5 things I love and hate about YouTube TV — is the price hike worth it?

[admin]

YouTube TV's recently-announced price hike has our streaming editor wondering if he should stay or go.

5 things I love and hate about YouTube TV — is the price hike worth it? : Read more

 

[ninjahedge]

The things that bother me are simple.

Yttv isn't as friendly as old school TV. Most aren't now anyway, but not being able to easily channel surf, or have that handy previous channel thing is bad.

Also, I watch BBC news/ world news every morning, why does it keep highlighting PIX 11?

THAT said, yttv is one of the few that even OFFERS PBS and BBC. I looked. Somehow I can get Fox everything on every service, but not a free channel like PBS.

Oh, I also resent having to PAY for something I am not going to watch. So some of these moguls forcing the streaming services am all our nothing deal are real scumbags.

If yt was smart, instead of offering a discount on 4k, maybe they should have bundled yt premium with yttv.

I am still looking for a true TV Ala carte, but I don't think we will ever get that.

 

[Hossmandu]

Background facts:
I have a very high speed connection that is very reliable.
I use Nvidia Sheild devices on all of my Tvs (Pro for main TV)

Viewing habits - 90% LIVE/DVR TV (sports, news) 10% DVR shows/movies. Also subbed to Netflix, HBO Max, ESPN+. No interest in Disney at all.

Was with DirecTv since the beginning in 1994. When that started to get out of hand from a cost perspective (bill got to nearly $240/mo for the Silver pkg/sports pkg and 4 boxes, one box being a DVR) I switched to Sling. This was significantly cheaper, but the service was spotty and picture quality was terrible. The old "you get what you pay for". I kept this for a few months and then switched to good old Spectrum Cable. The benefit to this was I lowered my monthly TV/Internet cost by $100 under a 12 month bundle. Problem with Spectrum is their technology (boxes, streaming capability, DVR capability) was something DirecTV had beat back in 2012. So I left Spectrum TV after the 12 months.

I trialed YouTubeTV (YTTV) and Hulu Live at the same time for a month and ended up choosing YTTV for the following reasons.

Price was right (and is still reasonable IMO).
User interface and features
Reliable picture quality.
FREE unlimited DVR (more on this later).
Seamless and reliable pause, rewind, fast FWD, and slow-mo of live TV and DVR content.
Recently added MultiView for sports.

My FAVORITE feature of YTTV is the DVR. It's unlimited. It's simple to add anything to the library. The library is constantly updated. As stated above I mostly watch sports and news. I have all local 5pm news broadcasts in my library and they stay in there for about 3 months. I can go back and bring up a date and FF right to the story I'm looking for. When it comes to sports, I simply have to search for MLB games, NFL games, College football games and find one. When you add it to the library, it presents you with the option of adding just that game, all the games for either team, or all the games in all of that league.

For shows/movies, it gets even better IMO. Assume it's premier season. I simply go to Rotten Tomatoes or similar site and go through the list of all new shows, add them to my library and watch them at my leisure. I like them, I keep them, I don't I remove them from my library. A real winner for shows is that if there is a show in wide syndication (eg. Seinfeld, Simpsons, Modern Family, etc.) just add it to your library and within a few weeks you'll basically have every single episode in your library, ready to go.

For me, the only downsides to YTTB are no MLB Network and no Regional Sports Networks (like Bally Sports), but I get access to those via other means.

I hope this helps someone with similar viewing habits make their choice. Peace.