Does anyone use YouTubeTV for their sports provider?
If this has been answered before I apologize but I was looking into YouTubeTV for football season and was curious if anyone here has any opinions on how well it works? I have been cable free for over 2 years, but I do miss watching football all season long from my house instead of having to go out to watch games. Thank you for any information.
Over two years now. Still happy with it.
Convinced my brother, mom, two cousins.
Even with the price increases?
For me, absolutely. I was paying $130/mo for DirecTV and about $60/mo for Comcast. Now, DirecTV is gone and I pay $50/mo for YTTV. Some would say to just combine everything under Comcast but I hate them with a passion. Moreover, YTTV travels well and if we go on vacation it's easy to bring along a Roku stick and plug it into a TV.
I do, but this is will be my first football season using it. We'll see how it goes lol. Works well for baseball if that helps.
There was a whole piece about this on the main page earlier this month: https://mgoblog.com/content/week%27s-obsession-cutting-cord.
I do and it's fantastic. I get all the local Cleveland games via Sportstime Ohio, I get the Michigan games via BTN, ESPN 1 & 2, Fox 1 and all the local network broadcasts.
I made the switch about 2 years ago. Went from paying $148/month with Direct TV for service on four TVs with 50 hours of recording capability to paying $40/month for service on unlimited TVs, phones & tablets with unlimited cloud recording storage.
It's fantastic. Highly, highly recommend.
I called Comcast the other day to find out if they could provide cable and internet for less than the $100/month they charge me for internet, plus the $50 PS Vue charges for TV. After 40 minutes, she told me it would be the same price and my whole house DVR can only record 20 hours. LOL
I'll never get that 40 minutes of my life back.
How do you get it for $40?
I was grandfathered in at $35, until they bumped the old timers up to the standard $50 earlier this year.
Probably on auto-renew and hasn't checked it in a while, lol. I'm also at $50, I think, plus about $40 for internet. All in, I'm at $90, which isn't some sort of fantastic deal, but it beats dealing with the cable companies
Relativity, my friend. I just made the switch to Youtube TV 2 days ago after my teaser rate for my cable/internet package expired. My bill was set to jump up to $217 per month for decent internet, cable, sports package and HBO. I'll now be paying about $60 for internet, $50 for Youtube TV and $15 (I think) for HBO. Save almost $100 per month and haven't noticed a drop in quality.
Do you know if it's possible to select a different set of local channels? I live in Madison but would really prefer to get Fox Sports Detroit (wings games).
Cheers.
You'd have to have someone periodically log in to your account in Detroit. As far as I know there's mixed information on what channels you get if you share the account with family in different cities. I share an account with 3 people in different cities. I get my own local channels even though the main account is set up somewhere else. Another person on the account claims they don't get their local channels, they get the account owners local channels.
This actually raises an interesting point. Can you just provide a Detroit zip code when signing up and thus get all the local teams, even though you live in another state?
Like having different shipping and billing addresses?
Unfortunately (for some people, I don't have this specific use case) no. The idea I'm sure is that if you chose a different location you'd get that location's local ads, which is of no use to the advertisers because you're probably not going to drive across the country to hit up Mom and Pop's Restaurant even though they're paying for airtime.
That said, my brother and sister live in a different city and have been able to use my account just fine. If I log in when I'm out of town, I get the local ads of the new place while I'm there.
How is the picture with a 4K TV?
Did you say unlimited users?
Say do mind sharing that log-in?
Asking for a friend.
It is okay. If the cable was similarly priced, I would happily go back.
My main gripes are:
- Picture quality is not great, even compressed cable PQ is better than YTTV PQ.
- Skipping brings up HUGE bottom banner up EVERYTIME! This is really distracting when watching recorded events (like baseball where I skip between every pitch or football between every snap
- If you are watching a long live event, YTTV will only go back 3 hours. It is fine for baseball/football. Not great for olympics, tennis or golf where a typical broadcast is longer than 3 hours
- On the road, you are not guaranteed to watch your live/recorded games (depends on your location)
- When searching for events that already happened, they show the final scores. SPOILER!
So you can record games like a dvr?
Yes and no limits I've run into yet
Not even in Watervliet!
Yes.
In response to the above poster, I think you can toggle live scores "off" so you can live blissfully in a cone of silence when necessary.
Absolutely. That’s the main reason I got and keep them. You get unlimited DVR space, and you can keep those recordings for up-to 9 months.
When searching for events that already happened, they show the final scores. SPOILER!
You can turn this off so it won't show scores, it's super easy.
I read somewhere that Google is supposed to be adding a feature where the system monitors stats to see if it should automatically extend the recording time on a game when it goes longer than scheduled.
Kind of surprised by your first two points. I run YTTV through Apple TV and have never even seen a banner - what do you mean by the banner?
Also, what speed is your internet? I get about 150-300mbps consistently (even though I pay for 1GB, lol, separate story) and quality has been awesome
Moved from Comcast to Hulu to YouTubeTV. Very satisfied with YouTubeTV. Hulu was awful.
Hmm, I had settled on Hulu TV for football season. Care to elaborate on what makes in inferior to PS Vue or YouTube TV?
All 3 have everything I need afaik, Hulu just has some additional content for the wife and was cheaper.
I had Hulu Live last football season.
Two things I found annoying.
First the delay on streaming is longer than cable (I don't think this is just Hulu) so if you text with friends during the game you can get texts about something that you haven't seen yet or I also like to check twitter during commercials so if something happens right out of the break I already know about it.
Second I made Michigan football and basketball my favorites and it records every time they are on. While I like that if you turn on the game 5 minutes after the broadcast starts it will start at the beginning of the block of time. While this is fine if you tune in while it is on commercial you can't forward to live TV until it is back off commercial. I also had problems that during commercials I might switch channels to watch another game for a couple minutes and when I go back it will either start all over again or I still need to fast forward to go to live.
I could probably do a few things different to alleviate these burdens but I go to every home football game so this only happens on away games for football so not the biggest deal.
I am interested into why the poster didn't like Hulu and really likes YoutubeTV.
I too text with friends during the game and the delay is always behind cable, but Hulu's seemed more significant. I have also switched from Roku to Apple TV, and that has helped the delay too. Roku's interface and remote were worse than YouTubeTV's and Apple's remote (my phone).
Mostly when I recorded the games on Hulu the way they handled commercials (I had the no adds option) was terrible. You could not fast forward through commercials. You could skip entire segments of the game including commercials but you always saw the most recent commercial block from the point to where you fast-forwarded. This was the deal breaker for me.
I had originally wanted YouTubeTV, but they didn't have HGTV live so I went with Hulu for my wife. Now, that has even changed. So, for me Roku + Hulu << Apple TV + YouTubeTV.
Yeah the delay is the biggest down side. It's hard to text people or even check the box score if you don't want to know what's about to happen. Streaming device definitely plays a big part. So buying the more expensive and newer models will go a long way to reducing delay.
Yes. I've used YouTube TV since it was available in Milwaukee in 2016 and I love it. Unlimited DVR, all local and sports channels you need.
holy shit. search function.
Holy shit. Shut up
The amount of time the OP has been on this site i agree on using the search function.
I am sure it can be annoying for some people, but I missed the last discussion on this topic. I am especially grateful for this post today because my wife and I were discussing getting rid of cable. The kids mainly watch Netflix, and we got the 99 cents Black Friday Hulu subscription deal. The only reason we have not canceled yet is because I was not sure about what I was going to do about watching football. In my recent research Youtube TV seemed like the best option for me, and I am glad other have confirmed it. Thank you OP for posting this question today. It was very helpful to me.
I too have the Apple TV + YouTube TV set up with Netflix but I also have Amazon Prime, plus we have access to my sister in-law's Hulu subscription. We rarely have an issue where we can't watch what we want at only $109 a month.
You are going to see some variation of this thread or "YTTY vs PS Vue" on at least a twice weekly basis through mid-September.
Virtually the entire Mgoblog staff uses YouTube TV as they explained in a front page post a few weeks back. I do as well, and I've been very happy with it. I did find it reassuring that people who write about sports for a living made the same choice I did.
Their reasons for doing so were not exactly convincing though. I don't buy things because they sport Apple or Google or the like in their name, or because all my friends have it. Price and Performance are the what matter most to me.
This thread has already been more informative than that entire post. Not being able to fast forward through commercials even on recorded live TV might make me go bonkers. There is a reason I start watching an hour after the game starts.
For me, that defeats the purpose of a DVR. I record shows in order to be able to fast forward through commercials. I dont care if they hold shows infinitely vs 30 days. I'll stick with PSvue
My experience with YTTV is that some programs have commercials you can fast forward through but others do not. The ones that do not pop up with a yellow status bar and have and Ad counter in the corner. I am unclear why there are both but am sure it's all about money.
Did some research after the revelation you couldn't fast forward on Hulu. You apparently can with a $15 add-on for expanded DVR features. You can FF on PS Vue, except FOX stations and on YouTube TV except CBS/CW stations. They gave reasons, but I don't care.
So effectively that makes Hulu TV $60, YouTube TV $50, and PS Vue $55 for what I need. YouTube TV it is.
I like YouTubeTV. You get all the main ESPN channels, Fox Sports channels, BTN, SEC network, and your local channels. So you get basically get every college football game, within reason. You'll also get the in-market and primetime NFL games.
The user experience and app are high quality. I haven't had issues with picture quality.
The only other service I tried was Playstation Vue, which had a good channel list, but a poor app design and buffering issues.
I did the exact same thing with my fire tv in regards to running a direct Ethernet cable to it for a better stream. My other TVs work great though with just the firestick. I also was going to switch to yttv but I do not want to have to buy new devices to stream it to my tv’s.
My connection was wireless for both services, mostly from my phone to the television via Chromecast. YouTubeTV definitely performed better in terms of buffering.
A wired connection probably would have improved my Playstation Vue experience, but my fiber line is located in a less-than-deal location within the house for that.
We should make sports programming a sticky.
Yes. It works great. Unlimited DVR. No lag. Would recommend.
edit: I said "lag" and I meant "no/little buffering". I would be surprised if there wasn't a lag.
Buy a TCL Roku tv from Walmart. They’re cheap and work well.Get YouTube tv. Plug your tv in anywhere you can get WiFi and enjoy. Out on my deck, up at the camper, backyard, garage, basement,at work on my phone etc. Only thing missing is NFL network. The portability is so useful. Occasionally get some buffering and that’s my only minor gripe. But that’s any streaming service. You could even stream on 3 tv’s at the same time if you wanted multiple games on at the same time.
I've had it for about a year. I've loved it, particularly the unlimited DVR space... I set up all tourney's (CWS, Gold Cup, WWC) this summer to record everything, and was able to make sure I didn't miss a game I might be interested in without having to think too much. One thing to be very careful of, however, is opening the app in the middle of a game...it will recommend things to watch on your home page, and likely will have teams you are interested in front and center. Knowing this, I've gotten used to flipping away from this screen very quickly.