This would actually be one of the absolutely immense capabilities Google (the advertising company) could bring.
I almost never watch cable/broadcast TV (don't have it at home, and haven't for 12+ years) so one of the things I notice when I do watch it is there are some commercials that are genuinely entertaining (well produced, funny, etc).
The issue is, after watching TV for an hour, when I see that 'entertaining' commercial for the 3rd time it is no longer entertaining.
Google can actually track what they are showing, and have an idea of who's watching. Don't show me the same commercial more than once per day (or every few hours), and definitely don't repeat the same one in a single show. Don't show me ads that are completely irrelevant. Track metrics on ads, and eliminate genuinely bad ads.
I'm not sure I'd ever come to a service where I both paid and watched ads, but this is basically the minimum necessary for me personally to watch content with ads at all.
Of the companies that would be able to pull this off, Google is definitely at the top of a very short list.
Wow, so is this the official beginning of the age of decentralized cable-companies?
As a cable cutter, one thing I am really looking forward to is the day that I can flip channels again very easily, without having to think about what I am doing.
This is cool, though part of the reason I like things like Hulu Plus is that I don't have to worry about commercials, and it's literally a third of the price.
I do find it interesting though; Youtube/Google is taking all the steps to be the next Time Warner or Comcast it seems. I wonder if this proves that that industry isn't impossible to break into.
The biggest problem with Google is their branding. They launched so many services - Google Music, Youtube Red, Youtube TV, Youtube Live, Hangouts Live, etc., it's just impossible to keep up on what they are actually trying to do. I am sure they have far less number of customers on any of these individual services than if they would have had if these were independent companies. They do everything and nothing they do recently is up to the mark.
(am googler, but don't work with any of the mentioned products)
Keep in mind that all of these products in many cases compete with other companies (music -> spotify, apple, ytr -> netflix/hulu originals, kinda, YTL -> twitch, YTTV -> cable providers). I, as a consumer, wouldn't want these things to all be bundled. I use spotify for my music, and I don't want to have to pay for Play Music or youtube red unless I use those services.
I can't even imagine how some kind of "unified google media" thing would work.
> I can't even imagine how some kind of "unified google media" thing would work.
It's quite simple. Pay more than a few services (but not as much as all of them together) and get access to all of them. The concept isn't really hard at all. You can go a step further and give increasing discounts the more services you add if you don't want one package deal.
You guys already do it for Youtube Red/Google Play Music. It's not mindblowing to imagine it being expanded from there. There's a common account for all the services anyway, so from a technical perspective you'd have a common place to store subscription information if that's not already done.
Right, but from my perspective as a consumer, at least right now, the only service I'm even remotely interested in is YTTV, and the reverse would be even worse. If I didn't want the YTTV package, there's no way I'd pay $40/mo for play music or whatever. A la carte models are a lot more efficient, the reason I don't like cable (and comcast) is because of bundled services, why on earth would I want to move to another, even more bundled, service?
Plus you've only handled the subscription portion, even if somehow we fix that. Where do I view this content? Is there a unified media dashboard that connects to 3 parts of youtube, play, and such?
I guess my basic point is that these services seem useful for entirely different groups of people. Why would consumers want them bundled, either technically or economically, and similarly, why would Google?
Sure, but that's you. Another person who subscribes to Youtube Red and Youtube TV and <insert something else here> would be more inclined to get a package.
Nobody is advocating taking a la carte away, but packages are known to increase profits because people are going to think "oh I can pay only X more and get Y" instead of evaluating each item individually.
Amazon, for example, has done a great job of balancing between Prime, which is a package subscription, and a la carte subscriptions and addons. You get a Prime music library, and can pay extra to get access to a larger music library, or pay a different price if you don't subscribe to Prime.
Think about it this way. Netflix wanted to separate their DVD and streaming into separate companies, so there would be different websites for each. Consumers complained about that so much that they changed their mind and stayed with one. If Google/YouTube started with a single product and broken it out like it is now, people I think would rightly complain.
I think the most egregious thing is music, rather than YouTube Red or this service itself. There's Google Play where you can buy music, Google Play Music where you can subscribe like Spotify, and YouTube Red also includes unlimited music on top of the shows on Red but is somehow different than Google Play Music. I guess what I would suggest if I had any say in things is just killing the Google Play Music and Google Play Movie/TV brands, and moving the content to YouTube and maybe integrating YouTube into the Google Play app on phones. YouTube already has movies, so it would just be a matter of making the music and live streaming part of it more visible on the home page. I don't see any links to them on my front page.
I would say - just brand them as completely different services unless they are totally dependent. Just because movies are served on top of YouTube doesn't necessarily mean that they literally have to be part of YouTube website. Why not a website like "MovieTube" with its own website and brand? It makes YouTube a single focused website intended to find any/all random videos on internet and people understand when they hear "MovieTube". With YouTube Red, YouTube TV, YouTube Live, YouTube Movies, etc., it is hard to remember which is what.
> Plus you've only handled the subscription portion, even if somehow we fix that. Where do I view this content? Is there a unified media dashboard that connects to 3 parts of youtube, play, and such?
Why does there need to be? YouTube Red/Google Play Music All Access are combined in one subscription, but YouTube itself has a really large number of Google-provided front ends (just for apps, off the top of my head, there is YT, YT Music, YT Kids.) And Google Play Music has its own app, which also.links to video content in YT.
Both of these services seem like an interesting step forward, but then, who really wants to watch live TV anymore, besides sports fans? The whole idea of watching something at a specific time that it's aired just seems unimaginable to me after years of on demand streaming. Not to mention commercial breaks.
If we started out with a Netflix like video hosting platform and then someone launches a live, continuously running, and a curated-list-of-shows platform, everyone would consider that as a mind-blowing "innovation". I guess some people do want to watch live-tv, simplifies the question of "what to watch next".
No, synced playlists that are curated by professionals, backed by millions of dollars of budget. I wouldn't consider that as mind-blowing either. It's a sarcastic comment on reactions from the valley about what they consider as an innovation.
Completely agree. Maybe 10 times a year I watch live TV, otherwise I want to choose a show and binge on episodes on demand. Unfortunately, the legal situation around licensing I think allows for "unlimited DVR" but not actually just an on-demand episode list. You have to setup your "own" recording of the episode, and your bits can be stored in the cloud for you. I'm not sure even if de-duplicating the bits runs into trouble.
last time I've had this conversation with cable execs, it was explained to me that even just de-duping the bits does in fact run into trouble. They have to store a complete copy for you, for your personal use.
> Both of these services seem like an interesting step forward, but then, who really wants to watch live TV anymore, besides sports fans?
There is probably a reason YouTube is advertising "never run out of DVR space." This isn't just about just live content, it's about no required delay but still on demand viewing.
It's not just watching it at a specific time, but also watching at a specific speed. I watch most video at 1.5x speed. Professional standards for how fast to talk are set low enough for a wide audience including non-native speakers. If you're watching something in your native language you can almost certainly understand faster. Live TV feels annoyingly slow.
DirectTV Now is $70 a month. They'll probably never compete against streaming only services because they need to be at a pricepoint that doesn't destroy their conventional satellite business.
Google's offering is half that. I imagine its going to have less channels. Considering Playstation Vue's selection, I guess we'll see how well they can compete.
> DirectTV Now is $70 a month. They'll probably never compete against streaming only services because they need to be at a pricepoint that doesn't destroy their conventional satellite business.
Why? Their part of AT&T, if they reinforce AT&T's fixed wired and mobile value proposition more than enough to make up for the satellite business, there's no reason AT&T couldn't accept that cost. As it is, they are already competing with other AT&T offerings.
You announce this on February 28 without TBS, TNT, or truTV? I get that Turner had you, but come on. Wait until April to announce if you're not gonna have them. Or even until June, when the NBA conference finals are over.
Have you found a source for the "& more" to definitively say that those are not included? Because as far as I could see, all we know is that the big ones are included and that there's others but what those are isn't very clear.
No kidding. The moment I saw the zip code requirement I knew it was going to be pointless.
Not only that but $35? Come on. There's not $35 worth of programming there. It's just the same old dumbed down broadcast TV that has been in decline for over a decade.
Compared to Netflix, Amazon, and even YouTube shows ABC, NBC, Fox et al just plain suck. As proof, after watching an awesome trailer for some new sci-fi show you may be totally pumped up to watch it until at the end when they announce, "only on ABC!"
And it's got an infinite DVR. I almost never get to actually watch TV live. Hell, even when I watch TV live, I prefer to pause, go to the bathroom, get something to drink, and then skip commercials.
I'm just saying - if I can skip commercials automatically, or without much pain, that'd be very nice.
The ad skipping sounds just for the DVR. Which is fine for shows you don't need to see live, but you're not doing it for sports or first-run content (what would you even be skipping to?).
At $35/mo, after 1 year you'll have spent $420. You can get a decent sized TV and an antenna for less than that, and enjoy free news/Jeopardy for many years afterwards.
I think his point was being able to watch them without using a TV and antenna.
I don't see why you would pay $35 a month though when you could get something like an HDHomerun and plug an antenna up to it. Or use an antenna, digital tuner and capture card and wire up your own solution.
The only advantage I see of YTTV is ESPN, so for some people that is probably enough to justify it.
They say "no need for a DVR" so I assume that you will get time-shifted content. That's not free. Also, watching 3 shows simultaneously (on devices I already own) is useful.
And for those of us cord-cutters who have been missing live sports this is a nice option.
FWIW you can buy TV antennas / tuner cards for not-too-expensive (especially after comparing that monthly cost after a few months / a year). Though that is one more peripheral to carry around if you want to be mobile, so it's not exactly equivalent :)
That's exactly why I gave in and paid for basic cable. Which ends up costing $17.76 ($10 HD fee, $5 broadcast TV fee, $2.76 taxes and fees). For access to free content.
I also bought a good indoor broadcast TV antenna. A winegard one, I think. And it normally works great, but it's only 90% reliable.
I wouldn't pay the extra $17.24 for nothing, but I'd like to watch some sports too.
Judging by how much people currently pay for cable, there is more than $35/mo worth of programming there. Perhaps not to you, but that just means you aren't the customer for this product.
> As proof, after watching an awesome trailer for some new sci-fi show you may be totally pumped up to watch it until at the end when they announce, "only on ABC!"
Legion is pretty good. Legion is on FX. FX is on YouTube TV. To be honest I'm struggling to come up with too many recent sci-fi shows that don't entirely suck, irrespective of where they're being made.
Cool, you would think they would advertise a larger channel lineup on their landing page instead of the rather spartan "Stream ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC & more." - it certainly didn't make me think "oh, let's go look at the YouTube blog to find out what else they may be including" nor was there any guidance to check.
thanks for that, confirming that BTN is offered will help me convince the wife, if she can't see her Nebraska Cornhusker Football it would be a non-starter.
> To be honest I'm struggling to come up with too many recent sci-fi shows that don't entirely suck, irrespective of where they're being made.
I'd have to disagree. Westworld, Rick and Morty, The 100, The Expanse, Black Mirror, Stranger Things, Outlander, and Sense8 come to mind as great recent Sci-Fi shows in active development. That's without mentioning the numerous high-caliber super hero shows recently released/coming soon.
I know this is off topic, but I really disagree about the quality of broadcast TV. Hannibal and The Good Place are both beautifully shot, very distinctive, and highly ambitious, and both came out of NBC. Speechless is on ABC, and while it's a pretty by the book family sitcom, I still think it's funnier than anything else on right now.
Why would I pay $35 a month to stream broadcast channels that are freely available in HD over the air in my area?
It's one thing if they provided something like Netflix. But it's absolutely bonkers that they're selling what is already a free resource. What's the value-add?
DVR functionality? Thinking this is more of a Hulu competitor with live events rather than simply an antenna... probably more of a viable alternative for local sports fans who want to ditch cable?
"It's one thing if they provided something like Netflix. But it's absolutely bonkers that they're selling what is already a free resource. What's the value-add?"
• 6 users can watch on their own devices simultaneously.
• Unlimited Cloud DVR.
Doubtful, outside of single-household sharing; I'd be very surprised if they got to avoid the contractual terms that limit your ability to share a PS Vue account in the same way - you have to activate a "home device" to anchor the account and regularly using six different devices in different locations would probably trigger some sort of fraud check.
They're adding a lot more than just over the air broadcast channels. For someone that likes watching live sports on occasion, this is a decent offering (the omission of TNT and TBS is odd though).
As one example, I predict the [NFL TV Blackout Policies][] are partially driving the zip code requirement. YouTube is certainly big, but so are the pro sports leagues.
My guess is they're asking for a zip code to see in which areas there's enough demand to negotiate with local news stations. I know a few people that only keep cable because of the local news stations.
That works if you're close enough to pick anything up. Where I live, I can get OTA hdtv no problem, with a piece of wire for an antenna indoors. Where my parents live they can pick up a single channel with a directional Yagi mounted on the roof. (Not an exaggeration, we tried)
I'd bet that's simply due to advertising. Advertising within TV is insanely tied to location, and we're just now starting to figure out online advertising. TV has country, local, regional, etc ratings and reach to judge ads and prices by.. i'm not sure how much, if any of that, is standardized by advertising.
It's written in the law too, mind you, so i'd be curious if online advertising ends up with some standards that providers have to adhere to. Ie, allowing regional ads, knowing the reach, etc.
Depending on the sports you watch there's other good deals deals. 35x12=420$. All access NFL package (for Europeans, not sure about US prices but iirc. it exists and is in the 250$ range) is about 250€/season. I think NBA/NHL are priced similarly. So you could get about two complete pro leagues for the same price (and these are a lot better than normal live, you get all games archived forever, non-commercial versions the day after, Redzone etc.)
If you want college sports or more variety or something outside of the big stuff (winter sports, cycling etc. etc.) then it's meh.
Kind of bizarre that they decided to highlight the free OTA networks most prominently in their marketing, when it's actually a cable replacement (or at least a partial one).
With the zip code request I wonder if they will be making local channels a key selling point. Service like Sling TV and DirecTV Now don't do a great job of handling the networks.
Local channel content (even when the network content is available) are something missing on many OTT services, so it makes sense to highlight that as a selling point.
This really needs to beat PS Vue's selection to be competitive. SlingTV looks good but the lack of a DVR function is a non-starter. I'm not even sure why they bothered to even launch without that. Who watches live tv?
I think this doesn't provide any extra value to anyone who is not a cable subscriber already; this is more useful to those who think cable is a fine package and would just prefer to not actually deal with cable companies any more than they have to. Getting this through YouTube's apps is probably going to be a big tech improvement.
It seems like a decent value proposition if you're into sports, especially if you split the price with 5 other people.
The offering does include channels that I only know of on cable (e.g. ESPN, SyFy, Bravo) at a cost significantly less than basic cable (last time I looked).
Thanks. I missed point 1 and 3. Point 2 has almost no value these days unless you don't have Hulu/Amazon/Netflix, which I guess some people don't.
I watched commercial TV for the first time in a few years the other day and lost interest in what I was watching because of it. I don't think I can go back now.
Point 2 is extremely valuable if you watch live stuff. I often DVR live shows and sporting events and then start watching them 30-60 min later just to fast forward through the commercials.
> Point 2 has almost no value these days unless you don't have Hulu/Amazon/Netflix, which I guess some people don't.
A lot of their content is from sources that aren't on Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix (or which are on one or more of those with a significant delay), so DVR is still valuable.
You should probably assume that if they ask for only a ZIP code (not a generic postal code) and don't ask for anything else that, yes, they are talking about the one country which uses ZIP codes.
The page is extremely void of any details, reminds me of Cable companies landing pages. This is odd because I noticed there has been a recent explosion of third party live CNN, FOX News, ... channels, not sure if this is because YT made their copyright detection algorithms more lenient as a segue to YT TV.
For what it's worth, not everyone can pick up all of those channels with a $20 antenna. I can pick up NBC, PBS, and a few odd local channels with no national affiliation. I'd imagine those in cities and metro areas would probably have more luck. But anyway, the blog post [1] has a full(er) list of channels. But even then it doesn't look price-competitive with Sling for some reason.
Presumably that you can add up to 6 Google accounts (i.e, your family members in the same household) to the plan for the listed price. They have a similar deal going for Google Play Music, Netflix has it, etc.
From the blog post (for what it's worth, I think it's a good idea):
>Six accounts, one price. Every YouTube TV membership comes with six accounts, each with its own unique recommendations and personal DVR with no storage limits. You can watch up to three concurrent streams at a time.
This is priced about the same as Playstation Vue, DirecTV Now, and Sling for the channels offered. Looks like they're trying to win people over with features (DVR, 6 account profiles, etc).
The only content on the page says, "Stream ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC & more."
While "& more" could include anything, I'm going going to assume it doesn't include any of those or they'd be listed. At the very least they'd put ESPN as that's the big one for people cutting the cord and wanting to watch live sports.
I'd just like to see when they start doing personalized ads for every different person. I know TV companies have started to do more targeted ads [1] but if there's a company that can do it, it's gotta be google. If there's enough ad revenue to go around, it could be a tipping point where the local channel rules cease to matter.
"NBA Basketball on Fox Sports Regional Networks" - Would this would be a bit of a coup for YouTube? My regional sports network doesn't have any streaming options; not sure if other markets are more liberal with this.
Also, that wording...are they getting the whole regional network or just the NBA basketball?
If this gets around the blackouts, sign me up. Something legal and convenient... This is the way to gain back lost ground on the cord-cutters, and the reason we left Dish/Comcast/etc in droves in the first place. It is simply too complicated or inconvenient to legally get to the different types of entertainment I am interested in viewing.
On the contrary, I can see this going down the path where I am back up to $100/month for entertainment between Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, etc.
I doubt the effort will gain them significantly more customers. If they charge $35 for 10 channels, but you can get 1 channel for $5, most people will see the 10 for $35 as a better deal. Unless their per channel price were equal to (bundle price)/(number of channels in bundle), then very few people would go that route.
Hmm really? I guess I'm among the minority on this one then. There's really only a few channels I'm interested in, that I can't get online. I'd gladly pay $10 for 2 channels rather than $35 for 10... because I certainly won't be watching the other 8 channels.
The science channel will be a lot more than $5/mo if all the sports fans aren't forced to subscribe to it just to get their ESPN.
It sounds reasonable that ala carte pricing should be cheaper because you shouldn't have to subsidize channels you don't watch, but people forget that others are also subsidizing the channels they watch. The reality is that channels are already roughly priced according to their popularity and most people won't save much, if any, money with ala carte pricing.
Then if it doesn't make a difference, why do it? It seems to me to just be a shitty way to move money around that doesn't make sense to the consumer. If nobody wants to buy a channel, let it die.
Lets call a spade a spade: they do it because people don't have a choice and have to pay for it.
It's really the other way around. Sports channels can't pack 24 hours of interesting content and are rapidly dying. ESPN has been crying for years now that they're dying a slow pitiful death. Sports fans don't want access to all sports, don't even want access to their sports, they want access just to the specific games they want to watch or think are important. Sports commentary outside of games just isn't compelling enough TV for casual sports fans to really watch and most of it is variations on "this season team <x> will work harder and not let other teams beat them" with archetypes of rebuilding, can-they-hold-onto-the-magic, underdog-story-of-the-season mixed in.
The rest of cable offerings is the only thing keeping these channels alive because nobody is really watching them.
This is a cool idea but it still falls very short by not serving users outside of the US. To the point where the welcome page doesn't even acknowledge that there may be global interest: https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/ (enter your ZIP code, no country picker ... YouTube, you do realize you're on the internet, right?)
Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the pie as possible and abusing the current geo-restricted licensing model while they can?
I imagine most people expected to use it don't get there by clicking a link on some other site immediately after it was announced - they'll probably be running ads inside YouTube, at which point they can target more accurately.
And I can't imagine they voluntarily restricted things to just the US for zero reason. Licensing around this stuff is nightmarish, and there are benefits to launching even before you're 100% global (which nothing is yet).
> Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the pie as possible and abusing the current geo-restricted licensing model while they can?
I'd prefer to give YouTube the benefit of the doubt as they introduce a brand new service. They're an American company, it makes perfect sense for them to start with US customers.
Parent's point is still valid. There's another 3+ billion of internet users outside the U.S., it would be nice not to be an afterthought's afterthought. They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard?
Yes it is. From what I understand, a network will license a show to another network in another country, probably in an exclusive way. So they can't just "oh yeah you're paying us millions to distribute in your country? Let me just walk over you by streaming directly to your customers."
It doesn't work like that. These contracts are worth more than the few users that are willing to pay to stream across borders. Sad but that's TV life.
>> They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard?
> Yes it is.
No, notifying that the offering won't be available outside of the U.S. wouldn't be difficult. Actually offering it outside would (and I think that's the question you were actually answering, which wasn't the question that was asked).
This kind of thing is part of why Netflix & friends are so keen to create a bunch of original content— it's theirs, exclusively, and they don't need to deal with navigating all these preexisting commitments.
Live TV isn't competing against TBP. You can't watch sports or other live events on TBP. Why would you sign up for a live TV service, if you prefer to watch things on demand on TPB?
For any live TV offering they are competing against traditional cable providers. Netflix is already on their way on figuring out the "on-demand" content space. If you look at the blog post, 3/4s of the channels offered are either sports or live news. This simply isn't a service for on demand content.
You'd actually be surprised how good bittorrent live video streaming has got. I checked it out and it was pixel perfect 720p HD - absolutely fine for sports.
But yes, it's still niche, but wow it has moved on a lot. The program I used was called acestream.
Live TV competing with illegal IPTV service with reseller cost as low as 2$/month and consumer price 9-20$/month(on a small scale).
I know many people who have either cut their TV subscription, or at least scaled it down to lowest cheaper tier, since grabbing a mag254 IPTV box and finding a reseller offering upwards of 1000s of channels.
If u don't know about it, you may be content with standard livetv.
But if you in the know, you are cutting at least part of your cable TV bill.
The way I understand it, historically geo restrictions originate from physical goods, and are usually driven by distributors, who want to reduce competition and control certain regions. I.e. in order to monopolize the market, they require those who produce some goods to restrict distribution through them only for that region, and in return they offer better pricing and assistance in that distribution. I.e. this basically makes it impossible to make global distribution rights.
This logic falls flat however in the digital world, where distributor isn't limited by region. I.e. you can open a digital store, and sell worldwide (like for example computer games stores like GOG, Steam and etc.).
So in the pure digital world, geo restrictions sound like nonsense, since they reduce reach and profits, both for creators, and distributors. My guess is, this creeps into the digital sphere, because of the influence of physical distributors, who see digital ones as a threat to their local monopolies. I suppose strong grip of some regional cable TV companies, forces creators to limit their distribution through any digital stores as well. The problem is, this approach is pretty nasty when applied in the digital space. It basically becomes xenophobic. Translating it back to physical goods, it can look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbiacSD13qk
Hopefully, the weaker regional monopolists will become, the more likely we'll have global distribution for video too.
I think it also has something to do with price discrimination. A seller can maximize profit if they can come closest to charging the maximum the buyers are willing to pay. So for goods where the cost to make a copy is negligible, such as media and books, the ideal pricing strategy is to sell the product at different prices to different markets, hence why you see versions of the same textbooks being sold for $10 in Asia when it's $200 in the USA.
This is also problematic in a digital store. Imagine someone from USA coming to Asia to buy a book, and they refuse to sell it, or require to charge more based on the citizenship and so on. It sounds ridiculous, but that's what happens in digital now both with regional pricing, and geoblocking. In short, applying physical geo based logic in the digital space can lead to unethical and ugly results, because of its non physical nature.
The reason is that most content creators don't have the business bandwidth to do this on their own; they don't have multi-lingual business development staff, multi jurisdiction lawyers etc. So they hand this all off to content distributors, and the vast majority of these distributors are old school, they have happy and mostly profitable relationships with various resellers and TV stations around the globe. So because the content creators sell locally themselves they have automatically bifurcated the global market for their goods; local and global. It is a small step from that to regional based licensing, especially given differential pricing based on various regions ability to pay and maximising revenue.
I think this will sort itself out in the near future if Google really wants to play in this area (who knows maybe this will be cancelled after a year it's Google after all). They have the machine learning power to negotiate deals with content creators that have some sort fo usage royalties. They basically get worldwide streaming rights in return for a reasonable payback that takes international viewers into account.
I think the more interesting play could be targeted add injection. Imagine this service for free but with targeted adds where TV commercials would run...I'm not sure online viewers are actually willing to watch adds for TV shows but free is also free so there's that. Or maybe a hybrid or maybe virtual product placement or some sort of add system I can't think of yet.
Add to that a theoretical possibility of automatic translation and possibly even modeling the Chinese voice of actor X to sound like the original from the original broadcast data which would cut out the dubbing costs and the worldwide streaming workflow could be optimized further.
As someone who has lived in many different countries, I find this stuff so frustrating. When I was living in England, my wife and I wanted to watch Japanese anime (in Japanese). Luckily Crunchyroll exists and it has quite a large amount of content for a very low price (I think we were paying 4 pounds per month). But now that I'm back in Japan, we want to watch shows from BBC... basically not possible legally. I really enjoyed watching cycling on Eurosport. Good luck.
I really wonder who is going to pay $35 a month for US shows, while you are already in the US. There are just so many other ways to get that content.
I hope one day before I die the media companies will realise that their old idea of breaking up the world into pieces and sublicensing is a stupid one.
> I hope one day before I die the media companies will realise that their old idea of breaking up the world into pieces and sublicensing is a stupid one.
You can watch iPlayer via a VPN or DNS service like unblock.us (do not know if they have service in Japan).
Note to the BBC - I would be to pay 3x the license fee to be able to watch on the internet with a subscription from outside the U.K. I bet if you opened it up world wide you would make more money then you do on the all the U.K license fees.
Even the BBC isn't powerful enough to do this. I can't remember who it was but one of the heads of the BBC said for a long time that content on BBC should be available for free everywhere. He reasoned that it was already paid for. It's one of the reason that they do so much free software development.
One of the shows that I want to watch is Match of the Day. Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I was in the UK the BBC was having a huge problem trying to negotiate the rights to put it on the iPlayer (strangely MOTD2 was OK ???). It would be impossible if they needed international distribution :-(
For freeview UK channels, you can watch some of them on FilmOn[1]
I'm a rugby fan and it's possible to watch high quality, BBC or ITV coverage of the Six Nations from abroad (BBC Scotland on Wales/Scotland has the higher quality for free). I'm pretty sure that Americans can't watch it though judging by comments on Reddit.
I moved from Scotland to Finland, and one of the things I really missed was UK TV. I'd love to have paid for it, but there aren't any really great options.
Initially I bought a NowTV subscription, with a home-made proxy setup. That worked for a long time, but then they caught on, and most of the VPN-providers became blacklisted too.
Nowadays I'm using FilmOn with a Roku box. I've slowly weaned myself off UK TV, but there are afternoons where I just want to sit on a sofa and watch two hours of "Come Dine With Me" for the snarking. I wish I could pay for it ..
Both Match of the Day's are now available on the iPlayer every week - I think from the Tuesday after airing. Still a bunch of asinine restrictions, but it's there. I remember it was like you say when they first started it.
I disagree since I am already paying for a licence in the UK I am barely able to take advantage of (I live outside the UK for 9 months a year). I am rather annoyed that I have do a workaround to watch stuff I have paid for.
I get especially annoyed when I also have to 'prove' I have a licence by ticking a box.
In other words, it's easier to get for free outside the UK than it is to pay for it.
This has always been Google's problem; it really only cares about the US. Which is not surprising given how it has historically acted as an arm of the US government. We saw this before in the iPhone vs. Android battle, it took years for Google to allow developers outside of the US (and a handful of others) in to be able to make paid apps even though Android phones where available in those markets. But when the iPhone in any country, developers from that country were immediately able to sell app in the Apple app store. This is one of the big thing that keeps us off of Google's Cloud offerings. With Google, if you're not in the US you're at best a second class citizen. With AWS you don't get that feeling at all. Even Google's founders are avowed American-supremacists, so it shouldn't come as any surprise.
This has been pretty well documented. Just watch any interview with Larry and Sergey when they talk about the role of the US in the world -- they are very open about where they stand and that they are American-supremacists (though wouldn't use that term obviously). Look at the role Google has played pushing the US government interests in Egypt and elsewhere during the "Arab Spring". Then there is Eric Schmidt's long history of operating as a go between on behalf of the US state department. Which was well documented by wiki leaks: https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 293 ms ] thread[1] https://help.hulu.com/articles/52427902
I almost never watch cable/broadcast TV (don't have it at home, and haven't for 12+ years) so one of the things I notice when I do watch it is there are some commercials that are genuinely entertaining (well produced, funny, etc).
The issue is, after watching TV for an hour, when I see that 'entertaining' commercial for the 3rd time it is no longer entertaining.
Google can actually track what they are showing, and have an idea of who's watching. Don't show me the same commercial more than once per day (or every few hours), and definitely don't repeat the same one in a single show. Don't show me ads that are completely irrelevant. Track metrics on ads, and eliminate genuinely bad ads.
I'm not sure I'd ever come to a service where I both paid and watched ads, but this is basically the minimum necessary for me personally to watch content with ads at all.
Of the companies that would be able to pull this off, Google is definitely at the top of a very short list.
As a cable cutter, one thing I am really looking forward to is the day that I can flip channels again very easily, without having to think about what I am doing.
Anyway, can you just flip channels with it, like cable? Perhaps I will check it out.
I do find it interesting though; Youtube/Google is taking all the steps to be the next Time Warner or Comcast it seems. I wonder if this proves that that industry isn't impossible to break into.
Keep in mind that all of these products in many cases compete with other companies (music -> spotify, apple, ytr -> netflix/hulu originals, kinda, YTL -> twitch, YTTV -> cable providers). I, as a consumer, wouldn't want these things to all be bundled. I use spotify for my music, and I don't want to have to pay for Play Music or youtube red unless I use those services.
I can't even imagine how some kind of "unified google media" thing would work.
It's quite simple. Pay more than a few services (but not as much as all of them together) and get access to all of them. The concept isn't really hard at all. You can go a step further and give increasing discounts the more services you add if you don't want one package deal.
You guys already do it for Youtube Red/Google Play Music. It's not mindblowing to imagine it being expanded from there. There's a common account for all the services anyway, so from a technical perspective you'd have a common place to store subscription information if that's not already done.
Plus you've only handled the subscription portion, even if somehow we fix that. Where do I view this content? Is there a unified media dashboard that connects to 3 parts of youtube, play, and such?
I guess my basic point is that these services seem useful for entirely different groups of people. Why would consumers want them bundled, either technically or economically, and similarly, why would Google?
Nobody is advocating taking a la carte away, but packages are known to increase profits because people are going to think "oh I can pay only X more and get Y" instead of evaluating each item individually.
Amazon, for example, has done a great job of balancing between Prime, which is a package subscription, and a la carte subscriptions and addons. You get a Prime music library, and can pay extra to get access to a larger music library, or pay a different price if you don't subscribe to Prime.
I think the most egregious thing is music, rather than YouTube Red or this service itself. There's Google Play where you can buy music, Google Play Music where you can subscribe like Spotify, and YouTube Red also includes unlimited music on top of the shows on Red but is somehow different than Google Play Music. I guess what I would suggest if I had any say in things is just killing the Google Play Music and Google Play Movie/TV brands, and moving the content to YouTube and maybe integrating YouTube into the Google Play app on phones. YouTube already has movies, so it would just be a matter of making the music and live streaming part of it more visible on the home page. I don't see any links to them on my front page.
Why does there need to be? YouTube Red/Google Play Music All Access are combined in one subscription, but YouTube itself has a really large number of Google-provided front ends (just for apps, off the top of my head, there is YT, YT Music, YT Kids.) And Google Play Music has its own app, which also.links to video content in YT.
Both of these services seem like an interesting step forward, but then, who really wants to watch live TV anymore, besides sports fans? The whole idea of watching something at a specific time that it's aired just seems unimaginable to me after years of on demand streaming. Not to mention commercial breaks.
1. https://directvnow.com/
I don't think it's mind blowing, I think it's a neat feature compared to on-demand, which I think is the gold standard experience.
There is probably a reason YouTube is advertising "never run out of DVR space." This isn't just about just live content, it's about no required delay but still on demand viewing.
DirectTV Now is $70 a month. They'll probably never compete against streaming only services because they need to be at a pricepoint that doesn't destroy their conventional satellite business.
Google's offering is half that. I imagine its going to have less channels. Considering Playstation Vue's selection, I guess we'll see how well they can compete.
Why? Their part of AT&T, if they reinforce AT&T's fixed wired and mobile value proposition more than enough to make up for the satellite business, there's no reason AT&T couldn't accept that cost. As it is, they are already competing with other AT&T offerings.
The day will come when TV streaming businesses takes over and removes the virtual location barriers set by the industry.
Not only that but $35? Come on. There's not $35 worth of programming there. It's just the same old dumbed down broadcast TV that has been in decline for over a decade.
Compared to Netflix, Amazon, and even YouTube shows ABC, NBC, Fox et al just plain suck. As proof, after watching an awesome trailer for some new sci-fi show you may be totally pumped up to watch it until at the end when they announce, "only on ABC!"
"Well shit. So much potential, ruined."
And the DVR forever thing... That might be very nice, especially if they put up tons of old stuff...
Plus, NOT paying my cable provider is worth a lot.
...and if this offers a way to Download content to my phone, to watch offline...?
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/28/14750894/youtube-streaming...
For all $ > 0 the number of ads should already be zero.
The Verge confirms you can skip ads:
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/28/14750894/youtube-streaming....
Where are you seeing that? If it's anything like Sling or PS Vue you're not skipping ads, you're streaming live TV.
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/28/14750894/youtube-streaming...
And it's got an infinite DVR. I almost never get to actually watch TV live. Hell, even when I watch TV live, I prefer to pause, go to the bathroom, get something to drink, and then skip commercials.
I'm just saying - if I can skip commercials automatically, or without much pain, that'd be very nice.
1. https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-... "we’ll store each of your recordings for nine months."
I don't see why you would pay $35 a month though when you could get something like an HDHomerun and plug an antenna up to it. Or use an antenna, digital tuner and capture card and wire up your own solution.
The only advantage I see of YTTV is ESPN, so for some people that is probably enough to justify it.
And for those of us cord-cutters who have been missing live sports this is a nice option.
[EDIT: 3 simultaneous streams, not 6]
I also bought a good indoor broadcast TV antenna. A winegard one, I think. And it normally works great, but it's only 90% reliable.
I wouldn't pay the extra $17.24 for nothing, but I'd like to watch some sports too.
> As proof, after watching an awesome trailer for some new sci-fi show you may be totally pumped up to watch it until at the end when they announce, "only on ABC!"
Legion is pretty good. Legion is on FX. FX is on YouTube TV. To be honest I'm struggling to come up with too many recent sci-fi shows that don't entirely suck, irrespective of where they're being made.
YouTube's marketing here is pretty crappy, but if they're actually trying to just sell access to OTA network content for $35/mo they are insane.
Which they aren't. It includes (probably) the exact same "healthy selection of channels not available OTA (including FX, etc)" as PlayStation.
I'd have to disagree. Westworld, Rick and Morty, The 100, The Expanse, Black Mirror, Stranger Things, Outlander, and Sense8 come to mind as great recent Sci-Fi shows in active development. That's without mentioning the numerous high-caliber super hero shows recently released/coming soon.
It's one thing if they provided something like Netflix. But it's absolutely bonkers that they're selling what is already a free resource. What's the value-add?
• 6 users can watch on their own devices simultaneously. • Unlimited Cloud DVR.
^^ value add
Channels offered: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wZJuVdp0HaH4GQiB-XNVz76qkd...
https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-...
[NFL TV Blackout Policies]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_telev...
It's written in the law too, mind you, so i'd be curious if online advertising ends up with some standards that providers have to adhere to. Ie, allowing regional ads, knowing the reach, etc.
What's included in "& more"? I can get the listed channels from an antenna.
If you want college sports or more variety or something outside of the big stuff (winter sports, cycling etc. etc.) then it's meh.
It seems like a decent value proposition if you're into sports, especially if you split the price with 5 other people.
2. Unlimited DVR
3. 6 accounts to possibly share.
I watched commercial TV for the first time in a few years the other day and lost interest in what I was watching because of it. I don't think I can go back now.
A lot of their content is from sources that aren't on Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix (or which are on one or more of those with a significant delay), so DVR is still valuable.
Disclosure: I'm a former Aereo engineer
[1] - https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-...
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wZJuVdp0HaH4GQiB-XNVz76qkd...
I do not watch any sports at all
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/network/vue/channels/
>Six accounts, one price. Every YouTube TV membership comes with six accounts, each with its own unique recommendations and personal DVR with no storage limits. You can watch up to three concurrent streams at a time.
https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-...
That's a series chunk of coin for something that you can get for free with an antennae.
I wonder how much of that is licensing. It's got to be a huge chunk of it.
Also, who watches any of those crap channels anyway?!
Includes a bunch of ESPN, Fox Sports channels
"It has 40 or so channels of broadcast and cable TV, including NBC, ABC, the USA Network and Fox. ESPN is also a part of the bundle."
ref: http://fortune.com/2017/03/01/youtube-tv-underwhelming/
While "& more" could include anything, I'm going going to assume it doesn't include any of those or they'd be listed. At the very least they'd put ESPN as that's the big one for people cutting the cord and wanting to watch live sports.
https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-...
@dang: Update the link to the blog post as it actually has information about the offering rather than just an email sign up box.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-29/tv-ads-ar...
Also, that wording...are they getting the whole regional network or just the NBA basketball?
On the contrary, I can see this going down the path where I am back up to $100/month for entertainment between Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, etc.
With Ads? Ouch, NO.
If I want ONLY the Science channel, then I should be able to purchase JUST the science channel for like, $5/mo.
It sounds reasonable that ala carte pricing should be cheaper because you shouldn't have to subsidize channels you don't watch, but people forget that others are also subsidizing the channels they watch. The reality is that channels are already roughly priced according to their popularity and most people won't save much, if any, money with ala carte pricing.
If a channel attracts fewer customers to the package, it will get less money in return for its inclusion, so nothing is really being "subsidised".
Lets call a spade a spade: they do it because people don't have a choice and have to pay for it.
The rest of cable offerings is the only thing keeping these channels alive because nobody is really watching them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/09/07...
Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the pie as possible and abusing the current geo-restricted licensing model while they can?
And I can't imagine they voluntarily restricted things to just the US for zero reason. Licensing around this stuff is nightmarish, and there are benefits to launching even before you're 100% global (which nothing is yet).
I'd prefer to give YouTube the benefit of the doubt as they introduce a brand new service. They're an American company, it makes perfect sense for them to start with US customers.
Besides, all their competitors are US only as well - Sling TV, DirecTV Now.
Someday who knows, but for now live linear is very region-locked.
It doesn't work like that. These contracts are worth more than the few users that are willing to pay to stream across borders. Sad but that's TV life.
> Yes it is.
No, notifying that the offering won't be available outside of the U.S. wouldn't be difficult. Actually offering it outside would (and I think that's the question you were actually answering, which wasn't the question that was asked).
* Works with any player or device, vs you have to use their application
* Free vs $35/mo
* Has been available for 13+ years, vs available nowhere so far
* Available worldwide, vs some unknown region-locking but certainly US-only for the foreseeable future
* Has pretty much everything, vs "6 accounts" whatever that means
For any live TV offering they are competing against traditional cable providers. Netflix is already on their way on figuring out the "on-demand" content space. If you look at the blog post, 3/4s of the channels offered are either sports or live news. This simply isn't a service for on demand content.
But yes, it's still niche, but wow it has moved on a lot. The program I used was called acestream.
Kek. Maybe for people who grew up with that. My country has had 1080p on all channels that broadcast sports for years.
I know many people who have either cut their TV subscription, or at least scaled it down to lowest cheaper tier, since grabbing a mag254 IPTV box and finding a reseller offering upwards of 1000s of channels.
If u don't know about it, you may be content with standard livetv. But if you in the know, you are cutting at least part of your cable TV bill.
Are most cable channels offered in the usa operate internationally?
This logic falls flat however in the digital world, where distributor isn't limited by region. I.e. you can open a digital store, and sell worldwide (like for example computer games stores like GOG, Steam and etc.).
So in the pure digital world, geo restrictions sound like nonsense, since they reduce reach and profits, both for creators, and distributors. My guess is, this creeps into the digital sphere, because of the influence of physical distributors, who see digital ones as a threat to their local monopolies. I suppose strong grip of some regional cable TV companies, forces creators to limit their distribution through any digital stores as well. The problem is, this approach is pretty nasty when applied in the digital space. It basically becomes xenophobic. Translating it back to physical goods, it can look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbiacSD13qk
Hopefully, the weaker regional monopolists will become, the more likely we'll have global distribution for video too.
Are most cable channels offered in the usa operate internationally?
Add to that a theoretical possibility of automatic translation and possibly even modeling the Chinese voice of actor X to sound like the original from the original broadcast data which would cut out the dubbing costs and the worldwide streaming workflow could be optimized further.
I really wonder who is going to pay $35 a month for US shows, while you are already in the US. There are just so many other ways to get that content.
I hope one day before I die the media companies will realise that their old idea of breaking up the world into pieces and sublicensing is a stupid one.
If not, at least you can die laughing
Note to the BBC - I would be to pay 3x the license fee to be able to watch on the internet with a subscription from outside the U.K. I bet if you opened it up world wide you would make more money then you do on the all the U.K license fees.
One of the shows that I want to watch is Match of the Day. Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I was in the UK the BBC was having a huge problem trying to negotiate the rights to put it on the iPlayer (strangely MOTD2 was OK ???). It would be impossible if they needed international distribution :-(
I'm a rugby fan and it's possible to watch high quality, BBC or ITV coverage of the Six Nations from abroad (BBC Scotland on Wales/Scotland has the higher quality for free). I'm pretty sure that Americans can't watch it though judging by comments on Reddit.
[1] https://www.filmon.com/tv/bbc-news
Initially I bought a NowTV subscription, with a home-made proxy setup. That worked for a long time, but then they caught on, and most of the VPN-providers became blacklisted too.
Nowadays I'm using FilmOn with a Roku box. I've slowly weaned myself off UK TV, but there are afternoons where I just want to sit on a sofa and watch two hours of "Come Dine With Me" for the snarking. I wish I could pay for it ..
I get especially annoyed when I also have to 'prove' I have a licence by ticking a box.
In other words, it's easier to get for free outside the UK than it is to pay for it.
Just had to do a second take to appreciate the irony of a geoblocking circumvention service being geoblocked.
> Google's founders are avowed American-supremacists
Pretty strong claims. Got any arguments to back them?