YouTube TV will be huge. Apple must respond
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
I've always had the feeling that Youtube had bad management. If they weren't the biggest library of videos online they'd probably be out of business by now (Thats my personal opinion).
Take youtube streaming for example, it can't take over Twitch . I find its hard to fiddle with youtube's UI changes.
I don't know really, I think we'll have to wait and see, but still $35 a month for 40 channels that seems a hefty price.
A cheap antenna will get the broadcast networks and Bravo, Disney, Sprout, etc don't have any compelling content for me. Far cheaper to buy one or two shows off of Amazon if I want to see them semi-realtime, otherwise it's just fine to wait until they are available to stream off of Netflix or Amazon Prime.
Just one nerd's opinion.
In particular, I suspect you overlook access to sports content, in particular live games. That by itself matters enough to a whole lot of people to sell the service at this price point.
This is my complaint about unbundling: content creators want to charge the same or more than their offerings cost on cable. Back in the heady days of Big Ugly Dishes (BUDs) the providers were unbundled and far cheaper. The price creep we've seen has been aggregators (cable companies and small dish providers) charging a premium + markup simply because they could. Content providers would like to decouple from cable whilst retaining the premium.
I remain skeptical of someone like Comcast ever unbundling ESPN because they'd lose ESPN customers in droves when the real costs were exposed and most likely they (Comcast) would simply set the new base package price as the old one.
There are some annoying quirks with Youtube for sure, but it's better than a lot of others.
Do we really need another one?
That is essentially VoD that they are offering as well as broadcast.
"unlimited DVR" is PR speak for VoD in this case.
(And when I tried it, I got the familiar "not available in your country".)
It's clear to see that a company such as Netflix can clearly benefit from moving away from these companies, as they tend to be priced highly (thus reducing the ability to make any serious margins) and be hugely inflexible when it comes to DRM and placing geographic and device restrictions.
Surely the deciding factory in YT TV's success will be in it's ability to wade through this ugly maze and convince the rights owners that their future success hinges on their ability to keep with the times...
That's a rather euphemistic way of putting it; the rightsholders know they have a monopoly on each specific item of content and don't see why any other business should make a single penny along the way.
(Orlowski is a known pro-DRM contrarian on this subject!)
As they say, the real success is if they can make this as frictionless as Youtube already is. Pay $35, get everything everywhere on all devices, end of story.
That said, the Register's Apple reporting, while no more directly informed than anyone else's, often stands the test of time quite well, and Orlowski is as close to a star reporter as anyone writing under their masthead. Thus the choice to disregard a piece like this I think merits some hesitation, whatever distaste one may have for the publication, which I gather is not well loved in all quarters here.
However, it does seem to be addressing a real need. Which is native multi device support for live TV with the features the modern consumer expects and a price point that Netflix only crowd won't loathe. With streaming services like Netflix moving towards original content, I can see YouTube TV complimenting Netflix nicely to provide the majority of content that consumers desire.
That's a huge drawback for Apple's offering, because a whole lot of people want to watch that stuff. If they want to keep their product relevant, they have to address it - but they now have a huge new problem in that every Apple TV has a YouTube app, and so do a lot of competitors in the space. They could've had first mover advantage on this, because up to now no one has managed it - but now it seems YouTube has, which leaves them playing catch-up.
Apple doesn't give out Apple TVs for free. The beauty of owning the hardware and platform like Apple does is that they still make money from other peoples services.
Now, whether they have a compelling enough TV hardware + OS/software for people to buy and watch Youtube TV over... that's another question. But I think that question exists regardless of whether Apple makes a linear broadcast TV streaming service or not.
The "reports" earlier, when Twitter was bidding for NFL (or NRL? I'm not American or into sport) Apple considered a bid but ultimately decided not to because they realised that whoever got the rights would just still stream it on Apple TV regardless.
I definitely acknowledge that Apple TV at the moment is Apple's compromise of not being able to put a better service out there, but I still think they're very happy selling people their hardware for other people To make software services over the top.
As for Google, good, that doesn't harm Apple. It means we can still access it on Apple platforms as Google still develop their services on both Android and iOS.
If not, there is still Vue, Sling, and other similar ones.
Apple might benefit from an open-minded media content providers seeing the success of the streaming services and they might ease up on the deals that Apple want.
But they haven't made it happen - and now they've probably lost that chance for good, if indeed they ever had it.
It has local stations and a cloud DVR as well as Showtime (for Homeland and Billions) and HBO (for Game of Thrones, Westworld, and Last Week tonight).
The price is a little high but overall I've been extremely happy with it. When I saw YouTube's new service my first thought was that it was awful in comparison.
They still are huge (they're some of the most popular devices sold) and Apple did respond, the entire industry did too.
The only thing that didn't stick was the name -- we call them "ultrabooks" now.
But yes, the really cheap Netbooks were replaced by tablets and tablet-based laptops. Things like the iPad Mini 2 ($280) or the Lenovo Miix 320 ($200ish) or most Chromebooks.