outside of the TVs with Roku built in I wonder how many people will buy Roku devices in the future. It will be hard for Roku to continue to compete if they have say, 10-20 percent market share. I use a Roku now, but I don’t think I will in the future. My tv is older, so no built in apps. Roku…

Roku is also going to have problems with their marketshare being so North America focused when platforms increasingly need their stack to either work internationally or at least be trivially repurposed for international. Globally Roku's marketshare is nowhere near 10 - 20%.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#366
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My TV has Roku built-in and it’s extremely frustrating. It’s super slow, it uses some surround sound virtualization (or something) for the stereo speakers with no option to turn it off despite being terrible (you can barely hear speech, but music and effects are extremely loud), the remote has shortcut buttons for things I don’t even use (google play and sling), there’s advertisements every time I turn on my tv and o…

Chromecast video quality is atrocious though. I have a Chromecast Ultra on my Roku TV (TCL 6-series QLED) considered to be a mid-range panel and has decent color accuracy, but on Chromecast all of it is out the window, the same video on the YouTube TV (native app) on Roku is so much better looking and accurate. Not sure who’s to blame here.

Huh, that... just doesn't jive with my experience at all, though I have a newer LG OLED TV. My Chromecast is able to play 4K UHD/HDR content perfectly.

That being said, when I first use a new input on my TV, I sometimes forget that each input has its own profile on my TV, and have to shut off the stupid smooth motion modes and adjust colors, etc. Are you sure this isn't the case on your TV?

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#367

HBO Max was delayed in appearing on Roku because of negotiation breakdowns. In the case HBO it was Roku that seemed to have the demands. They are looking at revenue anywhere they can, but if their position weakens look for Google, ATT, and others to simply forgo working with them. I think Roku is in a perilous position in general. They generated a lot of buzz on Wallstreet with their high user counts. They also purch…

I think we probably hang out in different crowds. I have a Chromecast, and various consoles. Roku is still the best overall (despite shortcomings). Everyone I know who bought a Roku prefers it to all the other options. Can anyone tell me what other streaming devices have over Roku? What I need: - A real remote. Not going to use my phone to control things. - Good search. When I search, I want results from most of the…

The new Chromecast with Google TV, despite being stupidly named, ticks basically every single box here, except that it's $50, instead of $25-$35, but it's _fantastic_.

The remote is great, and includes a Google Assistant voice search button that's super useful, and the search is federated in the way you describe, and very good. It has support from every service, but it integrates really well with YouTubeTV, obviously, which is nice because there's a great Live tab with a guide. You can run the app store and install whatever Android TV app you want: I've installed NordVPN on mine to get around NHL.TV blackout bullshit.

AND it will get around a captive portal because it has a remote/browser, so you can use it in a hotel. Honestly, it's a delightful little device.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#368
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My TV has Roku built-in and it’s extremely frustrating. It’s super slow, it uses some surround sound virtualization (or something) for the stereo speakers with no option to turn it off despite being terrible (you can barely hear speech, but music and effects are extremely loud), the remote has shortcut buttons for things I don’t even use (google play and sling), there’s advertisements every time I turn on my tv and o…

Chromecast video quality is atrocious though. I have a Chromecast Ultra on my Roku TV (TCL 6-series QLED) considered to be a mid-range panel and has decent color accuracy, but on Chromecast all of it is out the window, the same video on the YouTube TV (native app) on Roku is so much better looking and accurate. Not sure who’s to blame here.

My budget Vizio TV advertised HDR support, but it turned out to only be on two of the three HDMI inputs.

Maybe try swapping the inputs and see if that makes a difference?

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#369
post #257

HBO Max was delayed in appearing on Roku because of negotiation breakdowns. In the case HBO it was Roku that seemed to have the demands. They are looking at revenue anywhere they can, but if their position weakens look for Google, ATT, and others to simply forgo working with them. I think Roku is in a perilous position in general. They generated a lot of buzz on Wallstreet with their high user counts. They also purch…

Roku has tie up with TV manufacturers like TCL too. That's where a lot of their growth is coming in. Personally, I have switched to Fire-Stick and Chromecast with Google TV from Roku because the Roku interface hasn't evolved in the past few years and they are also pushing ads and their own channels now.

I recently managed to get my hands on a non-smart TV and bought a roku stand alone device for it. Mostly because the interface is simple and has been the same for years.

I prefer the moving fast and breaking things to stay away from our limited TV time.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's $200. Also the remote sucks, although maybe the new one is decent. I sold my Apple TV 4K and bought a Fire TV 4K and pocketed the difference. The Fire TV does have slightly more stupid ads on the home screen for shit like McDonald's but the Apple TV would gladly advertise me shit to buy on iTunes. Slightly more relevant ads maybe but still ads. Otherwise it does everything I did with the Apple TV plus works bett…

AppleTV has never shown me ads so I’m not sure where you saw them? The new Apple TV just announced has a much better looking remote

The top banner showing you movies to rent, sign up for Apple Music, download this app? It's just advertising.

The new remote looks alright. Knowing Apple it's probably still too thin and easily slipped through couch cushions.

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