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

YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 466 posts

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#241

Post by Ruthalas »

s17n wrote: post #231
newbie789 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting perspective, but it kind of looks like a lot of graphs saying "You should pay for stuff you don't want because otherwise it would incentivize the sellers to price gouge you for the stuff you do want" I'm kind of confused, if it's an adversarial relationship where the seller is going to extract as much money from you as possible in either scenario, wouldn't some consumers prefer to pay specifical…

You aren't going to be able to spend less money though. Since there's zero marginal cost to adding extra channels, you should assume that the price you're getting charged isn't actually based on the number of channels you subscribe to. A better way to think about bundle pricing is that the channels you really want cost $50, and they throw in a whole bunch of other crap for free. Why turn down free stuff?

The parent comment lists a specific reason why they'd turn directly the 'free' stuff. It requires more effort to then access the content they want to get to when they have to navigate around the cruft.

Whether that factors much into your personal value assessment or not, that is a valid downside to having a bunch of extra channels you don't intend to watch.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#242

Post by newbie789 »

s17n wrote: post #231
newbie789 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting perspective, but it kind of looks like a lot of graphs saying "You should pay for stuff you don't want because otherwise it would incentivize the sellers to price gouge you for the stuff you do want" I'm kind of confused, if it's an adversarial relationship where the seller is going to extract as much money from you as possible in either scenario, wouldn't some consumers prefer to pay specifical…

You aren't going to be able to spend less money though. Since there's zero marginal cost to adding extra channels, you should assume that the price you're getting charged isn't actually based on the number of channels you subscribe to. A better way to think about bundle pricing is that the channels you really want cost $50, and they throw in a whole bunch of other crap for free. Why turn down free stuff?

If those channels are free (and by that reasoning, not actually factored into the price of my package) then why am I unable to get individual channels or create my own bundle? Either I'm subsidizing stuff that I don't want to watch, or I'm not.

Is your point that I can't spend less because... they're going to get $50 out of me either way? Except that's impossible because there is no other way so there's literally no way of knowing a theoretical cost so it's safest to assume it's going to be $50 or more?

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#243

Post by paxys »

CivBase wrote: post #189
paxys wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the exactly what YouTube Premium is ( https://www.youtube.com/premium )?

No. YouTube Premium is a subscription to the whole platform , not a channel. It does not allow me to subscribe to channels a la cart. If I only watch one or two channels regularly, my options are to A) buy YouTube Premium, B) watch with ads, C) watch with an ad blocker. I bet YouTube would see more than a few people switch from C to B if they supported per-channel subscriptions. They could bring in even more revenue…

YouTube also lets you subscribe to individual channels. Go to some of the popular ones and you'll see a price next to the subscribe button. Channels can choose to publish videos to subscribers only.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#244

Post by tannhaeuser »

Jeremy1026 wrote: post #237
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:…

Replying to save for later.

Not a mod but please don't do this as it'll litter a thread with mechanical, generated comments, like it did with "linkback" blog post comments in the 2000s and early 2010s.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#245

Post by baddox »

s17n wrote: post #231
newbie789 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting perspective, but it kind of looks like a lot of graphs saying "You should pay for stuff you don't want because otherwise it would incentivize the sellers to price gouge you for the stuff you do want" I'm kind of confused, if it's an adversarial relationship where the seller is going to extract as much money from you as possible in either scenario, wouldn't some consumers prefer to pay specifical…

You aren't going to be able to spend less money though. Since there's zero marginal cost to adding extra channels, you should assume that the price you're getting charged isn't actually based on the number of channels you subscribe to. A better way to think about bundle pricing is that the channels you really want cost $50, and they throw in a whole bunch of other crap for free. Why turn down free stuff?

Except this article is about YouTube TV adding more channels and charging everyone more.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#246

Post by bonestamp2 »

nerfhammer wrote: post #188
Plough_Jogger wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting aspect of Aereo's model is that they attempted to circumvent these regulations by leasing each customer an individual antenna which they could access remotely. They maintained "antenna farms" full of tiny antennas.

always wondered if netflix couldn't have had warehouses full of dvd drives to avoid licensing fees. wouldn't work for new releases with a lot of peak demand but maybe it would be more feasible for the back catalog of older titles.

When you buy a consumer DVD, that DVD only has a license for home viewing. Video stores require a special license to rent out videos. So, I assume netflix would have to pay that fee at least (which they probably already had for their mail order DVDs).

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#247

Post by ridaj »

newbie789 wrote: post #148
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

That's an interesting perspective, but it kind of looks like a lot of graphs saying "You should pay for stuff you don't want because otherwise it would incentivize the sellers to price gouge you for the stuff you do want" I'm kind of confused, if it's an adversarial relationship where the seller is going to extract as much money from you as possible in either scenario, wouldn't some consumers prefer to pay specifical…

The argument is not about your buying preferences as a consumer. Of course if you had a choice between (a) paying X for watching stuff, or (b) paying Y for the ability to watch exactly the same thing, but Y is overall less money because it is somehow dependent of the amount that you consume, that is the better choice.

However, the economic equilibrium of a perfectly unbundled system is not that you get to watch the same thing for less money. It is, in the general case, that you either get less content, or pay more, or both.

To take your example, realize that it is outlier behavior to be willing to pay $9/mo for History and $0/mo for ESPN. If you took History channel, with the content that it has now, out of the cable bundle and tried to sell it $9/mo, or even $1/mo, there would be way too few interested customers to make such a proposition economically viable.

In a perfectly unbundled world, content such as the History channel does not exist. You only have marquee content like ESPN, movies for rental or purchase, or (if lowercase history is your thing) highly produced documentaries, i.e. the kind of content that willingness to pay for is high enough to justify the high customer acquisition cost. You do not have content like History channel because it lies in that tier of things that many people are kind of interested in watching, but only if it comes with something else more valuable that they already paid for.

One can debate the societal value of the existence of content such as the History channel to begin with, but that's what the argument is about, not about the consumer's individual preferences in a hypothetical world where it would be possible to watch the same content for cheaper.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#248

Post by nitrogen »

kgermino wrote: post #123
ls612 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood what the business interest of the tv stations was in preventing streaming online. They already give away for free the stream over the air. What gives? Do they make money on the antennas or receivers or something?

They get paid by the cable companies (or YouTubeTV style equivalents). It’s not too much (~$0.40/subscriber IIRC) but it obviously adds up. They don’t get that money if you use an antenna, but that’s a small market compared to the internet. Most people who use antennas won’t pay anyway, and broadcasting gives them access to the network. But opening up streaming will draw a lot of people who would otherwise have a cab…

One would think that the improved ad performance analytics should make up for the loss of $0.40 to $3.00 a month. But maybe they know ads don't work as well as they say and don't want the proof to get out...

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#249

Post by TylerE »

RHSeeger wrote: post #236
TylerE wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At least for me, I find that unlikely. I'm paying a fee for sports channels I have no interest in (because you can't not pay it), I'm buying a bundle that I only want a couple channels in, and those are the channels most people want. I would guess that I fall into the majority that are subsidizing the minority.

Things like Home Shopping and religious networks pay the cable company for carriage.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#250

Post by nitrogen »

julianlam wrote: post #100
anon102010 wrote: post #97

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).

While hoopjumping is still rather high (I did need to configure a MySQL database and read through some rather cryptic docs for SchedulesDirect), it was much easier to get running using MythTV than it was a couple years prior (last time I had tried). It's definitely a nice weekend project if you are serious about cutting the cord and are in an area with decent OTA signals. I will say though, that MythTV does have the…

Ah, takes me back. I ran a MythTV box ages ago. What is the I-frame interval on ATSC streams? Is it all still MPEG-2 or are there more advanced streams being broadcast now? Presumably you have to wait for an I-frame, or show garbled video until you get one.
Post reply on HN