Anyone tried Youtube Tv and can compare it to Tivo?

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That sure didn't work on my older Samsung TV. It kicked me out into the TV's internal tuner, which isn't connected to an antenna.

 

I'm using the Samsung app for YTTV, which may be why it works for me.
I also see it is working for some using Fire TV's and the Fire TV Cube.

 

The ability to channel surf with channel up/down buttons on your smart TV remote make YTTV that much more of a direct substitute for traditional cable. Nice.

But how can you do this with the Fire TV remote? It doesn't have channel up/down buttons.

 

I just noticed that myself. I was only going by the couple of reviews on cordcuttersnews.com. But! I have a Logitech Harmony Remote hooked up to my Insignia Fire TV, and it does work with the Logitech remote!

 

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With the up/down portions of the ring. On the Fire TV Cube gen 1, this was somewhat sluggish. On the gen 2 model it’s quite snappy.

 

Something else where YTTV shines over TiVo. I have a recording that airs multiple times. So, while the latest recording aired, there was the impeachment trial which blocked the episode. So, I was looking and I noticed it copied all 4 of the same episode and let me pick one. With TiVo, it would be all 4 episodes on the Now Playing list, or a manual recording each week.

 

That does not seem to work on my Insignia Fire TV. The ring up or down just goes to the timeline. From there you can go to "Networks".

 

Something I DO NOT like about YTTV is that there is no buffer. Once you do start watching and create a buffer, the buffer is lost when you change channels. I would love it if it kept multiple buffers akin to TiVo's four/six tuners.

I have figured out a way to watch two stations at a time with two buffers, using the app on my Samsung TV along with a Fire Stick in one of the HDMI ports.

 

YTTV's version of channel surfing is the thumbnail-sized live tv feed for each channel as you scroll through the guide.

 

Why don't you just record both shows and not watch live?

 

Well... From a PC, you can use Chrome to share your desktop to your TV (using a Chromecast or equivalent) and then bring up multiple browser windows with multiple YouTube TV screens running different content. From the desktop, you can choose which (or all) audios are active - perhaps best to make one YTTV window with active audio and mute and closed caption the others.

If you really want to watch more than one show at a time ;-)!

 

yah i always figured if a person really wants to watch multiple live programs then they record them. and always figured if a person is flipping between live channels with a 1TB hard drive full of recordings on Tivo then something is wrong. The person is saying to themselves, the 1tb of recordings I have don't appeal to me. lol.

 

50 bucks a month for YouTube TV is way too much. Add in a couple of streaming services and you're right back up into cable and satellite bill territory.

But I'm glad we're finally at a time, with cord-cutting, where we longer have to subsidize channels like ESPN when we don't even watch it that much. Let the sports nuts pay out the big bucks, while the rest of us save big coin.

 

doesn't make any sense.

makes sense.


The first part doesn't make sense because it's a case of, " compared to what?" Everything is too much for you if it's not for you. Also taking YTTV and adding in some streaming services and then comparing to the cost of cable seems like apples to oranges. I'd compare YTTV to what it replaces which is the cost of cable plus Tivo. Its cost compares very favorably to that. I would also add that I'm finding it more desirable than cable+tivo irregardless of the $$$ savings.

The last part makes sense. And probably explains the first part which is you don't care about the sports content in YTTV and thus aren't interested and thus it is too much money for you.

I am glad that people don't have to subsidize sports though. And I'm a sports fan. To me, they just keep asking people to pay more money and people keeping doing it and that's the reason we have dramatically higher sports costs than 20-30 yrs ago.

 

It must be my unique misfortune then to have Comcast as my sole cable option. Their basic HD package was $104/month for me (before their recent price increases) which was way more than $49.99/month for YTTV. And with YTTV, I don't need any further streaming services to replace the Comcast cable package.

But there are folks who want channels beyond what YTTV provides and so it won't work for everyone. YMMV.

 

I wish it was less than $50. But a comparable cable package would be at least double that. Why do you have to add in a couple of streaming services? Do you not subscribe to those extra services already?

 

I'm talking about adding them them in as in regards to one's overall monthly costs.

 

With Youtube TV you are subsidizing ESPN. With Sling, you dont have to with their Blue package.

 

I remember being slightly shocked a couple years ago when hearing about ESPN paying the NFL a billion dollars just to run one season of Monday night football. There is no way the revenue from the advertising they collected would make up that amount. The rest, and maybe even the bulk of that, would be paid by cable and satellite subscribers.

I generally likes sports, but it's become such an overpiced commodity that it's put me off.

 

Don't know how the cost of MNF breaks down between ad revenue and subscriber revenue. But either way a person is paying for it.

I don't see anything wrong with charging what you can get for something. I mean Avengers the movie (newest one) took in what? $2 billion in revenue?

IF you generally like sports, also realize that having people who don't like sports does help keep your share of the costs down.

But I definitely feel like there was a vicious circle going on with the costs of sports programming. LIke I sort of had no say in it. Other than to shut cable off completely. at least with going to see a game in person, i can choose to go or not go. I like that transparency. But the costs of sports programming was snuck in through increases in the cost of one's cabletv package. It wasn't transparent. People were sort of held hostage in a way. IT was all or nothing. I think that enabled sports programming costs to dramatically increase.