Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands
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I think Roku is in a perilous position in general. They generated a lot of buzz on Wallstreet with their high user counts. They also purchased a DSP to get more into the advertising game. However they are at risk of being disrupted. They do not offer much that is unique and have largely gained and held market position by being the cheapest and easiest to use.
Cheap Android TV devices are starting to compete with them on price and tv manufacturers have mostly chosen to create and maintain their own ecosystems.
Unless they make some big strategic maneuvers I see them slowly being squeezed out like Tivo.
As it is, I'm already in a mixed household (Me with iOS and my wife with Android) and it's a pain to deal with the lack of cross-platform playing together.
Same. I'm so sick of being locked into one system or another, having my eyeballs monetized, or getting the shitty version of an app because it isn't the vendor's platform. I got a Roku because they're as neutral as one can get, and so far I'm happy paying for YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime and Netflix. You tell me I can't run those on my Roku, well fuck you and your service.
The thing is that Google shouldn't be forced to make their apps for the 30 different streaming box app stores if they don't want to. If there's no money to be made and they inherently lose money by tasking a team to keep the Roku app (or LG app or Samsung app, etc) up-to-date then they shouldn't have to.
The Google Cast protocol is actually pretty open in this regard - the apps are just a combination of html, js, websocket, and a protobuf server with no need to publish anything - all the TV makers would have to do is embed Chrome (they would also have to use a not-e-waste chip to do so, though, as supporting 4k hardware vp9 and drm is intense and expensive). There also really isn't an app store that needs moderation or business deals to happen for your casting to work - the only registration is really so Google has a paper trail of accountability in order to prevent malware and perform some API calls (https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/registration).
Wait, what? Who exactly is "forcing" them to do any such thing, and how?
Fire Stick is a joke. The wifi reception is terrible, the entire UI is laggier than my old cable box, and the apps crash on launch more often than not.
Roku just works, and it works like something that was designed by professional adults and not blood-sucking marketeers eager to screw over their users to make an extra ten cents.
Sadly, you and I are exceptions - caring about it only enough to voice our disregard for it. Usually, by the time a person is old enough to not need the churn of mass culture to be relevant to their peers, they're usually hooked on some brand or other of high-quality spam. Unlike street drugs, mass media rots your brain with full societal approval.
This is nothing new of course - many writers, musicians, and filmmakers of the 20th century have expounded on the soul-crushing effects of commercialized culture. As expected, they have ended up being more obscure to the general public than the ones who embraced it. It was weird seeing for the first time a mainstream artist or work that risked to be slightly more original than the industry average (in order to reach a previously uncaptured audience segment) being lauded as some sort of genius, while its subject matter was the same old "hey you, yes you, buy a bigger TV!"
Allocating resources and incentives (economy) and collectively deciding what's valuable and worth incentivizing (culture) are two separate layers of the social "stack". Advertising couples them in the worst possible way, effecting a positive feedback loop of wastage. The possibility that the emergent adtech hivemind's ultimate purpose is to measure and hone the efficiency of this mass pacification strategy is Orwellian par excellence.
My answer to this? Just enough economic productivity to afford unabashed dirtbaggery on the cultural plane. Anyone who does not share this perspective is watching a different movie.
People said something similar 10 -15 years ago about pirating with bit-torrent. There was certain rage with them I couldn't understand. Now I finally feel the same. I think the age of Napster and BT will be back.
No, streaming providers do not have to give Apple a cut. They can force you to pay on their website. You can not pay for Hulu Live, Youtube Live TV, Netflix or many others through the App Store.
Content providers do have to make deals to get on AppleTV. You just don't hear about it.
Here's an example:
"WarnerMedia has firmed up a distribution deal with Apple for distribution of its forthcoming streaming service HBO Max.... Under the deal, HBO Max will be available on Apple devices and integrated with the Apple TV app on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV."
(note the words "the deal")
https://deadline.com/2020/04/hbo-max-apple-streaming-distrib...
And there are few details around the HBO and CBS deal to get on Apple TV here:
In a second sign of frayed relations between the two companies, Netflix has decided to opt out of the Apple bundle, which will upsell subscriptions to HBO and CBS in addition to its original programming
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/multimedia/netflix-apple-...
Yeah I know it’s confusing (not being sarcastic). The AppleTV is the device. The TV app is an app on the AppleTV and iOS devices.
Is this a comparison with Roku? Whenever I buy stuff using a Roku app, Roku is not involved.
The comment you quoted was specifically for people who I knew would reply about Apple “forcing” content providers to use in app purchasing.
This is actually a declining trend. LG and Samsung do but Moore's law has gotten it to a point where Android TV and, in fact Roku's platform are becoming much more prevalent on TVs, particularly some of the newer lower end devices. There's a large cost to maintaining your own HTML based platform (which is what most 3rd parties are) and the HTML platforms pretty radically under-perform these days.
Android TV could win but much like the US cable operators the large CE providers aren't too excited about getting so closely tied to Google. Roku's continued independence is cool in a space where there is so much consolidation, and attractive to some CE manufacturers.
Despite how much I dislike Google, I’ve resorted to using a Chromecast because it’s quicker, less of a hassle, and gives me the option of forcing stereo audio instead of the faux surround sound. I can also use JustWatch on my phone, tap the service that a movie/show is on, and directly open the corresponding app to cast from. It’s also nice being able to type directly on my phone instead of using the Roku remote, especially since many of the available Roku apps don’t support keyboard input from the mobile Roku remote app. Finally, I like that I can cast directly from my computer as well.
I also have an Apple TV, but its touchpad remote is annoying and it provides less value for me since I’ve moved away from Macs.
I currently have a really nice Sony with Android TV, but I had so many problems with the built-in Android that I plugged an nVidia Shield box into it instead and all those problems went away.
The other OS's all had their own issues, but the worst part of them was, like your Roku, the slowness. Everything is massively underpowered. Nobody wants to wait for the TV to slowly load apps when they want to be watching something.
In addition, other than Android, all of them tend to lag behind on updates after the initial launch of the each app.
So now I ignore whatever is on the TV and use an external box. I've considered FireTV and Roku again, but every time I look into them, I read about problems that I don't want to have (like this article) and so I stick with nVidia Shield boxes.
Not sure who’s to blame here.
Outside of the TVs with Roku built in I wonder how many people will buy Roku devices in the future. It will be hard for Roku to continue to compete if they have say, 10-20 percent market share.
I use a Roku now, but I don’t think I will in the future. My tv is older, so no built in apps. Roku was a cheap way to add that functionality without a big box. With that said, I am regularly disappointed with the performance of Roku especially with Plex. I am considering an Apple TV because I know IOS devices work well with Plex and there is a more robust app ecosystem available.
The entire smart-tv space is definitely fractured, and trying to develop for so many platforms all at once can be frustrating, especially when you're doing so in your spare time. Thankfully, at least in my case, I've had someone more experienced step in recently to help with a side-project on AndroidTV, but I digress.
Honestly, if I had a dongle for my Chromecast that supported ethernet, and I weren't too lazy to order one, I wouldn't really use the Roku anymore. With the removal of the Twitch channel, Spectrum channel, and others, I'm becoming more and more disenchanted with the platform.
I've seen audio stutter on a smart TV running the Netflix streaming app, and similar stutter on a network-enabled Blu-Ray player running the Amazon Video streaming app. I've seen 4K playback cause occasional stuttering in the Amazon Video app on a smart TV. Disney+ group playback is currently unsupported on PS4, but is supported on Xbox One. A few years ago, the PS3 Netflix app supported 1080p, whereas the Xbox 360 Netflix app only supported 720p. I've also seen the Xbox One YouTube app insist on playing a video at 720p or lower, despite that Roku will play it at 1080p (perhaps an issue with only a certain codec being available at that quality?). I've seen a paid video service with an iPhone app with completely broken Chromecast support (they fixed it a few weeks after I filed a bug report).
I'm struggling to understand the claim made by this statement. Maybe I missed something? What does HTML have to do with serving video over the wire? Underperforming on which metrics? What's the time value of "these days"?
LG is the only one that could be said to have sufficient marketshare to justify that investment for any but the largest VOD providers now. The revenue generated from those platforms once rights holders are paid is a fraction of what it costs to maintain them simply through testing overhead. Android TV and Tizen's marketshare has increased rapidly over the last few (read three-ish) years, and when you often need to account for international rollout or repurposing in your cost analysis it's even stronger (Roku has zero marketshare outside of the US, many large cable companies outside of the US have Android TV based set-top boxes with multiple million installations).
This generally also applies to browser based streaming, with the added bonus that is where a bunch of piracy comes from.
- a Roku - the newest "Chromecast with Google TV" - old style chromecasts - an "smart TV" with Android TV - A "smart TV" from visio
The worst by far are the smart TVs. The old chromecast is next because there's no UI outside my phone, but I always have my phone so it's not that bad. Next is the Roku and finally, top marks for the CCGTV. It's super fast and responsive and I love it.
When I purchased the Google TV device I was under the impression that Android TV was one of the major platform on the market, but later I found out that in terms of apps choice, it's not the best.
Also, it's puzzling that some apps are available for Amazon's Fire TV but not for Google TV / Android TV - both are based on Android so I thought it would be very easy to make an app available to both platforms - maybe there are some technical aspects that I'm missing.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/CHROMEBIT-Stick-Desktop-RockChip-3288...
Now I just use my TV (as a monitor) optical out since it is connected via ethernet. I can still use DLNA on it as well to play my music.
I think it's pretty safe to call Spotify a big tech company at this point
People also don't realise that I heart Radio is Clearchannel rebranded. The closest thing to an actual independent streaming service I'd say we have right now is Beatport or Bandcamp.
The situation that Spotify finds itself in, along with Roku, is that they are still at the mercy of who supplies them their content. Until they diversify and provide exclusive content of their own that keeps people subscribed (ala Netflix), they're doomed once labels and studios want to me-too and spin off their own services. Disney used to primarily have deals with Netflix, now they've split that off into Disney+. Netflix is able to maintain because of their content. I doubt Spotify will. Nor will Roku.
So even if you have the impression that they're not 'connected to' a big tech company, they're definitely at the mercy of if not already somehow owned by.
It is just scary how big these companies are, but because so many in HN are working for them I don’t expect it to be a popular opinion.
Also how are the small advertising companies doing the truly terrifying advertising tracking? Are they tracking me across the web when i go to seemingly completely unrelated sites like google, fb, etc?
Roku forced HBO Max to make a deal.
https://www.cnet.com/news/roku-hbo-max-finally-strike-deal-s...
Roku strong arms Fox
https://www.techhive.com/article/3519910/roku-fox-and-the-th...
NBCUniversal Peacock
https://awfulannouncing.com/nbc/nbcuniversal-threatens-pull-...
I have a Chromecast, and various consoles. Roku is still the best overall (despite shortcomings). Everyone I know who bought a Roku prefers it to all the other options. Can anyone tell me what other streaming devices have over Roku?
What I need:
- A real remote. Not going to use my phone to control things.
- Good search. When I search, I want results from most of the apps - so I can find out which ones have the show/movie I'm looking for (with an indication of price).
- Good support from all the major services: Youtube, PBS, Plex, Netflix, all the major TV channels (HGTV, ABC, CBS, etc).
- Easy to install my own app without militant control from the manufacturer.
- Affordable ($25-35), and not integrated into my TV.
- Can use in hotels/motels - this is critical (Roku generally wins big here - Chromecast totally fails).
And in any case, it doesn't check all the boxes - particularly the one about "use in motels/hotels when I travel"
My TV actually has Android, but due to multiple problems that resulted in me having to reset my TV to factory and set everything up again, I went back to my older nVidia Shield.
We now have the Shield on both TVs in the house, and they both work great.
With all the Android phones out there, nobody is going to skip Android as a device when launching their service. (Unlike Roku, which is a decision they have to make.) They also tend to update their apps a lot more often, so you always end up with the latest bugfixes and improvements. And the number of users guarantees that bugs get reported and fixed.
It doesn't fit your "affordable" point, though. We're talking $200, not $30. I've had mine quite a few years, though, and it's been well worth it.
The remote is great, and includes a Google Assistant voice search button that's super useful, and the search is federated in the way you describe, and very good. It has support from every service, but it integrates really well with YouTubeTV, obviously, which is nice because there's a great Live tab with a guide. You can run the app store and install whatever Android TV app you want: I've installed NordVPN on mine to get around NHL.TV blackout bullshit.
AND it will get around a captive portal because it has a remote/browser, so you can use it in a hotel. Honestly, it's a delightful little device.
Also, they just announced a YoY doubling of advertising revenue.
Their low end device is $30, and provides a best of class (but HD) experience. I don’t really see how they can realistically be undercut on price, unless competitors started paying people to use their devices. Do you want to deal with a janky streaming device for the next 5 years, or just shell out the cost of a pizza and six pack?
If anything, they’ll be attacked from the high end. Are you willing to pay an extra $100-200 for a non-ad-subsidized streaming device?
So far the only apps that I use that don't show Japanese as squares or worse blanks is the Apple airplay app (which shipped initially without support) and the YouTube app. It's a frustrating experience using Plex with properly named shows, but atleast burning in subtitles gives support while watching.
They needed to buy a digital signal processor to do advertising? That sounds odd. Can you elaborate?
That's when I ditched Roku. Android devices are cheap enough and arguably a little better.
Roku really has no lock-in - their entire value proposition is "you can stream the services you want on this cheap device." Nobody buys Roku because of the "Roku ecosystem" or "network effects" or anything else - they just buy it because it's cheap and (supposedly) works.
When it stops working - and it doesn't matter why - it's easily replaced.
I don't care about YTTV at all, though, becasue I don't want any live tv, period.
Personally, I have switched to Fire-Stick and Chromecast with Google TV from Roku because the Roku interface hasn't evolved in the past few years and they are also pushing ads and their own channels now.
I prefer the moving fast and breaking things to stay away from our limited TV time.
I think it's great. It was cheap. I'm a fan of Roku (been with them since 2008 or so).
I'm disappointed to see these tiffs with content companies. Remember the time when every video you wanted to play on your computer required a different software player? Are these companies planning on re-doing all that with hardware?
"Oh, I have a Roku for most things, then plug in Apple TV for Apple+, I use the Fire stick for Prime Video, and the Chromecast allows me to watch YouTube TV! I just needed a TV with 17 HDMI ports!"
> Roku says Google has threatened to require Roku to use certain chip sets or memory cards that would force Roku to increase the price of its hardware product, which competes directly with Google's Chromecast.
That's just straight evil - overriding user preferences to favor your own products... Some growth PM and/or business head is trying way too hard to hit their OKRs. I'd be surprised if Google could defend this in court.
> Roku says Google has threatened to require Roku to use certain chip sets or memory cards that would force Roku to increase the price of its hardware product, which competes directly with Google's Chromecast.
This could simply mean Google is requiring chips with hardware VP9 support
> Roku alleges Google has asked it to favor YouTube music results from voice commands made on the Roku remote while the YouTube app is open, even if the user's music preference is set to default to another music app, like Pandora.
This is both what many users would expect (if I have an app open, voice search works within that app), and a pretty reasonable ask for any business (don't show competitor's offering when searching within my app).
No, it's not. Most YouTube users have a different primary music app.
Google is trying to artificially force a marriage of YouTube and YouTube Music because they have utterly failed to do it in the product experience and user base themselves.
If I'm watching a random YouTube video and then want to switch to music, I expect my music app to come up, not YouTube Music.
That being said, f*k Roku and their voice remote. They've been pushing that crap hard. Showing prompts on screen for upwards of 30 seconds to push the Mic button. I don't want my remote to have a microphone or be able to listen to me.
I replaced my Roku remote last month because the one I had started having connectivity issues and missing clicks all of the sudden. The first thing I did with the new remote was pop it open and rip the microphone off the PCB with a pair of pliers.
I really don't want an Android TV or Fire TV, and I'm not really keen on Apple TV either but Roku is making it really difficult to stick with them.
This is kind of thread drift, but I really agree with this. I wish products would stop trying to get me to use some particular feature. First, they cram it onto every screen in the application. Then, they make it easy to accidentally invoke when you didn't want to. Then, they spam you with notifications saying "PLEASE DON'T YOU WANT THIS FEATURE?" Then, they silently enable it and make it opt-out. Product Managers, please just stop this madness. I don't want your feature. I don't care that your bonus is tied to its use. I already bought your product, so you already have my money. But if you keep trying to cram your feature down my throat, I'm not going to buy your company's next product. Give it a rest!
If you're using a fullscreen app on macOS and activate spotlight, do you expect it to only search that app, or do you expect it to behave like Spotlight always behaves and search the entire system?
Put another way, this depends entirely on how the OS and UI is set up.
I only expect it to be localized within the app I'm in when I'm in the search box for that app, in which case I'm not using voice search, I'm using voice recognition to fill in the contents of the search bar.
Outside the context of voice recognition for an input, to me clicking the voice button on my apple TV is opening Siri, just like "Ok Google" or "Hey Alexa"
Monopolists can often have batter products as well as charging monopolistic pricing.
Google as an example. They push their "sensor fusion" location service EXTREMELY hard on Android. It will ask you to turn it on every time an app requests location and GPS hasn't locked. It's hard to not turn it on by accident. And once you hit yes, you never see another notification.
Well it turns out this "location service" provides some of the most valuable data Google ever receives. It's tied to their maps live traffic, "how busy is this place" features, location based advertising, wifi based mapping, accuracy of their IP->location maps.
It's creepy data core to their business and if too many people turned it off, it would seriously degrade their mass data collection.
Oh, and it's often given to law enforcement for dubiously legal "area" warrants where they simply say "give me all devices in this radius at this time". Where the radius can be hundreds of meters and the time can be hours.
It sounds like they have been pushing too hard, but discovery of voice commands is hard. Pushing them is probably useful for some set of customers.
For example, I have an ATV. While watching something you can click the voice button and say something like 'what did he just say' and it will go back 30 seconds or so, turn on captions, replay the bit you missed, then turn captions back off. As a user how would one discover this amazingly useful feature? I didn't even know it existed until I happened to hear about it on a podcast.
I love voice search on Roku. Typing things in with a d-pad and on-screen keyboard is horrendous. I think it's very fast, and I like that it shows me all the ways what I'm searching for is available.
Every other steaming device I’ve ever tried is riddled with ads, dark patterns, and slow slow SLOW performance.
I can understand the aversion to a $200 device just to watch some Internet TV but then I watch people making six figures pretend like a $50 Fire/Roku Stick is the best way to watch movies on their $2,000 LG OLED.
If I were buying a steaming device today I’d probably be evaluating the Apple TV against the Nvidia Shield.
In some not too distant Black Mirror future, that would cause the remote to no longer function.
Users voted with their wallet and bought a Roku, then explicitly defined their preference in the settings.
Google then says fuck you, no.
Exactly. If I setup my music profile to be Spotify, and I have a Spotify premium account, I expect my device to play music on Spotify. Why should it play on Youtube?
I for one don't use YT Music, but to use YT. Then again I don't use Pandora or Spotify as well, but do listen to music on YouTube (non-music). In my case, I'd expect the search to be executed in the context of YT, but that's what the defaults are there for. I'd choose YT (non-music) as default, if that's possible, or YT Music if i'd care.
Yes, somehow it does make sense that it selects the app which is set as a default, even if I would expect it to perform the query in the opened app.
Can it act upon "Open Song/Performer in Pandora/Spotify"? What's so hard about it? It all doesn't make sense to me.
I'd expect it not to query in YT Music but in the app which is currently open, which is simple YouTube. No, it feels like Google shouldn't have the right to expect YT Music to get launched if it is not set as the default app.
Umm what? Why is it google's responsibility to ensure their youtube music video is linked to spotify's audio song listing?
If I'm watching a video on youtube and ask to play music, no I do NOT want at all youtube to handle that.
Youtube music is crap. Google has proven many times that they are totally unable to manage music. They should stop to try, because it is utterly embarrassing.
It's good enough for a lot of people. I pay for YouTube Premium, so I get YouTube music (formerly Google Play Music) included, and it works well enough that I'm not going to pay for a separate music app.
Me: This sounds terrible… but ok, let’s give it a go.
Google: Now that you have all your music in the cloud, wouldn’t it be nice if you paid us monthly for access to a lot more music?
Me: No.
Google: I see you switched to another app while watching a YouTube video. If you paid us extra, you could keep playing that in the background!
Me: First, why would I ever want that? It’s bad enough YouTube now keeps playing videos in a little thumbnail when I try to exit them. Second, why are you charging a monthly fee for a feature that ought to just come with your app?
Google: Hey, how about a free trial of our subscription service?
Me: No.
Google: Hey, how about we ask you every day if you want a free trial to our subscription service?
Me: Still no.
Google: Ok, I tell you what. How about we shut down Google Play Music, literally the only built in MP3 player, and then if you want to keep listening to music on your phone, you pay us monthly?
Me: Buys an iPhone.
I definitely prefer music videos over plain audio streams.
Only if I search using the in-app search feature do I expect it to be restricted to only that app.
If I'm watching a YouTube video and ask my device to play music, I expect Spotify to open as that's what I use and pay for.
The platform should prioritize the user, not the app developers.
"[...] favor YouTube music results from voice commands made on the Roku remote while the YouTube app is open"
Key word is "favor"
Q. "Play Diamonds by Rihanna"
A1. "Playing Diamonds by Rihanna from Youtube Music"
A2. "Playing Diamonds by Rihanna from Spotify"
Either A1 or A2 will happen, but not both. There can be only one.
If I said "search wikipedia for thing"
I'd expect to get wikipedia results back, not YouTube videos about wikipedia and thing
Sorta not really. On Roku, Google is deprecating all of the other means of playing content (e.g. Google Play Video) and funneling everyone to the Youtube App now for everything.
So if your default search engine in firefox is duckduckgo, but you're currently on google.com/maps reading reviews of a car service, firefox should use google for your next search request?
IMO, even if I had Spotify on a Roku, I would be fine with this change. It's not difficult at all to press the home button and then the search button to signal you want to search outside of YouTube. A big chunk of YouTube's utility is that it has music videos.
LGs TVs have a prominent omni search button. If you’re in the YT app and use the omnisearch it searches across all content services you have connected. It’s an amazingly useful feature and makes the TV experience actually feel integrated. First time I’ve been happy with a “smart” TV experience.
I’d say it’s a fair comparison.
> user preference set to another music app.
Entirely irrelevant.
Youtube Music is not Youtube. Its a rebranded music streaming service build to compete with Spotify and apple after the failure of google play.
Also is the Roku's device search. Which mean it can functionally search anywhere which is the entire point.
Almost definitely what they want but that isn't benign. There's very little user benefit here (lower bandwidth costs IF you're on a metered connection which is a tiny % of people) and lots of benefit to google/youtube (lower bandwidth!) and lots of extra cost to roku (these chips will cost more, at least in the short term). So google is basically forcing Roku to spend money to save google money.
That said, VP9 isn't just a good idea for Google. It's a good idea for everyone doing video delivery. Google and everyone else shouldn't be strong-arming Roku into deploying VP9-capable hardware they should be finding ways to help. Buy a billion dollars worth of VP9-capable chips for the next Chromecast on the condition that they cost no more than 10% more than H264-chips and the manufacturer agrees to sell to anyone at that price... or... something.
If customers do want either behavior, they should be advocating to Roku for it. Google has no place setting a requirement here.
This is not how Siri or the Google Assistant works on iOS, Android, or Apple TV.
Not when it’s not the current behavior, nor behavior present in any other application.
>>This could simply mean Google is requiring chips with hardware VP9 support
Shouldn't we expect reasonable backward-compatibility?
Your second point seems valid.
To be honest though ... youtube is the weak link in most of my set ups. Can't access ad-based youtube via Sonos (and no, I won't pay for premium because of how I feel about Google right now), scrapes here with Roku, etc.
Google is slowly becoming obsolete in my house.
n=1
If I want or search across all apps, I should be able to go to the Roku home screen and search there .
seems abusive coming from someone with an extremely dominant market position in one area.
That's the behavior I would expect from a full screen app. ie, if I issue a command in a full screen app for the command to be interpreted in the context of that app.
Annoying. It relates to the lack of discoverability in voice interfaces, there may be an incantation to get the behaviouyr I want but there's no way within the interface that such methods is revealed.
I think this behavior is what I would expect (search within open app first) and when it’s not present, it’s frustrating.
Talk about corporate-imposed audism.
"When searching within an app, favor results from that app" vs "When searching within an app always favor my default"
Apple also demands certain format support for their video streams to work (not to mention a browser).
Is Apple dropping support for older iMacs / MacBooks / iPhones also a threat to all the companies using them?
This seems reasonable to me - it would be super frustrating if I'm in YouTube, hit search, and Pandora pops up. Like what's the point of that?
This is what my Amazon Echo Show is doing when Youtube is open on it, and I find it rather logical and convenient. That lets me search on youtube with my voice.
disc: Google employee
It's probably not the best idea to be commenting on antitrust allegations against your employer unless you want your comment to be read out loud in a deposition.
Seems like you get a lot of additional headaches after the initial joy of cord cutting wears off.
Every television that I've bought over the past 5-10 years has Roku built into it. I know that some people prefer to plug in Amazon devices instead, and that's perfectly fine (not that Amazon is any "less evil" of a company than Google or Roku). But I use Roku's platform because it's usually the hardware default, and I like the UI well enough.
I'm already pissed that Google has raised their prices to the point where I no longer save any money compared to what I used to pay for cable+internet. And then dropped sports coverage for my local baseball team anyway. If YouTube TV disappears from Roku's platform, then I'll just sign up for Hulu or whatever 5 minutes later. Or fuck it, I might just go back to cable. These over-the-top, "skinny bundles" have been a bait and switch in practice.
I ran into major issues using Fire TV's YouTube app. The app would fail to get past the initial loading screen and hang forever. It would typically require 2-3 device restarts to work again, and even then it would only work temporarily. I tried completely resetting my Fire TV, relogging in, etc but never managed to get it to work properly). YouTube is the only app I've had issues with on Fire TV.
Google also discontinued YouTube's great web browser experience, which was almost identical to the app, that you could load in Fire TV's web browser.
This TV set-top box arms race is so stupid. The smart TV apps stopped working so I got an AppleTV. That stopped working so I got a Roku. When that stops working I guess i'll just go the full PC route with a NUC and a nice interface like Kodi.
We have Rokus (a 4K Ultra in the living room and a TCL Roku TV in the bedroom), as well as a 4K Chromecast, and until we got the Roku Ultra we had a Nvidia Shield TV. We keep more than one type of device specifically because it is inevitable that a provider (Roku, Amazon, Google) will drop a service we enjoy. This actually happened with the Shield which is why we replaced it with a Roku; it was no longer working with Emby at all, and it was flaking out on certain other services. It could have been just a case of bad hardware but it was flawless for two years straight until one by one services stopped working on it.
This is also why I have a Mac, a couple of Windows PCs, a Linux workstation, and a BSD laptop. When one of the above can't do something, one of the others can.
"Roku's standard terms for partner channels include 20% of subscription fees and 30% of ad inventory"
For services that bundle other people's content that's likely to be a problem (see Spotify and Apple).
https://popculture.com/streaming/news/roku-founder-reveals-w...
It's a very common practice for streaming services to make crazy demands about the devices they're on.
Roku[1], Google TV[2] and Firesticks[3] all have Netflix buttons on the remote not because they wanted them there, but because Netflix forces them to with the threat that they will blacklist their device.
And inevitably, all devices comply because they know they won't be able to sell the product without Netflix support.
[1] https://cigars.roku.com/v1/http%3A%2F%2Fimage.roku.com%2Fw%2...
[2] https://external-preview.redd.it/9itjeCYci2NPP7Vxr9onH_DFv7E...
[3] https://i.gadgets360cdn.com/large/amazon_fire_tv_stick_alexa...
That doesn't make it any less anti-competitive
Company with leverage others might not have using that leverage isn’t something we vilify in general.
I would love to see one of the meetings that lead to absurdly unethical and borderline/outright illegal decisions like this; did anyone bother to bring it up? Did the person that brought it up get the silent treatment? Were they no longer invited to lunch? Does everyone just understand that those topics are off limits? Or do these people seriously not care because they know they can get away with it?
Netflix paying Roku to add their button on remotes wouldn't be anti-competitive in the same way that buying exclusive ad space isn't. And therefore Netflix realizing that they bring so much value to the Roku ecosystem that they can get their button without actually having to pay is good business. Like I hate it. But it's true.
Thi is the same Google that still can't get their own gaming streaming service working on their own TV OS. And you think YouTube are trying to attack other manufacturers to boost sales of a $50 dongle with no margin?
Tbh I think it's more likely that nobody on the Chromecast team has ever met anyone from the YouTube team. Many things at Google would work better if they did.
Google could be incentivized to put onerous requirements on Roku which result in a worse user experience, price increases, or additional development time. That would benefit Chromecast.
https://static.slickdealscdn.com/attachment/2/5/1/6/8/8/6/78...
That sounds pretty anti-competitive to me. So that would not be a "falsehood". Just because lots of companies are making anti-competitive demands, does not invalidate the point.
How else do you use voice search for a music video on Youtube? If I open youtube and do a voice search. I'm expecting the search to be constrained to the app.
Frankly, how did Google end up with a good TV service? I'd rather not be relying on Google for TV streaming.
The whole spat started because Amazon removed Chromecast devices from their retail platform.
What's the point of singling them out?
- Google, who doesn't have to pay royalties
- Google and consumers, who can enjoy better compression and lower bandwidth
- Consumers, who can enjoy a much more mainstream video encoding format in not just YT but pretty much every app.
Google doesn't want to write off 45% of the set-top market right away, but at the same time it's 100% in the right to demand Roku support modern royalty-free codecs going forward.
Roku fights pretty much everybody nowadays and as someone who's been dealing with full-screen ads and missing apps on my $1000 TV, I have no sympathy for Roku whining about needing to support a modern codec.
Just peeling off this part of your comment. It seems like it would have been the natural course of events after they had to develop IPTV services for Google Fiber customers.
Private tv channels are constantly under attack.
I think their user interface and experience have been flawless for the past 5-7 years. I’ve had Roku 3, Roku 4K, and now a TCL Roku TV. The remote control is super snappy. The mainstream apps work really well (Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Plex, YouTube, PBS Kids). I can’t speak to the developer or business side of the company but for a steaming device/platform, I haven’t had a single complaint.
I bought an Apple TV 2 years ago for HomeKit hub purposes and to this damn day, I have no idea how to control it with the remote control (does the remote have momentum, is it a cursor? no idea). But my 3 year old has no problem with the Roku.
The streaming platform space is fractured for sure, but I think Roku is one of the best there is.
So, why shouldn’t they seek revenue from apps? Apple friggin charges 30% for iOS ecosystem no? Roku deserves to be paid for what they have built.
As for this Google/Roku issue, this is nothing more than a strike for likely unreasonable or unfair treatment. Google has every right to strike but strikes generally just piss off the customers. So, go ahead and take YouTube off of Roku and Roku can just build a skinned TV browser to view YouTube videos on their website.
Maybe the solution is to evolve the TV web browser experience in the same way that we have evolved to mobile friendly sites. Maybe TV friendly sites could eliminate some of these issues. But this opens up the app/web debate and I generally think native app experience is better.
At the end of day, Google has increased the advertisement frequency and quantity recently and the experience is beginning to suck. They are making more and more money from advertising so coming off of Roku is just a reduction of eyeballs for them.
I bet it affects many people with HDR monitors that aren't 4K, there's tons of those.
A good percentage of users that hook up Roku to a PC monitor will run into this.
Roku only supports HDR at 4K and normally I can just set youtube or whatever to "4K HDR" and OS downscales. Roku won't do it.
(But this article seems to have a lot more details)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/technology/apple-google-s...
Only reason Google can't bully Apple is because Apple is too big.
They know Google needs Apple as much as Apple needs Google, and of course the opposite statement is the same.
Apple showed their teeth when Google tried these tricks with their Maps app. Google isn’t really in a position to make tough demands.
Not too mention Apple puts the same kind of requirements on developers and apps on their own tvOS platform - including UX behaviours and format support.
If your laptop works, and your screen works, then this setup works. What's the downside?
The article raises an interesting point. Ultimately, Googles pushing of 'royalty-free' AV1 for the greater good is just shifting costs to device makers and implementors that have to pay increased engineering and build cost instead of royalties. if it turns out to really be royalty-free that is...
On the TV Device Maker side they don't allow manufacturers to use alternatives to Android TV (such as FireTV) or they threaten to kick them out of Android Mobile. See https://www.protocol.com/google-android-amazon-fire-tv
The bigger picture is that streaming has become such an expected, basic, embedded functionality and Roku along with other dependent companies failed to adapt.
Yes, Google is in a consistent, self denying state of being evil, but Roku has become the Blackberry of stream boxes. They haven't done anything innovative in years. I won't be surprised if they will be forever flooded by a storm of no-name Chinese Linux/Java powered stream boxes. Obviously these devices don't provide the same user experience, but they definitely reflect Roku's mediocrity.
Roku seems to be playing victim.
Anyone else find it alarming that google has no problem with strong-arming partners into prefering their search results?
Kinda makes you wonder about what determines Google's own search results, right?
Does Google really want us wondering that?
TimTheTatman DrLupo dogdog DQA_TFT Becca Break TidesofTime ibiza Kaymind smaceTRON Myles_Away Cheesewiz DeliciousMilkGG
It depends on how you define interesting content of course. For me that is "Tactical or strategic games with a significant enough RNG component to be classified as 'Controlling the Chaos' (think Poker, not Chess) and which have a lively leaderboard. I enjoy watching the competition for Rank #1 and I enjoy competing to see how high I can get. My current favorite game is Team Fight Tactics (Riot Games the maker of league of legends auto battler). You can find the leaderboards here: https://lolchess.gg/leaderboards?hl=en-US And my all time highest rank achieved was #540/1,250,000 in North America (not bad at all for an executive and father of a toddler). Pretty much all of the guys competing for rank #1 will also be streamers so finding content is as easy as googling their name from the leaderboard + twitch.
If thats not your cup of tea, probably the best way would be to choose twitch's browse option and just watch the most popular streamers in each game for a few minutes to see if you are into their content. Some are informative, some are looking to appeal to 13 year olds, some are chasing some goal, etc.
But it does seem to be a baseless claim, we have no idea actually what was asked. I think it's a little too early to jump onboard any side.
I wouldn't be surprised if there exist programmable remotes that allow custom launchers, at least for the set of all channels Roku has ever had on their own buttons (they must be giving each app they put on there a unique, or at least rarely-recycled, code, since remotes with different promoted channels on them do work as expected on Rokus other than the one they came with). Though, yes, it would be nice if Roku let the user program those buttons on stock remotes.
Something similar happened with Amazon and the Twitch app for Roku. Amazon obviously wants you to use a Fire product to access Twitch, and they completely removed support for the Twitch app for Roku. Even the unofficial Twitch app shut down shortly after this, leaving no reasonable way to access Twitch content from a Roku.
If the Youtube app and available alternatives get removed as well, I'll basically be forced into another device since Twitch and Youtube offer a large percentage of the content I watch.
I can only hope that some future legislation or anti-trust lawsuit makes it more difficult for these companies to force you into buying their specific hardware to access these services, but I am not hopeful.
You can use this site to get the .m3u8 URL for the stream at whatever res you want: https://pwn.sh/tools/getstream.html
Then use this tool with your Roku in dev mode: http://devtools.web.roku.com/stream_tester/html/
This is a giant pain in the ass obviously but it does work if you just want to use it occasionally. The Stream Tester works through a REST API so theoretically someone could write a browser plugin or app to automate all of this.
edit: a fun side affect of this is that the stream plays better than it ever did in the official twitch app or even on my Non-4k fire TV. 60fps is really smooth whereas on the FireTV or the Twitch app for Roku it would hitch and stutter occasionally
And even then, that's only at my friend's house where their TV is too old to have built in "smart TV / cast to me" functionality.
Roku is dope but this might not be as big of a deal as it seems.
Get rid of the youtube app. It's low quality videos with ads when I use roku I use it for a better experience.
Roku has some issues too. Namely, it autodownloads a new random app about once a week so Im constant deleting apps from my home page.
Lastly, this sounds a lot like, "Comcast Cale users might lose the ESPN Chanel ...". I'm pretty sick of all these xorporations.
WTF? New random apps about once a week? I've never seen this. Have multiple Roku boxes and a couple TVs with integrated Roku. Using them for years. Maybe there's some kind of "suggest new channels to me" checkbox you've got checked in account preferences?
I am 50/50 on youtube music/youtube, but youtube app includes music so it's a general hard to decipher request but genereally if I want to voice search while I'm in youtube, I want it to stay in youtube.
I don't understand why people flock to it/use it.