The YouTube TV Thread

[SpaethCo]

YouTube's live TV experience is relatively limited. They offer business products but up until recently most of their content has been painstakingly encoded before it becomes available.

I’m not sure I’d say their experience with live streaming is limited. Heck, they served up live video of the Red Bull space jump guy to 8 million unique viewers in 2012: Official YouTube Blog: Mission complete: Red Bull Stratos lands safely back on Earth

 

[harshness]

Yeah overall its the best streaming service out there and it will continue to get better plus over the next couple of years All providers will be streaming.

Best is always in the eye of the beholder.

We'll see how it compares price-wise when all the players decide they can't give it away anymore.

 

[Poke]

Best is always in the eye of the beholder.

We'll see how it compares price-wise when all the players decide they can't give it away anymore.

Reality is just compare the rest Yes always choose what you like but like with anything some services are Always better than others.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Any word on whether Youtube TV will ever get History Channel or the other A&E networks?

 

[harshness]

Any word on whether Youtube TV will ever get History Channel or the other A&E networks?

As someone pointed out in a recent DIRECTV dispute thread, would anyone really miss them?

I was watching only H2 and that went away.

Such is not to say that there isn't any value in the entire place, but across all the channels, it may only combine for one decent linear channel.

 

[comfortably_numb]

across all the channels, it may only combine for one decent linear channel.

I'd be fine with that. Only shows I care about from the whole group are Pickers and Pawn Stars.

Women sure do love the Lifetime networks, though.

 

[SpaethCo]

I don’t see it happening without another price increase. While it does introduce yet another service, it’s probably easiest to just spend the $16/mo on Philo to pick up the A&E/History/Lifetime channels, plus the Viacom channels, plus the Discovery channels that YoutubeTV didn’t add (DIY, Science channel, etc).

 

[comfortably_numb]

the $16/mo on Philo to pick up the A&E/History/Lifetime channels, plus the Viacom channels, plus the Discovery channels.

I thought the $16 Philo package was going away?

 

[SpaethCo]

I thought the $16 Philo package was going away?

Only if you sign up after the 6th. If you sign up before that, the package will be grandfathered*.

*Until it is inevitably not grandfathered anymore in the future.

 

[harshness]

I'd be fine with that. Only shows I care about from the whole group are Pickers and Pawn Stars.

And that's the problem with suites. You have to take the whole crappy lot to just get one or two shows. This includes the "premium" movie plexes.

 

[Jhon69]

Yeah plus I'm sure there will be plenty of 4K they can add since Youtube itself already has a lot of 4K content on it plus they are the streaming kings..

I watch 2160p on all my YTTV channels with my Roku Streaming Stick + which upscales all of them.
My Vizio M55-C2 is one of the earlier 4K UHDTV's so no HDR to worry about,but the better resolution is nice.
Since YTTV has added channels it was enough for me to give up and cancel Philo.

 

[Jhon69]

Streaming quality has an advantage vs satellite and cable. 1080p looks much better than interlaced 1080i. I've always been a quality over quantity type of person. YTTV looks strikingly better than Dish or even DTV IMO. YTTV is cream of the crop followed by PSVUE which has more buffer issues but better channel selection at a higher price.

When Spectrum cable HDTV finally was offered in our area.it was their 1080p resolution on their cable boxes that got me away from Dish and DirecTV 1080i resolutions.
Then when my son introduced me to the streaming world and I saw their resolution was also 1080p without all the little got ya fees,I was sold.

 

[harshness]

My Vizio M55-C2 is one of the earlier 4K UHDTV's so no HDR to worry about,but the better resolution is nice.

Given the choice between resolution and HDR/WCG, I'd pick HDR/WCG every time.

 

[SpaethCo]

The source content for the live channels is still 1080i - it’s just a matter of where the de-interlacing happens and what compression is applied where. In the case of Dish and DirecTV 1080i broadcasts, they’re compressing into interlaced H264 streams to push down to the receivers. The receiver will then either send the native decompressed interlace video to your TV to process (Native mode), or will de-interlace and down-rez the content to 720P on the receiver itself.

For Spectrum, they're still sending 1080i for live video. If you select 1080p on the cable box and the video looks better, all that means is that the de-interlacing hardware and algorithm used by the cable box is better than the one in your TV.

For streaming video, they de-interlace the video before applying the final compression for distribution. Many devices that consume streaming video don't have dedicated hardware incorporated for de-interlacing, which means these functions would have to be performed in software. That's going to chew into CPU on computers and lead to streaming glitches, and for mobile devices that would start to destroy battery life.

Even though streaming video starts from the same 1080i source, providers can usually source a higher bitrate master feed to use for encoding. If they apply de-interlacing first to the high bitrate source, they can get much more efficiency out of H264 encoding by having "key frames" to work with, and being able to leverage inter-frame motion compression for far better efficiency. There are a ton of factors, but in general, a 6mpbs 1080p stream should look better than a 6mbps 1080i stream because of the extra efficiency the codec can take advantage of.

All that said, I would rate YoutubeTV's de-interlacing quality as good, but not great. It does a *really* good job with motion tracking for sports like hockey, but their algorithm does break down on occasion. You can particularly notice it on text scrollers where occasionally there are massive comb artifacts. I'll still take YoutubeTV's occasional de-interlacing artifacts on NBCSN over DirecTV's halo of compression artifacts around smaller moving objects. (ie, anything shot by the center ice camera for hockey games)

 

[ncted]

When Spectrum cable HDTV finally was offered in our area.it was their 1080p resolution on their cable boxes that got me away from Dish and DirecTV 1080i resolutions.
Then when my son introduced me to the streaming world and I saw their resolution was also 1080p without all the little got ya fees,I was sold.

Must be a former Charter market. My former TWC market Spectrum PQ is worse than every other option, including DirecTV, Dish, and Uverse.

 

[Jhon69]

Given the choice between resolution and HDR/WCG, I'd pick HDR/WCG every time.

Unfortunately in 2015 Vizio did not have HDR in their UHDTVs,but I can still hear the salesman voice"This is the latest in UHDTVs.it's got everything, you will never need to buy another".

 

[harshness]

Unfortunately in 2015 Vizio did not have HDR in their UHDTVs,but I can still hear the salesman voice"This is the latest in UHDTVs.it's got everything, you will never need to buy another".

The blame here falls somewhere between the salesman and the customer. There is such a thing as too soon.

I think the only manufacturer that really mislead anyone was Samsung with its upgrade boxes though you could make a case for LG and tuners.

 

[Jhon69]

Must be a former Charter market. My former TWC market Spectrum PQ is worse than every other option, including DirecTV, Dish, and Uverse.

Yes I guess you could call us a former Charter market,where we live 4 1/2 miles from town all we had out here was 89 SD TV channels and that was all.
It took Charter's bankruptcy reorganization that became the reason to bring us into the 21th century.

 

[Gobucks]

I have a DVR question. I tried YouTube tv and it looks like every recording goes to the on demand version next day.

Is there a way to stop that? I was hoping you could skip commercials but that doesn't seem to be the case next day. I know when I had PSVUE you had a choice. I would pick DVR and just skip commercials.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using the SatelliteGuys app!

 

[SpaethCo]

I have a DVR question. I tried YouTube tv and it looks like every recording goes to the on demand version next day.

That should only be for CBS and CW shows. For all other recordings, there should be an option to choose the On Demand or DVR version of everything in your library.