YouTube TV

Seems like a high membership cost compared to Netflix or Hulu or something similar

 

this looks really promising but the thought of streaming all my tv still makes me cringe. i enjoy the crispness of real tv and lack of buffering too much.

 

This could be huge if adapted correctly.

 

But about 1/2 of what a cable subscription with ESPN costs, which is what it would be replacing.

 

1080 is really prevalent (and 4k is coming and already around). Streaming ESPN on the Apple TV in HD right now, zero buffering, as crisp as if I was using a box. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

This is huge if they pull it off. I see my Comcast internet costs going way up to make up for the cable subscribers they will lose from this.

I pay $140/mo for cable and internet now. This should drop me down to about $100/mo. That is until Comcast ups my internet price to $100 on its own. Then I'm almost the same price for less channels. Hmmm. Dang it.

 

ever have any problems with live big sporting events? i streamed NFL Sunday ticket on my laptop a couple years ago and the first few weeks were unwatchable. similar with watching MNF streams on xbox one, phases in and out of pixelation. though i guess that could be my new apartment's internet? i have no idea how to begin to diagnose these kinds of things.

 

I don't watch much football, but I watch NBA league pass almost daily. Seems like a bandwidth issue maybe? Could be a slow internet issue? I'm a big fan of how easy it is. It's how I watch basically everything these days.

 

Haha, and of course they will.

 

Yeah, no thanks. There are options out there similar to this already: DirecTV Now, Sling, and PlayStation Vue. These options already offer all of those channels, and more, with more flexibility. And overall, this isn't really anything more other than "streamed TV." It's nothing revolutionary. This price even becomes less appealing when you can bundle cable/satellite with your internet.

This looks like the competing model that Apple aimed for with its streaming service - basic package of channels. Could be really something great, but it doesn't really do anything that isn't already available. Maybe with Google's money and influence they can really make some waves, but this seems lackluster.

 

It's truly perplexing and amusing to watch all of this new technology unfold. I feel like we'll hear from big time cable companies soon with a plan to combat this and keep on raking in the dollars.

 

I wonder if they end up including Red into the subscription cost to inflate those numbers a bit. This could be massive if they do this right, but there's a lot of competition in the space.

 

redtube?

 

Youtube Red, their originals service

 

I honestly don't know so this is a genuine question, isn't ESPN totally meaningless to people who only watch their local teams (which I assume it a large majority of sports fans). I've always just treated it as a replay channel and I regularly hear that they're ratings are dismal

 

Last I saw, it was by far the most profitable channel for bundles. It's the reason many people pay for cable.

ESPN is the linchpin upon which cable television turns. It’s the sole reason many people have cable, and it’s insanely profitable. The vast majority of that profit comes from affiliate fees paid by cable companies on a per-subscriber basis (unless otherwise noted, all numbers are from this Forbes article that combines information from Disney’s annual report and data from SNL Kagan):

ESPN FY12 Revenue: $9.4 billion

Affiliate fees: $6.1 billion
Ad revenues: $3.3 billion
That’s about $508 million per month in affiliate fees alone, from about 100 million households.

The Cord-Cutting Fantasy
The Great Unbundling

 

The goal, I would guess, is to reach the kids and teenagers that have never had a cable subscription but watch billions of hours of YouTube. Maximize how much $ you can get out of them, and convert them as they get older from Red to TV.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-28/youtube-bets-it-can-convince-youngs-to-pay-for-tv

These TV-lite packages offer many of the same enticements (they’re low-cost and mobile-friendly) now being touted by YouTube, yet none has gotten off to a particularly strong start. Sling TV, which launched in February 2015, recently topped 1 million subscribers, less than 1 percent of the 120 million U.S. households that currently have some form of TV. PlayStation Vue, which entered the market shortly after Sling, has attracted upward of 100,000 customers. In January, AT&T revealed that DirecTV Now drew about 200,000 customers during its first month of operation.

No one is making much money, if any, says Dan Rayburn, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan Inc. The services, he says, are priced too low (usually $20 to $65 per month) to cover the costs of licensing premium programming from the networks. “I don’t buy it as a successful business model,” he says. “None of these services would be able to survive without the backing of their parent companies.”

Kinda backs up that theory.

 

I'm a big sports guy and the only time I really watch ESPN is for college bball/ football. Sportscenter has gotten so bad and is unwatchable most of the time. It's really not worth paying for to be honest but I think the average household isn't aware of the alternate options available these days.

 

My only problem with streaming (and digital-exclusive content in general) is the preservation of it. As a film major, it astonishes me the things we have preserved on film for over 100 years.

What happens in 75 years if a Netflix backup goes down and we lose hundreds of hours of original content?

 

huh. that makes me wonder if any Netflix Original films (like Beasts of No Nation) could ever get the Criterion treatment.

 

Wouldn't surprise me at all, and in fact I hope so.

 

As someone who watches a lot of NFL I will add that the NFL will never ever cater to their fans and it's likely their fault

 

People who don’t think this could be a big deal have no idea how huge ESPN is.

Is ESPN on ANY other of the “small package” offerings (Sling, Vue, etc?)