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YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

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Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#201
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 41 and watch the nfl with my dad. I try to explain that we can just record it and wait 40 minutes and watch the whole thing with no commercials. Nope. He wants to look up game stats without getting spoiled and needs frequent smoke breaks. It's nearly unbearable for me. I only stick it out because he's 76

I agree with your dad. Ever have a favorite TV show release an episode and then you have to avoid Facebook and Twitter so you don't get spoiled?

It's not so much that it's that he wants to follow the game as it goes as far as stats go. How many completions, ints, etc.

For me I don't care so I just don't watch the game for 30 minutes or so and that's perfect. But there is no way to do what he wants without watching in real time.

Miserable though for me.

Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#202
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While technically true this is hardly an option... Both of those "alternative" plans exclude YouTube TV while charging considerably more. How many users who enjoy paying more for less did they sell to here? $350/year for Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV included vs. $450/year for just Sunday Ticket, delivered via regular YouTube it seems. Their pricing page: https://tv.youtube.com/learn/nflsundayticket/#id-plan-matrix I…

$350/year for Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV included vs. $450/year for just Sunday Ticket, delivered via regular YouTube it seems. YouTube TV is required—not included—with the $350/year plan. So it's either $350/year + $73/month (with), or $450/year (without). Assuming you only keep YouTube TV for the September-January football season, that's $715/season with YouTube TV, vs. $450/season without. If you don't get any…

I agree with your math, but the whole thing is offensive and abusive no matter how you cut it. $450/year (minimum) just to get football games. We've been evaluating our different options overall, given that Netflix price-to-value continues to weaken, as does Sling and Hulu, but I can't find any reason apart from NFL games why I would subscribe to YouTubeTv.

Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This adds an uncertain future to OTA, but I don't think you can say it's implemented widely yet. Here's a list of current ATSC 3.0 channels, with an indicator for the encrypted ones: https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=atsc3 For now, most network affiliates that air an ATSC 3.0 signal must simulcast the primary video programming stream in ATSC 1.0 format. So most primary channels are still available withou…

In my market (Miami) almost everything is encrypted on ATSC 3. Do you know how long ATSC 1 will be up?

No, I don't. It looks like the FCC is going to let the market decide on this one. The sunset date for ATSC 1.0, meaning the date that stations can choose to turn off their ATSC 1.0, is 17 July 2027 [1].

Unfortunately, I feel that content providers have a financial incentive to discourage OTA reception. I'd take that 2027 date seriously.

[1] Paragraph 39 [PDF] : https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-53A1.pdf

Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#205
They also lied about having better quality than cable. They only do 720p while comcast does 1080. Also their customer service is crazy bad. Did the stream fail for the 5th time? Ok give me all your browser info because of course we didn’t collect that and fingerprint you in the error reporting form you just filed.

Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#206
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$350/year for Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV included vs. $450/year for just Sunday Ticket, delivered via regular YouTube it seems. YouTube TV is required—not included—with the $350/year plan. So it's either $350/year + $73/month (with), or $450/year (without). Assuming you only keep YouTube TV for the September-January football season, that's $715/season with YouTube TV, vs. $450/season without. If you don't get any…

I agree with your math, but the whole thing is offensive and abusive no matter how you cut it. $450/year (minimum) just to get football games. We've been evaluating our different options overall, given that Netflix price-to-value continues to weaken, as does Sling and Hulu, but I can't find any reason apart from NFL games why I would subscribe to YouTubeTv.

If you don't care what games you watch, an HD antenna isn't a bad deal.

Unfortunately, where we're located (South Dakota), there isn't a "local" team, so it's pretty random which games are broadcast by our local affiliates. If we want to follow a team and watch games we care about, it's either go out to a sports bar, or get Sunday Ticket at home. (And as discussed above, the latter is actually cheaper than the former.)

With other streaming services, we mostly stick to a "one at a time" policy. We'll subscribe to e.g. HBO Max for a month, catch up on the latest season of a show, and then cancel as soon as we're done.

I watch at most a couple of hours of TV a week, but my partner likes having "junk TV" on in the background while she's doing other stuff, so we do get some value from YouTube TV for cooking shows, shows like Deadliest Catch, etc. I wouldn't want to go back to paying $150/month for cable for that, but it's not completely worthless.

Compared to travel or my expensive tool habit, TV and football is actually a pretty small portion of our overall entertainment budget.

Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#207

I strongly recommend cancelling all your subscription services and seeing how long you can go without renewing any of them. Try no TV, really none at all, for a month and see how it feels. Ask yourself at the end: How did you spend your time differently?

Or at least the in-between option: Use the savings from cutting the subscription services to run your own NAS at home and locally stream whatever movies or shows you own

Plex and Jellyfin are a great user experience. Even my non-technical friends have no issues accessing content on it.

Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#208
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of comercial settings will be eaten up be online shopping? I can’t remember the last time I went to a brick and mortar store to buy something.

TVs in bars is a billion dollar industry.

AFAIK, and I'm with you on this, that bars that have tvs have to at least pretend to pay the rights holders for playing sports on their tvs, which in turn brings people in to spend money on drinks and/or food.

I can't imaging having to train every new employee on how to use the streaming-only custom set up you'd end up with without using a cable box, which, well, everyone probably already kind of knows how to operate ... at least for now.

It does make me wonder how long until the new employees won't have a clue how to use a cable box due to never having used one ever.

Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#209
post #147

I think the best hack I've found is get cable and a TiVo with a life time subscription. Now I get the same or more content then YouTube and no commercials because TiVo has a commercial skip feature. I also don't have to pay for hardware for my cable connection because they have to give me 1 free cable card by law. I just insert that into my TiVo.

> they have to give me 1 free cable card by law.

At least in the US, that is no longer the case. The FCC dropped the cable card in 2020. HDHomeRun cancelled their newer cable 6 tuner on that news. I was looking into getting one for a Plex server at the time.

Re: YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end "$600 less than cable" ads

#210
post #108

Are people here really so young that they never had to deal with traditional cable subscriptions? Let me tell you what it was like. You signed up for Comcast, paid a $50+ installation fee, prayed that the technician would even show up in the allotted window, paid $100-150 month for basic service, paid for a cable box/modem rental, paid for HD, paid for DVR, paid for each extra TV in your house, paid for premium chann…

Ah, don’t forget the incredible experience of calling Comcast customer service because your special promotional rate expired and your monthly bill went up 25%, or the free HBO promotion that you couldn’t opt out of expired and you are paying $10 more, or any of half a dozen other anti consumer nonsense some scumbag at Comcast dreamt up. The most outrageous was one some Comcast rep called me to tell me I qualified for a free DVR upgrade because I was such a loyal customer. By loyal I guess they meant captive, but ok. I don’t watch TV and only had a TV package cause it was somehow cheaper than just internet due to some promotion, but sure whatever. Turns out by free he meant like an extra $30 per month. Took me a few billing cycles to notice. I had never even unboxed it. They refunded me after several hours on the phone. I should have invoiced them for my time. I got rid of them as soon as I had an alternative.
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