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YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

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Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#191

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:…

This was the first time I've watched live broadcast US TV since leaving the country ten years ago. Are there any shows on, or is every channel besides PBS just advertisements all day?

yeah holy crow it has gotten way worse? are episodes shorter or something? I think I just sat through 5 minutes of ads.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#192
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. How can this be SO much better than even my cable box! Seriously, clicking up down with channels, there is very little of that slow feeling blank out / blank in thing that is so annoying. I'd love to have an OTA receiver go into something like this at my house with this simplicity and speed (I did HD Run or something once and the hoopjumping was high and quality low).

OTA channel surfing is slow because before you can see a picture, first you have to tune the digital signal, then you have to wait for an I frame, plus whatever decoder delay and output image processing. In order to make it better, you really need to three tuners, so you can process the streams of the up and down channels. Random access would still be slow, but oh well. I imagine cable is pretty similar, but I suspec…

Every cablebox I've ever dealt with is a pile of shit than struggles to display simple text-based menus.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#194

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

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.

Many of those channels you "don't want" actually subsidize the channels you do want.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#195
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure what the old media hacks are trying to accomplish here. They're trying to keep their channels artificially expensive and trying to limit the success of (previously) less expensive TV channel platforms like YouTube TV. They don't want to give ground on that, because if they do then it's a big freefall down to what the real value of their channels are. They make an enormous amount of cartel-capture money fro…

They have lost almost 4 million subscriber this year. And streaming companies, such as YouTube TV, have also lost subscribers. So these people just stopped.

> So these people just stopped.

I suspect a fair number of people just don't care about TV as much as the experts thought. Netflix plus Amazon Prime and a season pass of Dr. Who is about all I can watch anyhow.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#196

Unless you must have live sports/CNBC or can’t have your internet slow down, how are YouTube TV or cable packages attractive? We have Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Apple TV+. Even when the free/promotional periods are over, they would still end up costing less than a semi-decent cable package, but with way more useful content (in fact, more than we could ever hope to watch), and little to no ads.

> Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Apple TV+.

That's 2 services more than me!

Once I run out of things to watch, it's time to shut the TV off and go ride my bike or work in the yard anyhow.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#197

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:…

This was the first time I've watched live broadcast US TV since leaving the country ten years ago. Are there any shows on, or is every channel besides PBS just advertisements all day?

Try listening to a music radio station sometime. I turned one on for the first time a 10 years a couple weeks ago and in a 45 minute drive heard approximately 2 songs. The entire rest was station identifiers and commercials.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#198

That cost is nearly double it's original price 3y ago, and looking at the recent channel additions -- I'm not sure the users will be convinced it's worth the extra cost. I wish someone would have a selection like: $5 - one channel $7 - two channels $10 - five channels $20 - fifteen channels (you pick) $50 - 40 channels (we pick) $50 + $15 - 40 channels (the $50 package), plus

People always fantasize about this but it's not remotely workable. It's a complete fantasy. Different channels differ very widely in value and in how much they cost the provider.

If you're going to make suggestions, think of something realistic, at least.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#199
For the few months I tried YoutubeTV, the stream consistently failed (especially for live sports) and I reported it several times. I finally disputed three months of their charges with my credit card company. Google accepted the disputes within a day and effectively gave a $150 refund. I later canceled, but important to know they’re willing to give out their crappy service for free without a fight.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too. 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 ad flairs to comments and unlock emojis like…

> Complex subscription options are one of the easiest way to lose subscribers.

Source? Twitch and Patreon get along just fine. The existing options can continue as they are.

> It's far from being proven.

YouTube has already swallowed the expensive part of the deal - creating a video hosting platform. I'm just asking them to augment their monetization scheme that other platforms have already demonstrated demand for.

> Source? Alphabets ad revenue is extremely stable for the company and keeps on growing.

Source for what? Of course YouTube is expensive. It's expensive to host content at that scale. It's expensive to regulate content at that scale to comply with the law and satisfy ad partners. I don't know what else to say. I don't know if YouTube operates at a profit or not, but that's not really relevant.

What matters is YouTube's profit is almost completely dependent on their ability to sell ads. Content without ads can only benefit the platform if it drives premium subscriptions or drives users towards content with ads.

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