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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

#51

Post by hadrien01 »

xhrpost wrote: post #40
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:…

Wow that's impressive. I'm on the east coast and seeing instant buffering when changing channels.

I'm in France, and switching channels is faster than on DTT!

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#53

Post by Dylan16807 »

paulcole wrote: post #21
lowmemcpu wrote: post #17

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

When (for example) ESPN charges like $9 per household, there’s no way to get 5 channels for $10 that includes ESPN. Sure you could get the shittiest 5 channels for $10 but what’s the point of that? Until networks change their pricing model this a la carte option is not going to work out the way people hope.

ESPN is an outlier. Among normal mainstream cable channels, nothing else is more than $2, only a few are more than $1, and the cheap ones are $0.10 or less.

Even paying extra in lieu of bundling, prices like that could work out if you make ESPN a separate $5-10 option.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#54

Post by DavidPeiffer »

thrill wrote: post #9

Who's with me to start the Ron Swanson streaming channel? It'll have all the worthwhile channels: hunting, fishing, and woodworking.

I wonder what the cheapest way to do so would be? Something through YouTube would allow easy account management, consistent interface people are familiar with, no concern regarding bandwidth and scaling - but I'm entirely unsure if there's a way to do so within the TOS and YouTube structure.

Planet Money had an episode on starting a small cable TV channel. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/471633490

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#55

Post by ls612 »

crazygringo wrote: post #42
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:…

I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't exactly seem legal. Streaming free local network broadcasts was definitively ruled as illegal by the Supreme Court in 2014 -- remember that was Aereo's entire business model. [1] It seems like the Stanford service is trying to justify themselves by being an academic study and limiting to 500 concurrent participants... but it's telling they don't list any legal justification on the site,…

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?

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#56

Post by mennis16 »

I signed up for YouTubeTV quite recently (at the beginning of last baseball season) at $40/month. I'm pretty surprised to see in such a short span of time it has gone up to $65.

If things were normal right now I'd probably just shrug it off, but between no sports and quarantining with family instead of at my apartment I have basically been paying for nothing for 3 straight months now. This is definitely pushing me over the edge to cancel.

Maybe next spring I'll reconsider, but this doesn't seem like a great move to me right now?

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#57

Post by closeparen »

crazygringo wrote: post #42
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:…

I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't exactly seem legal. Streaming free local network broadcasts was definitively ruled as illegal by the Supreme Court in 2014 -- remember that was Aereo's entire business model. [1] It seems like the Stanford service is trying to justify themselves by being an academic study and limiting to 500 concurrent participants... but it's telling they don't list any legal justification on the site,…

I can't find it now, but could swear I read somewhere that educational institutions are specifically allowed to redistribute TV signals. My high school, for example, had a system where a single cable box / VHS / DVD player in the library could be made to present as channel 3 on all the classroom TVs.

If there is such a rule I highly doubt it's intended to cover distribution to the public, more like within campus facilities, but that could be what Stanford is trying to exploit.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#58

Post by ralmidani »

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.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#59

Post by DavidPeiffer »

tpmx wrote: post #50

Sort of related: I've noticed that regular Youtube has been cranking up the ads quite a lot lately. I view most of my youtube on the TV, via their crappy HTML-based Apple TV app. So many ads to suffer through, suddenly. On the desktop, it seems like they've suddenly started work against that one chrome extension I've loved the most: The one that blocks the ads from youtube. I can't see myself subscring to youtube red…

I've noticed a significant uptick in ads as well. The ad quality is akin to ads on streaming-specific apps.

It's not uncommon to only have ~4 different ads shown to you on something like CBS Mobile. They have the potential to target ads, they have an app installed (and all the privacy implications that go with it), but somehow they're showing the same 30 second ad 4 times in a row to make up a commercial break.

Others are far better. For a time, ESPN's app would simply show the logo and repeat the same ~4 second music loop until the commercials were done.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#60

Post by jmchuster »

eslaught wrote: post #49
draz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is not the content producer, rather strikes deals with content producers. The reality is there is consolidation in the media world, with a few mega corporations managing most channels. They typically bundle a few channels together for vMVPDs/MVPDs, for leverage - “you want channel X, you must also get channel Y.” Source: I head a Product organization at a mega media org.

Honest question: why do big organizations do this? I mean, I get it: you're making people pay for stuff they don't need. You can charge a higher price despite users not actually watching everything they buy. Clearly, this tactic must work at some level, or else they wouldn't do it. On the other hand, there are users like me who take one look at that and say, "ew", and walk away from TV completely. And it's not like I…

I'd imagine they've done the studies and found that they'd lose more money overall. The gain in new customers who only want a specific channel must not outweigh the revenue they'd lose by customers downgrading to less channels.

It's also possible that it would produce the secondary effect of killing channels that are more niche and not quite as profitable (maybe not profitable at all). Maybe there are channels that people would never pay for individually if given the choice, but would watch if given them as part of a package, and the aggregate value of which provides enough additional benefit to justify paying for the package as whole.

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