I just cancelled
Potentially take a look at Sling TV. They’re selling the same streaming TV service that YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV are, but they’ve structured things slightly differently. They have a “Sling Orange” and “Sling Blue” package which roughly translates to, “Do you want sports or cable news?” They both have an 80% overlap of channels like HGTV and Food Network, but Orange has ESPN and Blue has CNN. If you buy both it costs about the same as YouTube TV, but you save a decent chunk of change if you can forgo one of the packages.
The only big catch is they don’t carry local stations. If you sign up for 3 months in advance though, they’ll ship you a network connected TV antenna that you can use inside the Sling app to watch local TV. It’s probably not the most parent-friendly solution, but it works for watching one or two event programs a year like the Super Bowl or a debate.
Sling TV is solid, you can add extra channels super easily and it doesn’t complain at you if you only keep them for a month. There’s a decent amount of sportsball channels to add on. I just use an antenna for the local channels
Make sure you use the cancel link in the email they send you about the price going up.
Wait…that’s 83 per *MONTH * ???
It’s worth mentioning that this isn’t YouTube Premium, this is YouTube TV.
Ah… another subscription that I don’t have, lol
Oh, I don’t have it either lol. It’s just that their TV offering has always been much more than Premium.
Heh, speak for yourself. I’ve been mostly living on YouTube Premium for 10+ years. Certainly better than the crap on cable.
And while the YT ad renevue space has gotten worse over the years, it’s much better than the 5 minutes of obnoxious commercials every 15 minutes from cable.
EDIT: Ad renevue, as in content creators shucking outside products, not actual ads from YouTube.
I’m still annoyed that I can’t add funds to my account and give them the like fraction of a cent YouTube would get from advertisers rather than showing me an ad. I seriously doubt the revenue they’d get from advertisers is as much as the money if pay for premium. The whole thing is a racket lol.
I can’t cancel because my elderly mother who I take care of needs TV and cable is even more expensive than this. I wish I could.
Just throwing this out there since not everyone is aware of this, maybe applicable to you maybe not, but antenna TV isn’t dead and is as free as ever!
If you really need those cable channels like TNT or ESPN then yeah that sucks… But if y’all just want TV for ABC, NBC, iON, or what-have-you then I think it’s worth looking into at the very least?
If you’re in the USA, here is a list of stations the FCC thinks you should be able to get based on location.
Honestly I have way more channels than this, so you might want to play around with other sites to see what you just might get. That site should give you all the big stations though.
Public broadcasting is pretty great if you can get a continuous, uninterrupted signal. Ever since the service went digital, I’d get a bunch of random breaks and image artifacting in the display. You probably have a pretty decent antenna or clear view of the skies to not have that be an issue for you.
I get issues too but it’s typically because someone walks near my antenna which is just laying down next to the TV.
I’ve honestly never been too anal about my signal loss, but I only use the cable for before-work news and background noise otherwise. Sometimes I put on sports, but again that’s background noise if I’m on the cable.
But it’s an option to look in to none the less! It’s a relatively affordable entry point and low maintenance way of media
Contact your local pirate.
May I ask why you pay for it?
I pay for most services I use, from companies I want to support. YouTube, I use it all the time but it’s just google, they have more money than they’ll ever need.
So I have Unlock origin installed, which skips ads, and Sponsor Block, which automatically skips sponsor segments within the videos. It works great, sometimes there’s a little glitch as it hard cuts from before to after, sometimes you wouldn’t know you skipped it except for the tiny indicator. You can leave self sponsored content on so you are still in the loop and can support creators you like.
If you use chrome both these things can be installed, free, in minutes, from the app store, no weird pirating download or confusing installation.
I know lots of people have YouTube through a smart tv or something, but in case you don’t, or need to save the cash, this works great. Make sure to support the creators though instead with any cash you can afford to spend.
Just went back to reading the comments and I see this YouTube TV isn’t just what Americans call YouTube premium. Hope you can find a work around or discount friend.
Is there anything that hasn’t doubled in price in the past 5 years?
According to Bankrate’s analysis of BLS data, consumer prices have jumped 22.1% since February 2020.
So we’ll give YouTube’s asshole-ness credit for the other 78%.
Have u heard of newpipe and its fork tubular? Its a better user experience than yt premium. On tv u can also get the smarttube app.
This has nothing to do with YouTube TV, which is similar to cable TV with popular cable networks.
This is YouTube TV which is basically cable. It’s completely different than YouTube Premium despite sharing the same prefix name.
Ahh didnt realise that. Surly there is a heigh seas solution to this?
It’s not quite so simple as using an adblocker on YouTube.
You could find a service that provides this. I remember one being offered by this guy a few years ago until he got caught. He had a YouTube channel where he showed off his profits from doing this and that led to the cops looking into him and then arresting him. His whole business was just sharing his cable access with anyone for a subscription. Basically repackaging his cable access to multiple people.
You could download the old fashioned way with torrents or automate it using Plex/Jellyfin and other services like Sonarr. But the challenge is that you have to download everything you want to watch whereas YouTube TV and cable allow you to channel surf to see what’s currently being aired since it’s not just streaming on demand titles. There’s also the issue of having to wait for someone else to upload that episode to you and it coming after the episode has aired (fans of shows like Game of Thrones and the like do not want to possibly have tonight’s episode spoiled by friends/family or the internet so they just fork over the money to watch the episode when it airs).
I remember about a decade ago when Vuze (? Can’t remember the exact name, just a blue frog and the name starting with V) and TVu doing this where it relied on users to share their cable access over the internet. Both were free but not really reliable on a day to day basis or for the exact channel/showing you wanted to see. It was as if someone had recorded their screen at home and was streaming for the world to see, but the quality was very good. Drawback was that it was only whatever that person was watching. Couldn’t stream multiple channels at once.
But this is less common place nowadays because most people would rather have on demand titles akin to Netflix where you have total control over what is shown on your TV and the ability to pause and rewind or fast forward if desired. There’s also the fact that you’re not chained to only watch what some network has decided they want to air today, which often was a rerun or out of sequential order if they played multiple episodes in a row. As well as the ability to get up and do other things and not have to worry about something because you can’t rewind or pause. And then there’s ads shown on each network despite the fact you pay to have this “premium” service.
TL;DR: unlikely to find a high seas alternative in this day and age of on demand streaming to cable access/YouTube TV.
