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Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

63 points by magthor 5y ago

supernovae 5y ago
Youtube TV for those wondering, I don't think there is any concern for youtube app. I don't do youtube tv since its way too expensive, but i'm curious what kind of additional data/software they're trying to impose that other digital cable carriers aren't...
deathhand 5y ago
Roku also has been fighting with Spectrum https://www.nexttv.com/news/charters-spectrum-tv-app-blackout-on-roku-edges-toward-the-two-month-mark https://www.nexttv.com/news/charters-spectrum-tv-app-blackou...
gwbas1c 5y ago
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 shows I want to watch outright on Google Play... Commercial-free.
- e40 5y ago
  Yes. Anything you didn’t explicitly ask to “record” has them, from what i’ve seen.
- kschwab 5y ago
  It does, because it's essentially the same thing as old school cable TV. You're getting access to ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, Fox, FX, CNN, TNT, EPSN, BBC America, Food Network, HGTV, and so on. There's not really any service that offers (all of) that content without commercials. You can use their cloud DVR to "record" something, and after that happens, you can fast forward through the commercials. Which is similar to what you would get with a old school cable and a real DVR. I also hate commercials, and while you can find commercial free versions of some of the YouTube TV content, you can't find it for everything they air. Streaming is so fragmented now, both in content and features, that you have to do quite a lot of research before buying. Edit: The text of the email Roku is sending out: https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq
  - ProAm 5y ago
    There is DVR software that will strip out the commericals for you. Post processing DVR feature, and its awesome.
  - jerf 5y ago
    "You can use their cloud DVR to "record" something, and after that happens, you can fast forward through the commercials." Has this changed? When I tried YouTubeTV a couple of years ago, you could record things to the DVR, and sometimes not only would they not let you fast forward through the commercials, they replaced them with their own completely un-fast-forwardable commercials. Sometimes it would let you fast forward as normal though. This is what caused me to drop the subscription immediately.
    - kschwab 5y ago
      I have not had that problem. But, you do have to specifically wait for the actual air time to come and go before you're able to play it with fast-forward capability. Once that's done, I've never had an issue with fast-forward. The UI does differentiate between "recorded" and "on-demand" content. What I have run into: - Something I recorded is no longer available, I assume because some contract expired. - Something that's immediately available as on-demand isn't scheduled to air "Live". I can still click the thing that says to record it, but it never airs and so never records. That's pretty rare, but it's happened.
    - wjamesg 5y ago
      Even if you ‘record’ something to your YouTube TV DVR, if there is an on-demand (with ads) version available from the network, your DVR recorded version will be replaced and you will be forced to watch the on-demand (with unskippable ads) version
      - kschwab 5y ago
        I can't reproduce that. I wonder if it's on some specific channels.
      - jvolkman 5y ago
- ghaff 5y ago
  That was pretty much my thinking too. Cutting my cable bill by $100/month opens up a lot of "budget" for a la carte content. I still lose out on live TV but honestly that was a rare thing for me given I watch very little sports.
- xnx 5y ago
  Youtube TV isn't direct competitor to Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. but it's a great alternative for people who want cable TV channels. I found it was much cheaper, had more viewing flexibility, and better contract terms than any cable provider in my area. That said, there's no cable TV content that makes it worth being exposed to the aggressive obnoxiousness of commercials.
  - enos_feedler 5y ago
    Except live local sports that are blacked out on any streaming package. For me, at least.
- josefresco 5y ago
  > Does Youtube TV still have commercials for on-demand content? Doesn't every single TV content provider do this? On Demand content has unskippable commercials on every platform I've used - Netflix and Amazon Prime are not equivalents as they don't offer network On Demand content.
  - kschwab 5y ago
    You can get some of what's offered on YouTube TV without commercials in other places, but it's a piecemeal adventure. If you shut down YouTube TV in favor of Amazon Prime, for example, you could pay for a subscription to AMC+ on Prime and watch "The Walking Dead", "Discovery of Witches", etc, without commercials. Or, older stuff, like "Law and Order" that has commercials on YouTube TV, but comes with Prime, no commercials.
- supermatt 5y ago
  > 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?
  - neartheplain 5y ago
    Amazon is the worst for those. Netflix hasn't tried it yet, as far as I've noticed.
- neogodless 5y ago
  Sometimes these services shoot themselves in the foot. I tried Starz on trial, and had so many commercials to sit through. No way I'm paying for Starz. (It's entirely possible and even likely you don't commercials with the paid service compared to the trial, but the trial was for me to experience the service. I'm not then risking paying for the service with the risk that it still has commercials.)
helipad 5y ago
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 need a separate Peacock subscription to watch some, but not all Premier League games. Also the channels available on Roku seem to change, presumably due to contract disputes like this. Whatever promise TV over Internet once had over cable has long since gone away for me.
- tcskeptic 5y ago
  The Bally Sports thing is a long standing YoutubeTV contract dispute carried over from the Fox Sports RSNs. Its ridiculous
  - soupfordummies 5y ago
    Not the person you're replying to but I'm in the same boat. I was at least able to watch my team last year but now that I can't even do that, there's no reason for me to keep paying $65/mo, it's ludicrous.
- ghaff 5y ago
  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 as essentially a backup.)
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Antenna tv is HD now and offers most of those channels for free. Is it offered in your area?
lebrad 5y ago
Just connect a PC to your TV and pirate everything
- Causality1 5y ago
  You don't have to hook up a PC to your TV for that. Plex and other programs will let you stream your archives to your roku/chromecast/etc.
- BEEdwards 5y ago
  Or build a nice little Plex server built using stuff you have laying around.
- afavour 5y ago
  Some people like to pay for the things they get value from. And in any case, YouTube TV is live TV. Much more difficult to pirate live content.
tcskeptic 5y ago
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 live sports. All the other network programming is of very little interest to me. My total cost for a competitive package with CloudDVR (what used to be YoutubeTVs killer feature) and 400Mbps internet is now lower by about 30 bucks a month, which is not nothing. I live in hope that one day I will be able to buy a cable/streaming package that consists of Sports plus Local Channels with cloud DVR and very high bitrate streaming. That is all that I want.
- solosoyokaze 5y ago
  I don't watch sports but do enjoy cooking, travel and home shows (don't judge me!). I also did not like paying a huge monthly fee for mostly channels I don't watch. I've actually found Discovery+ to be a really great deal as it has Discovery, Food, Travel and HGTV content all bundled and on-demand for $5 a month. It's all of the content I wanted and was paying > $60 /month for, with no commercials and on-demand. It's a pretty great deal if you like this kind of content.
  - Terretta 5y ago
    Exactly! Discovery plus a global news package would be ideal. Only streamer with decent selection of global news in a skinny-ish package seems to be Sling, but what you describe would be ideal.
    - solosoyokaze 5y ago
      I would love to see local news (minus commercials). I'd definitely pay $5 a month for that.
      - Terretta 5y ago
GnarfGnarf 5y ago
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.
- jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  Which Apple TV? I have 1 1st gen TVOS box and 3 4K TVOS boxes. YouTube works on all of them.
  - GnarfGnarf 5y ago
    My Apple TV is model A1469, 3rd generation. It may have something to do with not being in the U.S. I also had to scrap an $800 early model iPad because it was no longer compatible with YouTube. An $180 Chromebook did a nice job replacing it.
bsharitt 5y ago
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.
- kschwab 5y ago
  Some detail here: https://popculture.com/streaming/news/roku-founder-reveals-why-hbo-max-peacock-arent-available/ 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 singularly." To me it just reads like Roku has grown it's subscriber base to the point where they can negotiate with content providers in the same way that cable companies used to. Which isn't great for end users, but it is what it is. Both HBOMax and Peacock ended up on Roku, so some deal was reached in both cases.
  - bsharitt 5y ago
    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.
    - kschwab 5y ago
      I feel the same way, but is there any safe haven? I assume Chromecasts or Amazon Fire would be subject to the same situation.
      - ghaff 5y ago
josefresco 5y ago
I have 5 TV's with Roku hardware attached. I've also been a YouTubeTV customer for several years (when it was $35/month). I'll drop YTTV long before I'll swap my Roku hardware. Roku hardware and UI is superior to anything on the market. YouTubeTV is decent, but the competition is robust.
- mmglr 5y ago
  > Roku hardware and UI is superior to anything on the market. I have to agree. I've used Apple TV, and while its UI is fancier, it lags, crashes and just doesn't have the same "ergonomics". Something as simple as toggling captions and changing picture modes while paying a video is so much easier on Roku. And, all the menus provide by the Roku OS just feel snappier.
- blantonl 5y ago
  I see this perspective somewhat in reverse. I watch TV for the content, not how nice the remote is or how solid the box feels when I hook up the HDMI connection. Granted, there are some objective measurements between different devices, such as Dolby support and format support, but that's typically for the most advanced consumers of content - not the vast majority of people who just want to watch certain content.
  - josefresco 5y ago
    I literally live and die by the Roku fast forward/back buttons. I can get the "content" from anywhere! The clicky, rubbery buttons and the responsive UI is amazing. After 5 minutes of use, I was hooked and bought them for all my TVs. This is the single biggest differentiator with Roku and other hardware.
- bagacrap 5y ago
  Plainly false. A PS4 is a much better media PC than a Roku given that it's so much faster. The Chromecast UI, ie your phone, has a far better interface. I'm never required to hunt and peck a password or search term. On top of that neither my PS4 nor Chromecast injects ads. I have never used a worse piece of smart TV software than a Roku so I'd be keen to know what you're comparing it to when you call it industry leading.
gregmac 5y ago
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.
- dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  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. I think being over the internet is the killer feature. Cable companies had on demand for a decade before netflix streaming, being over the internet meant you were not locked into a monopoly or duopoly. That said, I agree it seems old-timey and the wrong way of doing it.
  - truth_ 5y ago
    Surprisingly, there still exists demand for "live TV" rather than choosing the show because some people don't like to decide what they want to watch. Netflix is testing "live TV" in France [0][1][2]. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/7/21553998/netflix-linear-channel-france-streaming-cable-tv https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/7/21553998/netflix-linear-c... [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/06/netflix-is-experimenting-with-a-live-tv-style-stream/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/06/netflix-is-experime... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/06/netflix-tests-a-programmed-linear-tv-and-movie-channel-in-france/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/06/netflix-tests-a-programmed...
jsnell 5y ago
I'm a bit confused about the logic here. Roku seems to be claiming that YouTube TV has a dominant position, and Google is threatening to withhold it to get unfair benefits for the unrelated YouTube app. But the directionality is the wrong way around; YouTube TV the smaller of those services by orders of magnitude. It's dominates nothing at all, and it's a small miracle that it still exists at all. How could it possibly be used to extract unfair concessions? Does anyone have a link to the full statement? Maybe this got garbled by the reporting somehow.
- kschwab 5y ago
  What was emailed to customers: https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq The article with the most amount of direct quotes I could find: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/roku-youtube-tv-google-dispute-1234960563/ https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/roku-youtube-tv-google... Some comments from Roku's founder on a prior, similar situation: https://popculture.com/streaming/news/roku-founder-reveals-why-hbo-max-peacock-arent-available/ https://popculture.com/streaming/news/roku-founder-reveals-w...
bagacrap 5y ago
Roku is toxic and the only reason I know this is having been forced to deal with their products due to being pre-packaged on smart TVs. Roku comes "free" because it thinks it can extract value from me. It is free like a leech is free. It tracks what you watch and superimposes ads. The interface is frightfully slow. The remote is hard to use as compared to my phone being the remote, as is the case with a Chromecast.
- mmglr 5y ago
  > It tracks what you watch and superimposes ads. Tracking can be turned off in the settings. I have several Roku TVs and Roku boxes and don't see any ads "superimposed". The only ad (singular) I see is on the home screen.

63 points by magthor 5y ago

Youtube TV for those wondering, I don't think there is any concern for youtube app. I don't do youtube tv since its way too expensive, but i'm curious what kind of additional data/software they're trying to impose that other digital cable carriers aren't...

deathhand 5y ago

Roku also has been fighting with Spectrum https://www.nexttv.com/news/charters-spectrum-tv-app-blackout-on-roku-edges-toward-the-two-month-mark https://www.nexttv.com/news/charters-spectrum-tv-app-blackou...

gwbas1c 5y ago

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 shows I want to watch outright on Google Play... Commercial-free.

e40 5y ago
Yes. Anything you didn’t explicitly ask to “record” has them, from what i’ve seen.
kschwab 5y ago
It does, because it's essentially the same thing as old school cable TV. You're getting access to ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, Fox, FX, CNN, TNT, EPSN, BBC America, Food Network, HGTV, and so on. There's not really any service that offers (all of) that content without commercials. You can use their cloud DVR to "record" something, and after that happens, you can fast forward through the commercials. Which is similar to what you would get with a old school cable and a real DVR. I also hate commercials, and while you can find commercial free versions of some of the YouTube TV content, you can't find it for everything they air. Streaming is so fragmented now, both in content and features, that you have to do quite a lot of research before buying. Edit: The text of the email Roku is sending out: https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq
- ProAm 5y ago
  There is DVR software that will strip out the commericals for you. Post processing DVR feature, and its awesome.
- jerf 5y ago
  "You can use their cloud DVR to "record" something, and after that happens, you can fast forward through the commercials." Has this changed? When I tried YouTubeTV a couple of years ago, you could record things to the DVR, and sometimes not only would they not let you fast forward through the commercials, they replaced them with their own completely un-fast-forwardable commercials. Sometimes it would let you fast forward as normal though. This is what caused me to drop the subscription immediately.
  - kschwab 5y ago
    I have not had that problem. But, you do have to specifically wait for the actual air time to come and go before you're able to play it with fast-forward capability. Once that's done, I've never had an issue with fast-forward. The UI does differentiate between "recorded" and "on-demand" content. What I have run into: - Something I recorded is no longer available, I assume because some contract expired. - Something that's immediately available as on-demand isn't scheduled to air "Live". I can still click the thing that says to record it, but it never airs and so never records. That's pretty rare, but it's happened.
  - wjamesg 5y ago
    Even if you ‘record’ something to your YouTube TV DVR, if there is an on-demand (with ads) version available from the network, your DVR recorded version will be replaced and you will be forced to watch the on-demand (with unskippable ads) version
    - kschwab 5y ago
      I can't reproduce that. I wonder if it's on some specific channels.
    - jvolkman 5y ago
ghaff 5y ago
That was pretty much my thinking too. Cutting my cable bill by $100/month opens up a lot of "budget" for a la carte content. I still lose out on live TV but honestly that was a rare thing for me given I watch very little sports.
xnx 5y ago
Youtube TV isn't direct competitor to Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. but it's a great alternative for people who want cable TV channels. I found it was much cheaper, had more viewing flexibility, and better contract terms than any cable provider in my area. That said, there's no cable TV content that makes it worth being exposed to the aggressive obnoxiousness of commercials.
- enos_feedler 5y ago
  Except live local sports that are blacked out on any streaming package. For me, at least.
josefresco 5y ago
> Does Youtube TV still have commercials for on-demand content? Doesn't every single TV content provider do this? On Demand content has unskippable commercials on every platform I've used - Netflix and Amazon Prime are not equivalents as they don't offer network On Demand content.
- kschwab 5y ago
  You can get some of what's offered on YouTube TV without commercials in other places, but it's a piecemeal adventure. If you shut down YouTube TV in favor of Amazon Prime, for example, you could pay for a subscription to AMC+ on Prime and watch "The Walking Dead", "Discovery of Witches", etc, without commercials. Or, older stuff, like "Law and Order" that has commercials on YouTube TV, but comes with Prime, no commercials.
supermatt 5y ago
> 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?
- neartheplain 5y ago
  Amazon is the worst for those. Netflix hasn't tried it yet, as far as I've noticed.
neogodless 5y ago
Sometimes these services shoot themselves in the foot. I tried Starz on trial, and had so many commercials to sit through. No way I'm paying for Starz. (It's entirely possible and even likely you don't commercials with the paid service compared to the trial, but the trial was for me to experience the service. I'm not then risking paying for the service with the risk that it still has commercials.)

helipad 5y ago

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 need a separate Peacock subscription to watch some, but not all Premier League games. Also the channels available on Roku seem to change, presumably due to contract disputes like this. Whatever promise TV over Internet once had over cable has long since gone away for me.

tcskeptic 5y ago
The Bally Sports thing is a long standing YoutubeTV contract dispute carried over from the Fox Sports RSNs. Its ridiculous
- soupfordummies 5y ago
  Not the person you're replying to but I'm in the same boat. I was at least able to watch my team last year but now that I can't even do that, there's no reason for me to keep paying $65/mo, it's ludicrous.
ghaff 5y ago
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 as essentially a backup.)
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Antenna tv is HD now and offers most of those channels for free. Is it offered in your area?

lebrad 5y ago

Just connect a PC to your TV and pirate everything

Causality1 5y ago
You don't have to hook up a PC to your TV for that. Plex and other programs will let you stream your archives to your roku/chromecast/etc.
BEEdwards 5y ago
Or build a nice little Plex server built using stuff you have laying around.
afavour 5y ago
Some people like to pay for the things they get value from. And in any case, YouTube TV is live TV. Much more difficult to pirate live content.

tcskeptic 5y ago

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 live sports. All the other network programming is of very little interest to me. My total cost for a competitive package with CloudDVR (what used to be YoutubeTVs killer feature) and 400Mbps internet is now lower by about 30 bucks a month, which is not nothing. I live in hope that one day I will be able to buy a cable/streaming package that consists of Sports plus Local Channels with cloud DVR and very high bitrate streaming. That is all that I want.

solosoyokaze 5y ago
I don't watch sports but do enjoy cooking, travel and home shows (don't judge me!). I also did not like paying a huge monthly fee for mostly channels I don't watch. I've actually found Discovery+ to be a really great deal as it has Discovery, Food, Travel and HGTV content all bundled and on-demand for $5 a month. It's all of the content I wanted and was paying > $60 /month for, with no commercials and on-demand. It's a pretty great deal if you like this kind of content.
- Terretta 5y ago
  Exactly! Discovery plus a global news package would be ideal. Only streamer with decent selection of global news in a skinny-ish package seems to be Sling, but what you describe would be ideal.
  - solosoyokaze 5y ago
    I would love to see local news (minus commercials). I'd definitely pay $5 a month for that.
    - Terretta 5y ago

GnarfGnarf 5y ago

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.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago
Which Apple TV? I have 1 1st gen TVOS box and 3 4K TVOS boxes. YouTube works on all of them.
- GnarfGnarf 5y ago
  My Apple TV is model A1469, 3rd generation. It may have something to do with not being in the U.S. I also had to scrap an $800 early model iPad because it was no longer compatible with YouTube. An $180 Chromebook did a nice job replacing it.

bsharitt 5y ago

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.

kschwab 5y ago
Some detail here: https://popculture.com/streaming/news/roku-founder-reveals-why-hbo-max-peacock-arent-available/ 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 singularly." To me it just reads like Roku has grown it's subscriber base to the point where they can negotiate with content providers in the same way that cable companies used to. Which isn't great for end users, but it is what it is. Both HBOMax and Peacock ended up on Roku, so some deal was reached in both cases.
- bsharitt 5y ago
  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.
  - kschwab 5y ago
    I feel the same way, but is there any safe haven? I assume Chromecasts or Amazon Fire would be subject to the same situation.
    - ghaff 5y ago

josefresco 5y ago

I have 5 TV's with Roku hardware attached. I've also been a YouTubeTV customer for several years (when it was $35/month). I'll drop YTTV long before I'll swap my Roku hardware. Roku hardware and UI is superior to anything on the market. YouTubeTV is decent, but the competition is robust.

mmglr 5y ago
> Roku hardware and UI is superior to anything on the market. I have to agree. I've used Apple TV, and while its UI is fancier, it lags, crashes and just doesn't have the same "ergonomics". Something as simple as toggling captions and changing picture modes while paying a video is so much easier on Roku. And, all the menus provide by the Roku OS just feel snappier.
blantonl 5y ago
I see this perspective somewhat in reverse. I watch TV for the content, not how nice the remote is or how solid the box feels when I hook up the HDMI connection. Granted, there are some objective measurements between different devices, such as Dolby support and format support, but that's typically for the most advanced consumers of content - not the vast majority of people who just want to watch certain content.
- josefresco 5y ago
  I literally live and die by the Roku fast forward/back buttons. I can get the "content" from anywhere! The clicky, rubbery buttons and the responsive UI is amazing. After 5 minutes of use, I was hooked and bought them for all my TVs. This is the single biggest differentiator with Roku and other hardware.
bagacrap 5y ago
Plainly false. A PS4 is a much better media PC than a Roku given that it's so much faster. The Chromecast UI, ie your phone, has a far better interface. I'm never required to hunt and peck a password or search term. On top of that neither my PS4 nor Chromecast injects ads. I have never used a worse piece of smart TV software than a Roku so I'd be keen to know what you're comparing it to when you call it industry leading.

gregmac 5y ago

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.

dec0dedab0de 5y ago
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. I think being over the internet is the killer feature. Cable companies had on demand for a decade before netflix streaming, being over the internet meant you were not locked into a monopoly or duopoly. That said, I agree it seems old-timey and the wrong way of doing it.
- truth_ 5y ago
  Surprisingly, there still exists demand for "live TV" rather than choosing the show because some people don't like to decide what they want to watch. Netflix is testing "live TV" in France [0][1][2]. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/7/21553998/netflix-linear-channel-france-streaming-cable-tv https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/7/21553998/netflix-linear-c... [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/06/netflix-is-experimenting-with-a-live-tv-style-stream/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/06/netflix-is-experime... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/06/netflix-tests-a-programmed-linear-tv-and-movie-channel-in-france/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/06/netflix-tests-a-programmed...

jsnell 5y ago

I'm a bit confused about the logic here. Roku seems to be claiming that YouTube TV has a dominant position, and Google is threatening to withhold it to get unfair benefits for the unrelated YouTube app. But the directionality is the wrong way around; YouTube TV the smaller of those services by orders of magnitude. It's dominates nothing at all, and it's a small miracle that it still exists at all. How could it possibly be used to extract unfair concessions? Does anyone have a link to the full statement? Maybe this got garbled by the reporting somehow.

kschwab 5y ago
What was emailed to customers: https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq The article with the most amount of direct quotes I could find: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/roku-youtube-tv-google-dispute-1234960563/ https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/roku-youtube-tv-google... Some comments from Roku's founder on a prior, similar situation: https://popculture.com/streaming/news/roku-founder-reveals-why-hbo-max-peacock-arent-available/ https://popculture.com/streaming/news/roku-founder-reveals-w...

bagacrap 5y ago

Roku is toxic and the only reason I know this is having been forced to deal with their products due to being pre-packaged on smart TVs. Roku comes "free" because it thinks it can extract value from me. It is free like a leech is free. It tracks what you watch and superimposes ads. The interface is frightfully slow. The remote is hard to use as compared to my phone being the remote, as is the case with a Chromecast.

mmglr 5y ago
> It tracks what you watch and superimposes ads. Tracking can be turned off in the settings. I have several Roku TVs and Roku boxes and don't see any ads "superimposed". The only ad (singular) I see is on the home screen.