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Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

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

#31

Post by kschwab »

bsharitt wrote: post #29
kschwab wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some detail here: https://popculture.com/streaming/news/roku-founder-reveals-w... "Roku's standard terms for partner channels include 20% of subscription fees and 30% of ad inventory, which has driven away Peacock, as it is currently airing fewer than five minutes of ads per hour. Meanwhile, WarnerMedia has been looking to retire the HBO service now sold through Roku to promote HBO Max, which Roku has turned down sin…

This is exactly where died for me, when I went from being a buyer of their hardware to a potential source of monthly revenue and made it more difficult to get content I want as a result. They established a customer base and good will and once that was in place, the rent seeking started. At this point once a company that make a product I like goes public, it seems like a good tome to start looking for alternatives.

I feel the same way, but is there any safe haven? I assume Chromecasts or Amazon Fire would be subject to the same situation.

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

#32

Post by SimianLogic2 »

bsharitt wrote: post #12

After the whole HBOMax debacle, I'm not sure if I trust Roku's side of the story and am wondering if the real issue isn't "Youtube TV won't give us a slice of their pie". I used to be a huge fan of Roku when they were the neutral streaming box that was open to all services, but the HBOMax nonsense last year soured me on them.

Seconded. Roku started out as the "we partner with everyone" streaming device and all this "we're a platform now" bullshit is such a consumer betrayal. I think I've bought 4 or 5 over the years since we cut cable. I'm not interested in Roku streaming services. I don't care if they get a cut of ad revenue of the app I use on my own hardware.

I do care that I couldn't get HBO for a year. The Amazon stick is pretty trash, but I'm pretty happy with the Chromecast. I've got one more to switch over and all our Rokus can go to e-waste.

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

#33

Post by gregmac »

I'm a bit amazed these "live TV" style services even still exist and people use them. It kind of makes sense for specifically live content -- sports, mainly -- but these are basically 1980's style cable TV delivered "over the internet".

The killer feature of services like Netflix is not really the "over the internet" part, it's the "watch any show on demand" and "massive library so you can start watching from S1E1, if you want to". Streaming live TV services fail at both of these.

CloudDVR I guess kind of gets part way to on-demand, but in a frustratingly stupid way. Clearly, the service just has a single recording of every show from every channel. If a subscriber clicks "record" all it is really doing is opting them in to access to future recordings. I assume people can't get access to old recordings (then it would just be "on demand", not "DVR"). Are there also limits on how many recordings you can access (emulating a limited size hard drive)? Do recordings go away after some time? Does it also record commercials, and does it allow skipping?

Everything about these just seems like a relic of a by-gone era. They've even added artificial limitations to emulate the old actual technical limitations. The only real thing they have going for them is access to content not available on other streaming services, Otherwise everything about a service like Netflix seems to be superior in every way. If Netflix (or similar service) had live sports streaming and all the other shows, even at the same price as traditional cable, my guess is the cable industry would be dead within a year.

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

#35

Post by ipaddr »

ghaff wrote: post #13
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…

I cut my cable TV (and cable landline) cord last year because I wasn't using either much. But I went into it knowing that it would mean giving up live TV because if I were going to subscribe to something like YouTube TV, the difference in cost wouldn't be much at the end of the day. (My cell, even with WiFi assist, and other calling mechanisms also aren't quite as good as my landline but, again, not worth the money a…

Antenna tv is HD now and offers most of those channels for free. Is it offered in your area?

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

#36

Post by ghaff »

ipaddr wrote: post #35
ghaff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cut my cable TV (and cable landline) cord last year because I wasn't using either much. But I went into it knowing that it would mean giving up live TV because if I were going to subscribe to something like YouTube TV, the difference in cost wouldn't be much at the end of the day. (My cell, even with WiFi assist, and other calling mechanisms also aren't quite as good as my landline but, again, not worth the money a…

Antenna tv is HD now and offers most of those channels for free. Is it offered in your area?

I can't get any OTA. Basically, I'm fairly far out from the nearest large city and I'm at the base of a hill that blocks anything I might pick up.

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

#37

Post by supermatt »

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…

> 4-5x the cost of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and both are commercial-free

Dont you get annoying pre-roll commercials for other amazon programs? I do and its driving me insane. Any way to turn them off?

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

#38

Post by neartheplain »

supermatt wrote: post #37
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…

> 4-5x the cost of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and both are commercial-free Dont you get annoying pre-roll commercials for other amazon programs? I do and its driving me insane. Any way to turn them off?

Amazon is the worst for those. Netflix hasn't tried it yet, as far as I've noticed.

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

#39

Post by jbluepolarbear »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #11

My Apple TV box stopped showing YouTube a few months ago, probably because it is an early model and they couldn't be bothered upgrading the software. Instead of buying another one, I got a cheap Chromebook instead.

Which Apple TV? I have 1 1st gen TVOS box and 3 4K TVOS boxes. YouTube works on all of them.

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

#40

Post by derivagral »

Terretta wrote: post #19
tcskeptic wrote: post #7

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…

They should let us pair up and split bundles. All I want is a package that’s all available global news, and zero sports. Looking at the individual channel costs for cable, sports is the culprit. Over half my cable costs were subsidizing live sports, costing my provider $8 - $12 per channel, with home/garden, food, and news type channels coming in under a buck each. It’s aggressive for streaming video packages to pric…

In my region of the US, sports were literally subsidized by the cable bill. You paid an extra itemized fee for the privilege of regional sports programming even if you never turned your TV on. This is part of why I ended up going full internet, but due to bundling discounts the savings were not actually that impressive.

I wonder if we'll get a similar institution demanding something from our ISP bills. You can see the slow decline of ESPN[0] as it gets eaten by the internet, and I'm curious what'll happen as the money pie in that vertical decreases and how it affects professional leagues.

[0] https://nextlevel.finance/updated-espn-subscribers-and-espn-...

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