This one’s at Awful Announcing and looks at what the author calls the major players: DirecTV Now, YouTube TV, Hulu Live, YouTube TV, and PlayStation Vue.
Read through it all, as everyone has different needs, but I’ll just say as someone who never watches the NFL that she’s spot on with this:
Sports-wise, YouTube TV is the best bang for your buck for the basic sports channels, and the unlimited DVR storage, for $40 a month.
After having cycled through several of the others (thanks for the free trial periods and month to month contracts, fellas!), I’ve been very happy with YTTV. What say you guys?
Get The Picture 
VERY happy with YTTV. I’m still angry I didn’t do it sooner.
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Agreed!
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Seconded, YTTV and I haven’t looked back once. I’ve helped a dozen or so people cut the cord with YTTV, everyone is happy. The lag (spinning dots on black) between channel changes is nothing once you get used to it.
My only gripe is they are tighter with their 5 family accounts than Netflix or Prime. I’m sharing successfully with family/friends around town, but the people in another state I’ve tried with get locked out fairly quickly. Their TOS says all 5 family members should live in the same house, so I can’t complain too much.
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Gripe? More like a glitch. Sounds like they are working on it.
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No, it’s a gripe. If they are working on it, they are working on a way to better stop people from sharing their 5 free family accounts with people that don’t live in the same house. I’m violating their TOS by sharing with people outside my home, but the nature of geo-locating IP addresses (especially if someone is watching using their cell provider’s connection) makes it tricky to enforce.
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I had a friend in the college days who was arrested for theft of services for running a cable splitter and piggybacking off of a neighbor’s cable TV service. At least they’re not sending the police to your house…
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Okay, but how do you get college football?
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This winter I had the pleasure of firing directv and replacing them with roku sticks and YouTube tv at 2 houses. Saving $260/mo and haven’t missed a thing. I don’t really care about the nfl (no idea if I will miss anything next fall) but with my local channels and all the ESPN variants + sec network I can’t imagine I’ll miss anything
How does the 5 users/account work? Right now I’ve got 5 TVs on the account. Will soon be adding a sixth. Does that mean I’ll have to sign up for another account or will I be ok as long as all of the TVs aren’t being used at once?
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Ps – spelldawg, my 5 TVs are being used at locations in 2 states (though less than 40 miles apart) with no issues. I can’t say that a tv has been used at both locations at the same time though
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Yeah, I’m sharing with a sister-in-law in the same state who’s about 300 miles away, no issues so far. It was sharing with another family member who’s several states away that was clamped by Google pretty quickly. I’ve toyed with the idea of setting up a VPN at the house that everybody could tunnel through every so often to share the same IP, making it look like everyone was at the same location.
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I’m sharing with my sister in ATL while I live in Colorado. I guess I’m lucky! My sister rarely uses it though.
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The accounts are for customizing your DVR selections and channel guide. You don’t need one account per TV, I have 4 TVs/Roku all signed in under my single gmail account. The concept is your wife has shows she wants to DVR, you have yours, and the kids have theirs; each person has their own account/DVR and doesn’t have to slog through your DVR selections to find theirs. You can have an unlimited (in theory) amount of devices that use a single account.
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Had to switch from YTTV to HuluTV. The spouse insisted that we needed Food Network and HGTV. The interface is much worse than YouTube’s but the channel lineup is better.
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I also cut the cord with DTV in January after 14 years. They used to give me anywhere from $50 to $80 off per month every year through their loyalty program but decided not to that that anymore so fk’em. I’m using HuluTV for the same reason as kershdawg, wife has to have her HGTV and other channels. I sponge off my brother’s NetFlix and recently added HBONow so I have everything I could possible want to watch for $60 bucks a month vs. $150 to those fkers at AT&T who ruined a pretty good satellite service.
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Internet access?
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I use Windstream which is about the only option where I live and not the greatest service I’ve ever had. I was paying for that anyway so I didn’t include it in the cost of TV. I pay $37 a month for 10Mps which works pretty well. I’m hoping they’ll install fiber in downtown Toccoa at some point but not holding my breath considering they just ask for bankruptcy protection.
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One word “Philo”. Sixteen bucks and it makes the wife happy. Has all the stuff YOUTUBE TV is missing.
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For the 2017 season, I used Sling. In 2018, it was YouTube TV. My only gripe is that YouTube TV is not supported for my Kindle Fire tablet like Sling is. But YTTV is enough better than Sling that I’ll be staying with it in spite of that drawback.
We keep Netflix and Amazon Prime year round, and subscribe to the Sling/YouTube TV service only during college football season.
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YTTV and Amazon seem to have (temporarily, at least) buried the hatchet. I would check again, as long as your Fire has the processing power, the app might be accessible now.
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My old Fire tablet handled SlingTV excellently. It’s not empirical, but that gives me a fair amount of confidence that the new one would handle YTTV fine.
Regardless, the YTTV app is not yet available on the Amazon app store. Maybe by August. I can always hope!
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I agree about YouTubeTV. Out the gate, I tried Playstation Vue and the channel lineup was great, but the service had significant issues with buffering (for me anyway). I haven’t had those issues with YouTube.
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I also tried Vue first and am sticking with YouTube.
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For sports we use HULU with live TV. For me the most important aspects of the streaming experience are two fold: 1. Get a high speed router. 2. Use hardwired connections. A high speed connection is assumed. Since I’ve done these two things I never have buffering issues and only rarely experience any lag. Since I am on Comcast I got a router that is certified. Otherwise Comcast will not support you and simply blame all your issues on the fact that you are using a router they don’t certify. Upside is no monthly router rental fee. Here is a link to the one I use: https://www.amazon.com/ARRIS-SURFboard-Certified-Spectrum-SBG7600AC2/dp/B07H4VJHB9/ref=dp_ob_title_ce
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A mesh network is the way to go if you can’t hardwire, or you are using a device that doesn’t have an ethernet port (Roku sticks, in my case). A good one costs a few $100, but my fast-action/sports went from blocky, water-color images to crystal clear. Well worth it.
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Agree with YouTubeTV. I like that there’s no contract. I also live wayyyy far north of GA, so I like how you can set a “home” zip code and get the local channels back home. I don’t have it currently, but will re-up in August.
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You might have trouble with the home zip code plan. There are a lot of territorial agreements, and when I’ve watched on mobile devices when I”m outside of the home area, I get a message welcoming me to whatever market I’m in and I can only watch the channel lineup that’s available there.You can still set your DVR to record stuff in your “home” market and watch that way, but I think you have to log in from your designated home zip code at least once every several months to maintain that home zip code. There are a lot of territorial agreements with networks and properties that are negotiated on the basis of the old cable paradigm that will probably have to be rethought with streaming.
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I set my location when my laptop was in Atlanta on a trip. Didn’t reset it when I returned. Maybe it’ll force me to when I sign up again, though.
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YouTube TV has been the greatest thing to happen to my media consuming life, and it isn’t close. I’m angry at myself for going a year or two longer on cable because I assumed nothing else could feed my sports obsession. With the exception of MLB Network, the offerings on YTTV are actually better than what I had in my cable package, for which I was paying a lot extra per month. The functionality of the DVR and the unlimited storage capacity are amazing. And because i updated to a newer high speed router when I made the switch, it is exceedingly rare to have a buffering issue. I’ve had one in the last four weeks, and it was resolved in five seconds. It’s just brilliant. If they ever add NFL Network, the last of my complaints will evaporate on the wind. I’m certain that Google makes money off of YouTube TV, but it feels like the rare service that was created with the intention of benefiting the customer as well as the provider. It’s that good.
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The biggest question for me is college football. Can you get ALL of the D1 games?
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There hasn’t been a game I wanted to see that I couldn’t watch. I’m not saying you can get EVERY D1 game, but you get ESPN, ESPN2, SEC Network, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, FS1, FS2, Fox Southeast, Fox South, NBCSN, CBS Sports Network, plus all the network channels. If the game you’re looking for isn’t on one of those, then you’re looking for a fairly obscure game!
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Yeah, I haven’t had it during the meat of the season and I don’t know if it’s got the SEC Network Alternate that gets put in play every now and then, but it does add the MLB Network Alternate when something is actually on it and then it disappears when there isn’t, so I’m thinking it might be the same for SECN.
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Are two TV in very close proximity able to “synched” up on the same game, channel, etc?
That has always been my issue with streaming games…
and some here must get “free” internet…many never mention that cost, it has to come from somewhere.
That said choices are good. It has brought the cost of cable down.
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I think that most people don’t mention the cost of internet because they’d be paying for it either way, terrestrial cable or no. For me, I can’t be without home internet service.
However, since you asked, my high speed internet connection is in the “middle” tier offered by the cable company and runs about 35 bucks a month. Combined with the $40 per month that I pay for YouTube TV, the $75 freight to get live TV delivered to my screen is still about 30 bucks cheaper per month than the terrestrial cable package I was paying for (which as a city utility was a lot cheaper than other providers!). When you consider I was paying for internet access on top of that… this is a much better deal.
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To answer your other question, I only know about YouTube TV, but your subscription there includes five separate user accounts for the household. Each household account has its own DVR and settings, so you and your kids can each have a login and use the service at the same time to watch different programming. As long as the two TVs you’re talking about are on two different user account logins and you have enough bandwidth, you can show the same channel or different ones at the same time.
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What about multiple users at the same time? From what I’m reading you can only have three users at the same time? I have two kids at home, plus my Mother lives with us. Does this mean all four of us can’t watch tv at the same time?
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Joel, my HULU subscription specifies a max of three concurrent users. More than three people can watch TV simultaneously but only three separate TV’s can login to HULU at once. We also have Prime and Netflix. Plus, if you are in a metropolitan area you can get some channels off the antennae. So, there are options. We use Roku boxes to access our streaming despite the fact that a lot of stuff is programmed into the newer televisions. I find that a Roku box hardwired to my Gigabit network can process signals a whole lot more efficiently.
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I’ve never encountered the 3 users issue with YTTV, but maybe that’s another situation where the 5 separate family accounts come in. Now, 5 people in the same household watching TV at the same time might severely strain the bandwidth you are allotted by your ISP. I’d say you would want at least 75mb download speed in that situation.
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We’ve had YTTV since early 2018 and I love it. Love the DVR feature, love being able to watch from anywhere (we have unlimited data on our phones, so I watch YTTV a good bit on my phone when traveling), and the channels are everything I’d ever want. My sister and her family use Hulu TV for the same reasons stated above, channel preference (non-sports channels).
The ONLY complaint I have about YTTV is it does not have a very good “TV Guide” type of feature, there’s not an easy way to see what’s coming on next, for example. You can search for shows/events by name pretty easily, but you can’t just pull up a list of what comes on, and when. This doesn’t affect me too much because 90% of what I watch is stuff I’ve DVR’d, but it is a mild annoyance at times. I’m not sure if the other services are better on this or not, it’s just the one drawback I’ve found with YTTV.
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I tried YTTV for the bowl season (as a backup plan for the Sugar Bowl). Slick interface and it worked great. However, by the time we added a premium channel or two, the cost was the same as TV with our internet plan, so we went with the convenience of one provider. It looks good and cost effective by itself, but as PTC mentions above, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. When all the costs were added up for me, they didn’t save me anything.
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Russ, I know cord cutters that readily admit they spend the same amount of money, however, they don’t have to deal with Comcast so it’s worth every penny to them. Personally, we get Amazon Prime for half price, split Netflix with our daughter and pay $35 a month for HULU with live TV. We’re spending significantly less than we were.
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We have more than we really need, but we like what we have and can afford it, so we didn’t have a big need to cut the cord. Comcast is “not bad” in my area. I’ve had pretty much all the major providers and they have all had issues. The YTTV experiment did finally force me to consolidate a bunch of services under Comcast and that did save me ~$75/month. When they (inevitably) jack up the price, I’ll probably move on to the next bundle.
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Okay, I’ve generally avoided the cord-cutting because I’ve been happy with Comcast (yeah, I know) and have 3 Tivo’s that I love. But this YTTV thing has me really curious about making the switch. So here’s the question I have – one thing I love about my Tivo is that I can have 4 different channels all going at once. I don’t watch them all at the same time, just that I can flip between all 4 and rewind to anything I missed. This really only comes into play for me during college FB season, as I will turn all channels to the 4 best games on at that time and flip around. It’s sort of like my own personal college FB version of NFL Redzone.
Does YTTV have this same feature? I wouldn’t need 4 like I have with my current Tivo but having at least 2 and maybe 3 would be ideal.
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No. You can be recording multiple things at once, but toggling between them wouldn’t be nearly as easy as what you’re describing. It can be done, but would be a lot more lag and so forth, you’d lose a lot of time trying to bounce between them, rewind, etc.
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That was an issue for me as well. However, the interface on YTTV shows a live preview of many of the channels in their guide (which is an app on your phone or tablet). So, you can get a little bit of that, but it’s not nearly as interactive as cable or satellite from a major provider.
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Did PS Vue for about a year and the wife hated it. The DVR sucked (still can’t add minutes to a show at the end) and On Demand content made you watch commercials (e.g. you couldn’t fast forward).
Back to cable. Yeah its more expensive, but it sure is nice to have a full remote with number buttons on it that I can just hop into and out of channels. I can park my ass on the couch and start watching something within seconds on cable. When I had Vue, I had to switch inputs, make sure the FTV was working, log into Vue, etc…
I’ll gladly pay for for the better user experience that is cable.
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I tried YTTV and really liked it on the whole, but the picture quality did not come close to HD from Charter or ATT. I like watching HD tv because, well, it’s HD. YTTV always seems pixelated, and the color was not as robust.
Until they fix that, I’m fine with playing my two available providers off one another for the lowest rate for basic cable.
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It might be an issue with your internet speed or your router or the quality of your connection. It is sparkling on my TV. The HD service looked exactly like my cable did, I had several friends try to guess which was which and fail. When you turn to a new channel usign Apple TV, it is slightly pixelated for about two seconds and then it clears into full 1080p.
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I’ve been streaming for about 3 years. I started with Sling, decent experience but limited local channels plus you have to buy two plans (orange & blue) to get the channels you’ll want, DVR was an extra charge.
Next I went with Playstation Vue, it has all the local channels and DVR included, good sports programming, but I dumped it because of the buffering issue got to be too much, plus the DVR is sucky, poor customer support too.
Now I’m with YouTube and it’s been great so far (about 2 months). Very little buffering issues, channel guide is best in class, DVR is also superior, and cost is great at $40. NFL channel is the one channel missing I wish was included, (my GF misses HGTV) but who knows by fall it may be in the lineup, or optionally I can stream directly from NFL as they’re doing more of that.
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