Fortunately I am continuing to have almost bug free YTTV for the past few weeks. It works well now.
So I'm going to stick with YTTV for the time being. Love the straightforward pricing and not having a contract term obligation.
The YouTube TV Thread
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So I'm going to stick with YTTV for the time being. Love the straightforward pricing and not having a contract term obligation.
YouTube TV just announced on Twitter that HBO is coming this spring. No details beyond that.
- Nov 29, 2003
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Not just HBO but HBO MAX also, I believe they are the first Live TV service to have access to MAX.
By the way, I was able to get 10 $25 HBO NOW gift cards at 60% off, so I will have access to MAX when it starts up, hope it is worth the $6 a month it works out to.
- Nov 29, 2003
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Ebay this time, last xmas Best Buy had Hulu, Netflix at 20% off so I stocked up ( both services are paid till Feb.2020 ).
The hardest card to find at a good discount is Google Play, the most I see that at discount is 5% off at Sams, even itunes go 20% off during the Holidays.
Thanks for the info.
I agree Best Buy is pretty good during the holidays. Walmart is good also.
- Nov 29, 2003
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The year previous, Sams ( owned by Walmart) had Netflix and Hulu at 40%, so stocked up on only a year's worth with the assumption they would have the same deal the next year but no luck, if I ever see a deal 40% or more I will buy as many as possible.
Through my credit card rewards, I can sometimes get 10% off Google Play. I thought it was a standing deal, but I haven't seen it since October. Of course, I don't always have rewards points to redeem, and Google won't take gift card credits for partial month payments on YTTV. You have to have at least $50 in gift card credit in your account, otherwise they just charge your credit card for the full $50 amount.
- Nov 29, 2003
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I was using my Best Buy Credit Card points towards Sony gift Cards ( when I had Vue) but 3 years ago they would not let you buy gift cards with redeemed points anymore.
I do get bonus money from my Amazon Credit Card, but I let that build for when they have itunes cards on sale, last year I bought $500 worth ( still have $350 in my itunes account) so when I buy new movies it costs me nothing basically.
I’m kind of still on the fence. Cut the TV cord and have gone streaming and OTA. Today I found that the Tivo decided it actually could get all the locals so the OTA part is fine.
But in some ways I’m still tossed between YTTV or using the combo of Sling/Hulu/CBS All Access. There are definitely some pluses to either way.
With YTTV everything is there that I would want with the exception of Paramount, and that for only one show. But the DVR methodology they use is just hinky IMO. My usual use of DVR is just to time-shift shows a bit. I don’t archive them, watch and delete. But you can’t do that with YTTV, nor can you have it just record a series on one ‘channel’. And that makes for a mess. I can deal with it, I just don’t like it.
And since the Tivo does fine for all the broadcast, it removes a real need to have them in a streamer. And the channels that YTTV has over what my Sling combo aren’t of a whole lot of interest.
The biggest plus for YTTV IMO is that it is all there in one app. Makes management a bit easier.
My thinking with the combo of Sling/Hulu/CBS is that at some point both HBO Max and Peacock will launch and they will have the content I’m getting that I care about from Sling for about $10/month cheaper, and that content will be somewhat manageable via Apple’s AppleTV app.
Thankfully with streaming you never have to pay for more than a month!
I agree with the DVR but after several months I'm liking it more and more. I'm getting ready to ditch Dish for good and only go with YTTV for my two homes.
No, you can’t record a single episode, nor can you record a series on just a selected channel. For instance, Law & Order SVU. Many channels play incessant reruns of this show, if you pick the series to record you get it all. Just makes for a hell of a mess IMO.
I want to see shows I haven’t yet watched in my recordings list, not every instance of whatever show. You can’t even delete a show.
Seems pretty clear to me what programs I have watched, am in progress watching, and haven't watched.
Yep, if you like a bunch of stuff in your library that you haven’t watched and have no intention of watching, I suppose it is OK.
I don’t. I don’t archive old shows/movies. I record, watch on my schedule, delete after watching. Keeps a nice, neat list of things I will watch and nothing else.
I also prefer to record, watch, and delete when done -- on a show by show basis. The YTTV interface simply does not work for me. It is awkward. I'm sure that some here like it, and may try to tell me why I am supposed to like it too.
But despite the above, I decided that YTTV's strange interface sucks less than my $130 cable TV bill used to.
I’ve still got YTTV for another month as well as using my SlingTV/Hulu/CBS combo. Lots to like in both methods, some to dislike too.
YTTV’s biggest draw is that all I want is there and more. It all seems to work fairly well though the way they chose to do DVR/VOD intermixing is a bit of an irritant. Skip, when available, works better than Sling’s. PQ and SQ seem equivalent.
The Sling combo is $15 cheaper with the expanded DVR, and the DVR works similarly to what most cable/sat DVRs do. Skipping is a little hinky because it responds to the skip command a bit slowly. And Sling doesn’t cover everything, it takes multiple apps to have the channels I want. I got Sling Blue as it has my 9 must have cable channels. Currently not much on those channels of interest, but there is some.
And that is both good and bad. The good is that I can see the ‘up next’ for both Hulu and CBS in AppleTV app’s ‘up next’ strip. And both Hulu and CBS are with no ads, so ad skipping isn’t an issue at all.
My current setup is a Tivo for OTA via antenna, everything else on one or the other streaming box. Preference overall is the AppleTV.
To each his/her own. After over a decade of using Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, etc., YTTV provides something much more in line with those services, where we watch most of our content, than what a legacy DVR does. Is it perfect? No, but it works better than most IMHO.
It almost works like a cable/sat box, though not quite. And it almost works like Netflix, etc, but most, if not all VOD having non-skippable ads. It biggest advantage is that it is almost all you might want to watch under one roof and is similar enough to the cable/sat boxes we’re used to, that switching to it isn’t as daunting as using multiple apps to do the same thing.
A lot of their VOD is the same shows that are available with the various channel’s apps, complete with non-skippable ads.
I suppose I’ve gotten spoiled a bit with TiVo’s automatic ad skipping on many channels, and even the smoothness of skipping them manually compared to any streamer’s skipping.
I don't watch any VOD on YTTV. It is literally only for sports (mainly F1, which has few if any ads), local news, and things that haven't made it to the streaming services yet. Oh, and in the case of Babylon5 above, things that have left 1 streaming service but haven't landed on another yet. If my Recast were more reliable, I probably would choose another solution to save money, but given my specific needs, YTTV is the best fit at this time.
