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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

Does Youtube TV still have commercials for on-demand content?

Back at the beginning, I signed up for a trial. The first thing I did was try some on-demand, and it made me sit through A LOT of commercials before the content started.

Considering that Youtube TV was 4-5x the cost of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and both are commercial-free, I canceled immediately. I watch so little TV that it's cheaper to just buy the shows I want to watch outright on Google Play... Commercial-free.

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It does, because it's essentially the same thing as old school cable TV. You're getting access to ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, Fox, FX, CNN, TNT, EPSN, BBC America, Food Network, HGTV, and so on. There's not really any service that offers (all of) that content without commercials.

You can use their cloud DVR to "record" something, and after that happens, you can fast forward through the commercials. Which is similar to what you would get with a old school cable and a real DVR.

I also hate commercials, and while you can find commercial free versions of some of the YouTube TV content, you can't find it for everything they air.

Streaming is so fragmented now, both in content and features, that you have to do quite a lot of research before buying.

Edit: The text of the email Roku is sending out: https://pastebin.com/C3cEE3qq

There is DVR software that will strip out the commericals for you. Post processing DVR feature, and its awesome.

"You can use their cloud DVR to "record" something, and after that happens, you can fast forward through the commercials."

Has this changed? When I tried YouTubeTV a couple of years ago, you could record things to the DVR, and sometimes not only would they not let you fast forward through the commercials, they replaced them with their own completely un-fast-forwardable commercials. Sometimes it would let you fast forward as normal though. This is what caused me to drop the subscription immediately.

I have not had that problem. But, you do have to specifically wait for the actual air time to come and go before you're able to play it with fast-forward capability.

Once that's done, I've never had an issue with fast-forward. The UI does differentiate between "recorded" and "on-demand" content.

What I have run into:

- Something I recorded is no longer available, I assume because some contract expired.

- Something that's immediately available as on-demand isn't scheduled to air "Live". I can still click the thing that says to record it, but it never airs and so never records. That's pretty rare, but it's happened.

Even if you ‘record’ something to your YouTube TV DVR, if there is an on-demand (with ads) version available from the network, your DVR recorded version will be replaced and you will be forced to watch the on-demand (with unskippable ads) version

I can't reproduce that. I wonder if it's on some specific channels.

Maybe it depends on the channel, but in my experience you can pick which version you want to watch. Take this screenshot from SNL for example: https://i.imgur.com/s7eCDi8.png

There are 3 versions currently available to me for S46 E16: two DVR and one VOD. If I select either of the two DVR versions, I can skip commercials as expected. The VOD version forces me to watch commercials (also as expected, I guess).

Why not Sling? I find it much cheaper than YouTubeTV

It's missing ABC and CBS. And the DVR is more limited. But, yes, it's very inexpensive in comparison to YouTubeTV.

Youtube TV isn't direct competitor to Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. but it's a great alternative for people who want cable TV channels. I found it was much cheaper, had more viewing flexibility, and better contract terms than any cable provider in my area. That said, there's no cable TV content that makes it worth being exposed to the aggressive obnoxiousness of commercials.

Except live local sports that are blacked out on any streaming package. For me, at least.

That was pretty much my thinking too. Cutting my cable bill by $100/month opens up a lot of "budget" for a la carte content. I still lose out on live TV but honestly that was a rare thing for me given I watch very little sports.

> 4-5x the cost of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and both are commercial-free

Dont you get annoying pre-roll commercials for other amazon programs? I do and its driving me insane. Any way to turn them off?

Amazon is the worst for those. Netflix hasn't tried it yet, as far as I've noticed.

Sometimes these services shoot themselves in the foot. I tried Starz on trial, and had so many commercials to sit through. No way I'm paying for Starz. (It's entirely possible and even likely you don't commercials with the paid service compared to the trial, but the trial was for me to experience the service. I'm not then risking paying for the service with the risk that it still has commercials.)

> Does Youtube TV still have commercials for on-demand content?

Doesn't every single TV content provider do this? On Demand content has unskippable commercials on every platform I've used - Netflix and Amazon Prime are not equivalents as they don't offer network On Demand content.

You can get some of what's offered on YouTube TV without commercials in other places, but it's a piecemeal adventure. If you shut down YouTube TV in favor of Amazon Prime, for example, you could pay for a subscription to AMC+ on Prime and watch "The Walking Dead", "Discovery of Witches", etc, without commercials. Or, older stuff, like "Law and Order" that has commercials on YouTube TV, but comes with Prime, no commercials.

Yes. Anything you didn’t explicitly ask to “record” has them, from what i’ve seen.

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