Review YouTube TV review: A reasonably priced cable TV alternative

[admin]

YouTube TV is easy to use, available on every platform and offers a strong channel lineup.

YouTube TV review: A reasonably priced cable TV alternative : Read more

 

[T2Jock]

The reviewer missed one of the most important features of YouTubeTV: Included in the price for many localities is the regional sports network. For example, my subscription (Massachusetts based) includes New England Sports Network, giving me the Red Sox games during the summer. To my knowledge this makes YouTube TV the first to offer these regional sports networks.

 

[SamTab]

I was very happy with the service except for the absolutely screaming commercials on some of the channels (Bravo, for example). Total deal breaker for us. Went back to Roku with Locast for local channels. Very disappointed in YoutubeTV and their customer service.

 

[T2Jock]

SamTab, what about the customer service was a problem?

I'm now two, almost three, months in as a subscriber and pretty happy. The ability to have six users (logins) on one account has worked well for us. My daughter and her family cancelled their FIOS TV service (they still have their Internet thru FIOS) and are on my account.

I like the user interface and my only complaint is that they don't support 4K.

 

[Mitchell Hayes]

Beware of YouTube TV's fake channels. One of the 'channels' listed in YTTV advertising is a perennial favorite, Turner Classic Movies. But what you get is not the TCM you love. TCM on YTTV is simply several collections of movies that have been recorded by YouTube 'stars' on home equipment and then uploaded as TCM presentations, complete with TCM logos and intros. Truth is, most of these movies are so grainy and blurry that they're simply not worth watching. So once again TCM becomes a pawn used to trick customers into subscribing, much like the monstrous act by Comcast who simply ripped the real TCM from legitimate subscriptions and made it part of a sports package available for an extra ten dollars a month.

I am stunned by the YTTV trick. Is this act condoned and endorsed by TCM? All in all it's a very disturbing situation.

 

[CabWrx]

YouTube TV is easy to use, available on every platform and offers a strong channel lineup.

YouTube TV review: A reasonably priced cable TV alternative : Read more

Not Happy With YouTube TV anymore! I am very disappointed with Google and YouTube over another price increase. I have been a subscriber for over 2 years. Now the price has increased again. That's 62.5% increase in 2 years. YouTube TV has added more channels with low viewership and exchange we get a bloated bill. They are starting to feel a lot like Comcast. The price goes up every year. I guess when you have a strangle hold on search and video, your customers satisfaction isn't important anymore. Do no evil! I forgot that Google/YouTube already removed that from your corporate culture. I am looking for a better alternative.

 

[Souplos_ms]

My family has had YoutubeTV ever since Playstation Vue got shut down (a very sad day as Vue had set very high UX standards). While the current YTTV channel lineup and DVR capability are among the best, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned what a heap of garbage the YTTV guide experience is, no matter the app platform:

• On the Roku app, you get a matrix of channels but are limited to seeing not even the next 24 hours, but just the rest of the day! So if it's 9pm, you can only browse and record the programming of the next 3 hours. YTTV Guide Strike #1.
• So next what do you do? You go to your phone and hope to see the next few days of programming over there. What you get is still limited but a bit better - the next 24 hours - but there's a catch...you can't see more than one channel's listings at a time! That's YTTV Guide Strike #2.
• The last bastion of hope lies on the Youtube webapp, where new features seem to be tested first. And you'd be right to bet that the guide there gives you more options. The good news: A whopping 7 days of listings available, hurray! Is there a catch here? Unfortunately yes: It takes a dozen clicks of an arrow button to sloooowly scroll into the future, a few shows at a time just to get to the next 48 hours. So, multiply those clicks to get up to day 7...that is if you don't decide to give up before that. This is where PlaystationVue's date selector feature came in very handy. Come on Google, it's not that hard! YTTV Guide Strike #3.
• A final YTTV Guide strike is given to the fact that you can't go back in time to see programs you may or may not have recorded. Now you may say "so what if I can't go back in time? If it was recorded it will be tagged as recently recorded, or I can look up the show" (good luck if you just wanted to verify that a specific show did a rerun or not). That's true...you could fumble your way in YTTV's arbitrarily categorized "daytime, evening, etc." options for a given channel or try the Search, but what if the programming changed and the show isn't named the way you thought? Or what if an important event occurred in the news cycle and you want to see the show in which the news broke? You then have to do a small investigation just to figure out what shows were running at the time. Super annoying!

Ok I know this was quite the tirade but I wanted to make a point about the inconsistency and lack of maturity of the YTTV guide experience, especially now that we've had a price hike that made this an even more expensive proposition than most cable cutting services out there. We should demand a much better experience than what we're getting.

Is my family the only one as upset about the guide? Or is it because we had gotten a taste of something much more intuitive to compare it to, while a majority of YTTV users may have not? I'd love to hear what others have to say about it.

 

[SirStephenH]

AGAINST

• Lackluster originals
• No Viacom channels
• No HBO add-on

You might want to update your article again. YTTV has 85+ channels, including Viacom, and an HBO MAX add-on is also available.

 

[Timesetter]

I've had YTTV for a couple years now. Initially, and for the first year, year and a half, it was awesome. It was exactly what I needed in a TV service. Great price, enough channels, including local television. Then something changed. The price increased. Then the channels increased without the choice to stay at the original base model I signed up for. Then the commercials started replaying over and over and over. Then the commercials were synchronized with other channels. Now the price has increased again, now it's $70+ and I still only watch the same, original channels I signed up for.
I signed up for like $52 or so after tax. I didn't need more channels. I didn't sign up for more channels. And the reason I signed up is no longer valid. I'm ditching YTTV. And it's really too bad, because it was pretty awesome for awhile.

 

[pitman44]

Is my family the only one as upset about the guide? Or is it because we had gotten a taste of something much more intuitive to compare it to, while a majority of YTTV users may have not? I'd love to hear what others have to say about it.

Thank you for your review. A decent guide is fairly important to me. I've tried a couple of streaming services and dropped both in large part because their guides were pretty much worthless.

 

[kw22631]

Am I the only one who has a really nice surround system? Not one person, unless I missed it, said anything about the lack of sound other than a 2 channel stereo feed. I was set to change and as I set here trying it out, the sound was not surround! I had to dig to find out it is still living in 1999. When you put together a 7.2 system with an expensive receiver, the lack of SS is a deal breaker.