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://youtu.be/63aECX2MZvY
The content is... well, it's U.S. network television and associated daytime programming. But some people like it! And it's free (for people inside the U.S.).
For any YouTube TV PMs reading, I just added an event to my calendar marking the day I'll cancel my account. Thanks for the helpful reference to the exact date my current rate expires. Spectrum is offering more channels for $45/month and you don't even need a cable box if you're using an Apple TV. YouTube TV is an OK service that is very rough around the edges and I won't miss it a single minute after I cancel.
"This new price reflects the rising costs of content, and we also believe it reflects the complete value of YouTube TV"
Your price does not reflect the complete value of your service, but happy churning.
Just cancel now. You still get the rest of the current month you paid for and there's no need to worry about forgetting. I just cancelled mine. "Rough around the edges" is a nice way of describing an app that doesn't play what I click on but random shit it feels like.
In fairness, at $45 a month you’re not getting any the unlimited DVR service YouTube TV provides, which is a big feature for some.
If anyone is in a similar boat I can strongly recommend the Channels DVR app: it’s $6 a month or less per year, runs on most platforms (raspberry pi included) and lets you record to anything you want.
Yeah, when I first saw the email I put a reminder to cancel before August billing, but I've been using it much less recently anyway so seeing this thread I decided to just cancel immediately. Hopefully in the future there will be a basic option back in the $40 range
Have they figured out how to play the show you click on yet? No. $50 a month and the basic functionality of the app doesn't even work. With a Chromecast, it's even worse. Eventually, after clicking back and forth, disconnecting and reconnecting, it may play. Then you have to turn off the closed captioning for every single show even though it's off in the settings. Then it randomly stops at times. The ui displays the wrong show. And they have the gall to charge even more for this shittiest motherfucking app I've ever had the displeasure of using. This engineering team should be fired. They should be ashamed of themselves. They can't even make the app play a single video without problems. I've been putting up with it for years now just because of certain channels my mom likes, but no more. Fuck this garbage app. I've submitted dozens of support requests and the only people dumber than the engineers, project managers, and others who work on this app are the idiots running customer support. Fuck them all. They can shove this fucking app right up their ass.
Sounds like you have a generation 1 Chromecast™ and bad WiFi. We hope you'll try YouTube TV again with a Chromecast Ultra™ and a Nest Wifi™ 3 pack. Take care!
Stop beating around the bush, come on just come out and tell us how you feel! ;-)
BTW I'm dumping YTV after this move, but I haven't had a quite the same horror show w/ the app etc. At $40 it was worth it, I felt the hike to $50 was a bit steep, but now another $15/30 pct... it's just a big middle finger. I watch news & sports, but not $800 per year.
Parent comment might come off as offensive, but it very accurately represents my experience with several Google apps that I've been using recently (YouTube, Google Play Music/YouTube Music, Google Photos, Google Maps, ...). But I'm on Firefox, so I guess nobody cares.
This is so true. I've always had horrible usability issues with YoutubeTV, especially when using with a Chromecast. I was always shocked that the app/website had so many bugs, the same type of bugs OP is talking about. It was literally the buggiest piece of software I've used in the past few years. The person I share the membership with never ran into these bugs somehow, so seeing this comment really makes me feel better about my experience. Still scratching my head about how so many bugs could show up in production for so long. I'm guessing severely inadequate testing.
I love YoutubeTV, and I've been using it for years. This is probably enough to get me to cancel, though. It started at $40 when I signed up a couple years ago, they raised it to $50 last year, and now $65 for just a few more channels (and among them, only one I even want).
I wish they'd offer a more a la carte option. I'd be willing to pay $10-15 per major broadcaster's channel collection, or $2-7 for individual channels (depending on quality of programming). I might even land at $50 or more with my channel choices, but I'd prefer to pick what I'm paying for instead of subsidizing dozens of channels of programming I dislike (and quite a few that I would prefer to boycott entirely).
The conventional TV channels don't allow their networks to be sold a-la-carte because they all make more money via the bundle than anyone would be willing to pay for their channels individually. Remember that most of these channels are related - for example, NBC owns Telemundo, SyFy, USA, Bravo, E!, Oxygen, etc. They sell all of those through bundles and keep $20/mo or so, but how many people would pay that much for any one of the channels, and how many people would actually buy them all?
I think everyone would love to just get their favorite channels for (let's say) $3/mo/channel with no ads... but that would be a huge loss for the media companies, so they won't sell that way.
Instead what we're seeing is disruption via alternative models, like Netflix, HBO, Apple TV+, and now even the biggest media owner (Disney) offering Disney+ and ESPN+ direct.
I'm not sure if conventional TV will still exist in its current form in a decade, but I don't think we'll ever see today's bundled TV become available a-la-carte, because it isn't compatible with that business model.
It's not the services fault. These big tv conglomerates don't want their channels optional because they know no one wants them for the most part. Or, at the very least, you won't accidentally start watching something on their network if you don't even have the channel.
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 add flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch.
Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy.
Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue.
Right now, every video that isn't "advertiser friendly" is dead weight and money on the table.
Now they're doing the exact thing that drove everyone away from their cable company to them in the first place. It's clear misunderstanding of their customers. I'm sure most of the HN demographic would have no real trouble affording this 30% rate hike, but it's not about the actual money, it's about the principle.
Just cancelled. The value proposition of YouTube TV was great a few years ago, for $40 a month. They've added a bunch of channels I won't watch several times, and raised the price multiple times now. I wish they had a cheaper option, with the original channels.
YouTube TV had enough channels at launch. They kept adding channels that I didn’t want and charging for it. This went from best value to worst value in three short years.
Not sure what the old media hacks are trying to accomplish here.
> 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 from the high cost subscription services like traditional cable and DirecTV. In their ideal world, absolutely nothing would change about that (other than prices always going up over time).
I can only assume the only remaining reason why people even still want traditional TV is live sports.
Stuff might finally be happening. I can‘t wait for Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, etc. to just come in and start getting those licenses. Imagine a FIFA world cup on YouTube live-streamed in 4K. Granted, it‘s unlikely to happen soon. But sports is really the only valuable thing the traditional content providers still have.
Wait a minute, though. AT&T and NBC both have have their own streaming services now. So why wouldn‘t they use their sports licenses to stream games on there?
Really not surprising that old media still has pull like this.
I enjoyed using YouTubeTV during this past college football season, but I won't be renewing this year. It was already iffy at best with Coronavirus, but now with this price hike YouTube can forget it. Probably exactly what old media wants from us anyway so we go back to cable. Forever a cable cutter.
If needed, I'll go back to Sling despite it going up as well when it first got started, but not as dramatically as YouTubeTV. Sling Orange + sports package will be $40, which is good for the few months I need it. At-least we still have some other options out there instead of having to go back to cable.
At $20 they were disruptive, at $65, they are dead to me. I will be interesting to see how many others leave. The "teaser" cable package is more channels and half the cost.
I think it is just a continuing trend in Google getting squeezed harder and harder by the falling search advertising margins and no replacement or even side hustle to compensate.
Just before Google winks out of relevance I expect to see them try to charge people to use maps.
At least they were nice enough to include a link to cancel the service in their email about the price hike. Seriously! Other services purposefully make it difficult, so props to Google for doing the right thing there.
I liked the service but I just don't use it enough to continue. I'll re-subscribe when they drop the price again.
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 <package B>
This is certainly CBS Viacom flexing their influence. Youtube TV without CBS and their sports coverage is dead in the water. That gives them leverage to force feed the other Viacom junk. Even the official blog post announcing the changes sounded like more of a resignation.
Unfortunate. Too much money for me and I won't be continuing my subscription.
YouTube TV is nowhere near good enough to demand that high of a price. The shows are limited, the DVR interface is terrible, and the DVR barely even works. It's nowhere near as good as Vue was.
Or this one (I'm on android): Tapping the "cast" button to send to a Chromecast while in the middle of a show causes a random jump. On a good day, it would start playing at the beginning of the show, on a bad one it would jump to an entirely different network.
I assume my experience was unique somehow because it's too egregious of a bug to ignore (it basically gave me a choice of ditch the Chromecast or ditch YoutubeTV, in the end I did both), but I was using an android phone and a gen 3 chromecast so I can't imagine why this only affected me. Never got fixed in the ~1 year I had the service.
Disagree, and I doubt you're a regular user of YouTube TV given your comments. "The shows are limited" doesn't even make sense; you get access to the live feed of all the channels in question. The DVR works perfectly in my experience over the last year or so; it has never failed to record what I wanted it to record.
It's actually still a great value if you can go in on it with a few friends/family members. They allow up to 6 different accounts. I've got 6 households using my account, so essentially it's like $10/household.
I really don't expect too many people to stay subscribed, unless they're relying on the (sketchy) revenue stream that's people who subscribed once and then forgot all about it.
If they keep increasing the price every time they add more channels pretty soon it’ll end up being the same as the old cable subscriptions. What happened to a-la-carte channels?
Disappointing, as Youtube TV's low entry price for the last several years took the wind out of Playstation Vue, which I really enjoyed. It's frustrating to see the big tech companies engage in monopolistic, anti-competitive behavior by selling services at a loss to drive out competition only to then jack up prices.
Pluto.TV is free because of commercials, and it has 250+ channels. It has a TV guide for what is playing and while it has no DVR it has the ability to start a movie from the beginning so you don't miss it.
The whole streaming platform war is beginning to resemble the Stone Soup parable. At some point, no platform will have enough content for anyone to care to subscribe (arguably now). Someone needs to come along and convince them all that sharing is in everyone’s best interests.
I was thinking the other day: if you replace the word "commercial" with "ad", it somehow seems much more ridiculous to be spending $50+ month for a video service, only to still have to sit through countless ads.
It seems obvious, but for some reason, I accepted that TV will have "commercials", but I always associated "ads" with computers. Maybe it's a regional/language thing...IDK.
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?
[+] [-] keithwinstein|5 years ago|reply
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://youtu.be/63aECX2MZvY
The content is... well, it's U.S. network television and associated daytime programming. But some people like it! And it's free (for people inside the U.S.).
[+] [-] chrsstrm|5 years ago|reply
"This new price reflects the rising costs of content, and we also believe it reflects the complete value of YouTube TV"
Your price does not reflect the complete value of your service, but happy churning.
[+] [-] mnm1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juped|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|5 years ago|reply
If anyone is in a similar boat I can strongly recommend the Channels DVR app: it’s $6 a month or less per year, runs on most platforms (raspberry pi included) and lets you record to anything you want.
[+] [-] mennis16|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] texasbigdata|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paul7986|5 years ago|reply
Its gone starting August 15th.
[+] [-] op00to|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnm1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mobiledev2014|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thr0w__4w4y|5 years ago|reply
BTW I'm dumping YTV after this move, but I haven't had a quite the same horror show w/ the app etc. At $40 it was worth it, I felt the hike to $50 was a bit steep, but now another $15/30 pct... it's just a big middle finger. I watch news & sports, but not $800 per year.
[+] [-] ResidentSleeper|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cc23|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whymauri|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caymanjim|5 years ago|reply
I wish they'd offer a more a la carte option. I'd be willing to pay $10-15 per major broadcaster's channel collection, or $2-7 for individual channels (depending on quality of programming). I might even land at $50 or more with my channel choices, but I'd prefer to pick what I'm paying for instead of subsidizing dozens of channels of programming I dislike (and quite a few that I would prefer to boycott entirely).
[+] [-] burlesona|5 years ago|reply
I think everyone would love to just get their favorite channels for (let's say) $3/mo/channel with no ads... but that would be a huge loss for the media companies, so they won't sell that way.
Instead what we're seeing is disruption via alternative models, like Netflix, HBO, Apple TV+, and now even the biggest media owner (Disney) offering Disney+ and ESPN+ direct.
I'm not sure if conventional TV will still exist in its current form in a decade, but I don't think we'll ever see today's bundled TV become available a-la-carte, because it isn't compatible with that business model.
[+] [-] strangescript|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CivBase|5 years ago|reply
Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy.
Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue.
Right now, every video that isn't "advertiser friendly" is dead weight and money on the table.
[+] [-] bonestamp2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verandaguy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 29athrowaway|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seansmccullough|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cwhiz|5 years ago|reply
Not sure what the old media hacks are trying to accomplish here.
[+] [-] adventured|5 years ago|reply
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 from the high cost subscription services like traditional cable and DirecTV. In their ideal world, absolutely nothing would change about that (other than prices always going up over time).
[+] [-] v7p1Qbt1im|5 years ago|reply
Stuff might finally be happening. I can‘t wait for Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, etc. to just come in and start getting those licenses. Imagine a FIFA world cup on YouTube live-streamed in 4K. Granted, it‘s unlikely to happen soon. But sports is really the only valuable thing the traditional content providers still have.
Wait a minute, though. AT&T and NBC both have have their own streaming services now. So why wouldn‘t they use their sports licenses to stream games on there?
[+] [-] Fellshard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seansmccullough|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vanc_cefepime|5 years ago|reply
I enjoyed using YouTubeTV during this past college football season, but I won't be renewing this year. It was already iffy at best with Coronavirus, but now with this price hike YouTube can forget it. Probably exactly what old media wants from us anyway so we go back to cable. Forever a cable cutter.
If needed, I'll go back to Sling despite it going up as well when it first got started, but not as dramatically as YouTubeTV. Sling Orange + sports package will be $40, which is good for the few months I need it. At-least we still have some other options out there instead of having to go back to cable.
[+] [-] mrits|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|5 years ago|reply
I think it is just a continuing trend in Google getting squeezed harder and harder by the falling search advertising margins and no replacement or even side hustle to compensate.
Just before Google winks out of relevance I expect to see them try to charge people to use maps.
[+] [-] russellbeattie|5 years ago|reply
I liked the service but I just don't use it enough to continue. I'll re-subscribe when they drop the price again.
[+] [-] lowmemcpu|5 years ago|reply
$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 <package B>
[+] [-] gundmc|5 years ago|reply
Unfortunate. Too much money for me and I won't be continuing my subscription.
[+] [-] shepardrtc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfredward|5 years ago|reply
I assume my experience was unique somehow because it's too egregious of a bug to ignore (it basically gave me a choice of ditch the Chromecast or ditch YoutubeTV, in the end I did both), but I was using an android phone and a gen 3 chromecast so I can't imagine why this only affected me. Never got fixed in the ~1 year I had the service.
[+] [-] Bud|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixQuarks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anoncareer0212|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burlesona|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kemonocode|5 years ago|reply
I really don't expect too many people to stay subscribed, unless they're relying on the (sketchy) revenue stream that's people who subscribed once and then forgot all about it.
[+] [-] quantumwannabe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awill|5 years ago|reply
In hindsight, it was stupid for Google to get into a business where they cannot control pricing.
[+] [-] burlesona|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cable2600|5 years ago|reply
Pluto.TV is free because of commercials, and it has 250+ channels. It has a TV guide for what is playing and while it has no DVR it has the ability to start a movie from the beginning so you don't miss it.
[+] [-] jimbob45|5 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup
[+] [-] Unklejoe|5 years ago|reply
It seems obvious, but for some reason, I accepted that TV will have "commercials", but I always associated "ads" with computers. Maybe it's a regional/language thing...IDK.
[+] [-] couchdb_ouchdb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mennis16|5 years ago|reply
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?