- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month, agrees to end “$600 less than cable” ads::Google to “modify or cease” ads after industry review board rejects appeal.
Remember when it was $35/month? Dropped them like a bad habbit when it went to $60 something. No ala carte and adding channels I never wanted were also contributing factors.
Nit: It’s “à la carte” meaning “by the card” or “according to the menu”. Often the accent is dropped in English writing, but it’s always written as three words.
This is just a stupid, meaningless nit-pick. I totally understood what you were saying, so it’s really not important. It’s just, the more you know, ya know?
by the card
G: yeah, we are charging you by the (payment) card, what is the issue here? Can’t please anyone these days…
Card is the literal translation; however a more correct translation would be “menu” or, traditionally, “bill of fare.”
Same. I moved my parents from directv to ytv, saving them like $150+ a month (maybe more, it was a huge deal). When ytv was like ‘puts on the proctology gloves’ with that first price hike, I pitched an ota antenna + TV tuner, hooked up to my already-paid plex server running on my nas. We dropped ytv a few days later and now pay $0.
Smart move, G. Helping my family save so much money <3
I dropped around the same time. I really only had it for local channels, but the stuff I was watching ended up on other streaming apps day or two later anyway.
It was a great delivery mechanism for live sports for me. I went back to sling and put up a TV antenna. Too bad none of my local channels come in great past 15 miles, but I’d be a fool to pay that premium for locals.
I still pay them, I record F1 races, hgtv, cooking shows, and playoffs of a couple American sports. Then I can watch/rewatch whenever I want. I’m still ok at the current price but only because I don’t think I could reliably obtain the hgtv and cooking stuff on the seas that my wife and I enjoy
Holy crap. I had no idea it was $73 a month. I’m a little shocked that is a viable price point.
Is cable cheaper? I haven’t used it for 15+ years so I have no comparison.
My Comcast is $78 for their highest tier channel lineup and DVR with no premium channels.
So kinda samesy except you can share the YTTV with five family members.
My Spectrum cable TV bill was around $85, but they also charged a $22 “broadcasting fee” on top of that. YTTV doesn’t have any added hidden fees (yet.) Spectrum makes a big deal advertising “no hidden fees,” so fuck them and their hidden fees. Their TV app was also horrible, constantly losing audio sync.
If you can be bothered to call Comcast/Verizon once a year or so? Yeah. They love to bundle plans together and you can get a shockingly good deal.
Which actually makes it annoying if you actively do not want a tv subscription.
annoying if you actively do not want a tv subscription.
Our guys won’t stop trying to bundle VoIP phones with their TV package.
I don’t want a phone. My cell phone is set up as a tablet (can’t do calls or SMS;just data) and I love it. The only call I ever got on my last handset was some lying ad flunky trying to sell me a fucking tv package.
They stopped asking me why I didn’t want the phone bundle after I told them that.
Cox was kinda like that. We got 2gig ATT fiber for way less than Cox at 1g because cox charges for unlimited.
I went to YouTubeTV earlier this year and it’s definitely cheaper than RCN, which recently bought WOW. I have Comcast as a choice but they aren’t better. The base rate for RCN that they advertise is $59, but they add four different fees that you don’t see until your first bill: Sports Surcharge, Broadcast TV surcharge, franchise fees, and Entertainment Networks Surcharge. After those add-ons it was $115, so I’m saving money because the YouTubeTV price is actually advertised properly, without these ridiculous add ons.
Wouldn’t that explain why they got this ad banned
I think I’m saving about $500 per year, so the ad isn’t completely accurate. I think they based it on the savings from before they raised the rate to $73.
I currently pay $130 for cable and internet with Verizon (was $115 but they raised it recently). Cable package is comparable to youtube tv and the internet is 90 up/down.
But I’m moving and if I want useful upload speeds from Comcast at the new place I need a package that’s something like $200+ per month. I’m going with tmobile internet and YouTube tv since it’s about $70 cheaper.
Personally, I’d love to just diitch cable. I only want it for hockey and I can get that with ESPN+ and a VPN. But my wife watches it quite bit. She’s got a dozen shows on different cable channels she watches religiously.
Jesus. I pay Comcast $50/month for 800 down/200 up + $10 for unlimited data.
Internet options here are pretty damn bleak. I was counting on at least just moving my fios service but that’s a nogo as their service ends in the neighborhood across the street from our new house.
Where? I’m near LA with similar pricing to the guy above you.
I think I’m paying 120/mo for 2gig down and 350 or 500 up, unlimited. I just use yt premium and pirate all else so I just need the fast connection
90? How do you live?
90 is plenty for us since we have cable. We’ve only got about two people max at a time streaming something and it’s always at 1080p anyway. The upload speed is actually the bigger deal for me as I play online d&d with video calling and a self hosted virtual tabletop a couple times a week.
Ah, yeah. I pirate random shit, download/update games a lot and my tv is almost always on a 4k youtube video of some sort
Look into Dish Network or Sling. Both of them are usually cheaper than YouTube TV, but both have drawbacks. But if you get all the channels you want on them, you can save a ton.
Doing won’t give us the channels my wife wants, and the place we’re moving into is too tree covered for satellite to work well (in addition to new not wanting to deal with it). Thanks for the suggestions though!
What does she usually watch? I got my MIL on Frndly TV, which doesn’t carry ANY sports channels, so the costs are fairly low. All sorts of Hallmark, Lifetime, Game Show channels. Pretty sweet, honestly. https://try.frndlytv.com/
Regardless, good luck finding something.
Thanks, I’ll check them out! She watches all sorts of junk reality TV on lots of cable channels and network dramas. She’s also very tech technophobic so I’ll likely end up paying to make sure she can access everything from a single interface. Otherwise I’ll be called in to help her find her shows every night.
Heh, yea, I get that. I call it the mother in law test. My wife and I are fairly techy, but my MIL refuses to pay a cable bill and isn’t satisfied with the shows available on the antenna. I’ve got an entire Emby setup for her to use, and have mostly trained her how to use Overseerr to request shows/movies for her to watch, too. It was a bit of a pain getting here, but it works well now.
I honestly have no idea how much cable costs where I live and it’s not for a lack of trying. I’ve tried to look but it’s literally not possible to look on mediacom’s website to get cable prices unless I add a cable package to my internet plan. My only other option is to call them, and their entire support is outsourced and it’s a toss up on whether I get someone who speaks English or not. One time the call center person spoke so little English that they had to transfer me to someone else.
$73 A MONTH?
Yeah. NOTHING on TV is worth $73 a month.
You underestimate the amount of times boomers can rewatch Mountain Men and Deadliest Catch, and what they are willing to sacrifice to do so.
Hey, if suckers will pay it that’s what they’ll charge.
You know, that’d a damn good point. We can judge the price all we want, but Alphabet has all the tools and analytics to say "lmfao guys watch, we can double the cost and we lose one out of 230 subscribers "
I still cannot understand how anyone decides to have 30% of their programming to be ads AND decide to pay for it.
Boiling frog effect mostly.
Cancelled Amazon for exactly this.
So what is the next step for Google? Raising YT TV to $100/month? $200/month? Raising Youtube Premium to $30/month? Google one to $200/month? Laying off employees?
I mean they gotta keep hitting that 5% growth every year, right? When does it stop? When there’s nobody else at the company? When people can’t afford anything anymore and go bankrupt?
When are companies gonna understand that growth for the sake of growth every year is just not feasable?
It’s not a matter of understanding the failure is systemic.
Shareholders only buy shares for the expected growth, not so much for the dividends. Dividends are literally pennies on the hundred dollar costs. Single digits percent annually.
At some point prices have to adjust to material reality and someone will lose money. Sometimes expected growth is not possible.
Hence when predatory shorting takes place while long institutions switch to short positions hoping retail joins in on selling shares to allow the stock to crater and delist from the open market thus facilitating cellar boxing to occur, making them even more money then they made on the upside. It’s why wall street actually loves bubbles and helps create them…
Well maybe retail but hedge funds love shorting shit to the ground. Having unrealistic growth goals sets a company up to eventually reach a point where they can switch the narrative to decline in a company because of missed unrealistic growth goals, that’s where the big boys make a lot of fucking money as once a stock gets delisted they can warehouse and never settle failed to deliver trades, or naked shorts that inflated the number of shares available to exponentially grow there position on the downside. It’s a game of siphoning money away from the public.
When are companies gonna understand that growth for the sake of growth every year is just not feasable?
Depends when we actually enforce and support the SECs market reforms instead of defending them. As it sits once, that 5% target is no longer consistently hitable the naked shorts will start to come from maket makers and hedge funds allowing wall street to make just as much money in the growth stage as in the desth stage of a company plus when Google eventually gets to that point they can buy up all the IP during the bankruptcy process for their next unlimited growth candidate to usurp. Shit is absolutely fucked, plus congress has basically called out in their deals to keep the government running that the SEC can’t use any of the budget to further market reform, so your gonna need to vote in candidates who support Markey reform, and proper reform at that sense baring indivual household shareholders from being able to participate and get accurate disclosures on off market trade data, equity swap data, or just widening the gap between wall street and retail investors access to data is also considered market reform by those corrupt individuals supporting wall streets mess.
Isn’t that pretty much late stage capitalism?
You can stream pretty much anything for free here: https://fmoviesz.to/
Just make sure you have uBlock Origin installed.
If you have any issues, try searching ‘free streaming sites reddit’ and go from there.
Your wallets will thank me later.
I’ve never heard of this site before and you can bet I’ll be adding it to my bookmarks uhh I mean block list right away!
The downside is that sometimes you get really bad quality, like some guy filming it in a cinema with terrible focus, contrast and sound and people walking in and out…
Only if you watch very recent movies that aren’t released to dvd or streaming yet. That’s always the case with all pirate websites
The real value of those sites (and there’s a ton of them with mostly the same content), is that pretty much everything is there.
No fucking about with JustWatch to find which of your services (if any) has it, only to find you can rent it for £15. You just type what you were after and watch it.
And then switch to another steam and fuck about with the subtitles again because sometimes movies cut out halfway through, or the sound goes out of sync.
Don’t forget the part where JustWatch says it’s on Paramount+ so you go looking and it’s not there. Now you’re right back where you started, but you’ve lost 10 minutes because the P+ app is complete garbage.
I’ve never subbed to P+, because every advert I’ve seen for it has somehow made me want it even less.
Here’s a list of more :)
Well that looks useful. I used athd for a while but they became unusable.
Thanks!
The fuck? What’s the point of it can’t be cheaper.
Well, you need a router or access points instead of a cable box. And you can stream it over Wi-Fi. Yeah, you can stream it over Wi-Fi. That’s why this is vaguely better than regular cable TV.
So, it costs more because it requires less dedicated hardware?
Of course, how did I not see it before
Back a few years ago when I had Verizon, I was able to stream via the Verizon app. But then sling came along and gave me the option to choose channels that I wanted AND have DVR for only $50. If it starts creeping back up then I will probably just go back to cable. I already have internet through them anyway 🤷🏿♂️
I went back to cable and got an old cablecard and networked tuner. No rental fees for a box, and I can stream it wherever without checking in or dealing with location restrictions, and my DVR is still mine even if I leave and subscribe to something else.
One part of it is retransmission fees. Cable channels charge an arm and a leg because they can and broadcast OTA TV networks charge a fee as well even though their signal is free with an antenna. It just gets more and more expensive as a result as long as there are customers who can tolerate it.
I used YouTube TV early on when it was a legit alternative to cable. It costs just as much so there is no benefit. I cancelled when the prices were raised to 45 a month. They can fuck straight off at 73 a month
Next advertising campaign: Cable companies sued to keep us from telling you how much money you’d save by switching to YouTube TV. Find out the numbers for yourself at calculate your savings link
I’ve had Comcast offer me cable TV services for $1/month and -$1/month on two separate occasions. That’s much less than $73/month.
Fuck Comcast, but it seems this stuff doesn’t have to cost near as much as they’re all charging.
Relevant bits
YouTube TV launched in 2017 for $35 a month, but the base package is $72.99 after the latest price hike in March 2023. Google’s “$600 less than cable” claim was challenged by Charter, which uses the brand name Spectrum and is the second-biggest cable company after Comcast. The National Advertising Division (NAD) previously ruled in Charter’s favor but Google appealed the decision to the NARB in August.
“Charter contended the $600 figure was inaccurate, arguing that its Spectrum TV Select service in Los Angeles only cost around $219 a year more than Google’s YouTube TV service,” according to a MediaPost article in August.
A Google ad claimed that YouTube TV provided $600 in “annual average savings” compared to cable as of January 2023. A disclosure on the ad said the price was for “new users only” and that the $600 annual savings was “based on a study by SmithGeiger of the published cost of comparable standalone cable in the top 50 Nielsen DMAs, including all fees, taxes, promotion pricing, DVR box rental and service fees, and a 2nd cable box.”
Not just YouTube TV. I was thinking about switching from the Spotify family plan to the YouTube family plan, but the Spotify family plan is $16.99/mo and the YouTube family plan is $22.99/mo. That does include YouTube with no ads, but it’s still too expensive for me. It’s just not worth an additional $6. Especially not while my adblocker still works. It does mean I can’t cast ad-free YouTube to my Chromecast because Google would not allow that, but I can live with it.
Pretty sure your description sold YouTube family plan to a lot of people. I was ready to hate on it but after you describe that’s a pretty sweet deal.
Ok, if it’s a good deal to you and them, fine. $6 extra for no ads is not worth it to me.
The great thing about YouTube’s family plan is that it also comes with YouTube Music and you can share it with up to 4 friends. If they toss in their portion of the plan, it gets way cheaper - something like 4 or 5 a month.
I need it to be a family plan because there’s me, my wife and my daughter and we all use Spotify, so we would all need to use YouTube Music.
Install smarttube on your TV connected smart device. I installed it on the Chromecast 4k one with the remote and its a godsend. Even with your own official YouTube history for easy switching
I have the original Chromecast. No apps to install. You just cast to it.
I had no idea YouTube TV cost that much, or that there were people paying that much.
Yeah my parents pay for it because their only other option was Comcast and it was the lesser of two evils. They were paying like $250+ for phone, TV, and gig internet. The TV was like $125 or so, 300+ channels and about 250 of them were useless. At least with YouTube TV the channel listing is concise and the picture quality is good.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Google has agreed to stop advertising YouTube TV as “$600 less than cable” after losing an appeal of a previous ruling that went against the company.
The National Advertising Review Board (NARB) announced today that it rejected Google’s appeal and recommended that the company discontinue the YouTube TV claim.
The National Advertising Division (NAD) previously ruled in Charter’s favor but Google appealed the decision to the NARB in August.
A disclosure on the ad said the price was for “new users only” and that the $600 annual savings was “based on a study by SmithGeiger of the published cost of comparable standalone cable in the top 50 Nielsen DMAs, including all fees, taxes, promotion pricing, DVR box rental and service fees, and a 2nd cable box.”
Agreeing with the NAD decision, an NARB panel found that the price comparison provided by Google did not justify the “$600 less” claim.
Google said it “disagrees with NARB’s determination that people watching the challenged commercials will somehow understand ‘cable’ to mean something other than traditional cable television,” but “intends to modify or cease the disputed advertising claim.”
The original article contains 443 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Lol. My retired parents just switched to this because cable was too expensive.
OTA antenna + Plex is the best combination for me. Any content with no subscription fees.