Multiple large tech companies have been in negotiation for NFL Sunday Ticket distribution rights all year. While early rumors pegged Apple and Amazon as the top contenders, Google’s YouTube and YouTube TV have won the bidding war. Google announced today that it has struck a multi-year deal with the NFL for YouTube to be the new home for NFL Sunday Ticket after the current deal with DirecTV ends at the conclusion of the 2022 NFL season. Read more ›
YouTube has announced a new feature that allows the YouTube app on your phone to sync up with what you’re watching on your TV’s YouTube app, via TechCrunch. If while watching YouTube on a device like a Fire TV, you can then open the YouTube app on your phone and you’ll see a prompt to connect the mobile app to the TV app. This “reverse-casting” will then allow you to view comments and other YouTube aspects for the YouTube video being played on your TV. Read more ›
YouTube is joining the likes of IMDB TV, Tubi, Plex, Pluto TV, and many other streaming services with the addition of free ad-supported TV shows. YouTube has been offering movies that are “Free with Ads” for some time, but now the platform has added 4,000 TV show episodes to its free ad-supported content library. While most, if not all, of the shows are already available on other ad-supported services, it might be worth your time to take a look at them on YouTube because YouTube seems to have shorter ad interruptions than most services. YouTube is also expanding its free ad-supported movie catalog, with additions like Legally Blonde and Gone in Sixty Seconds, to now include 1,500 movies. YouTube says it will be adding 100 new pieces of free content each week. To watch YouTube’s free ad-supported movies and TV shows, just load up the regular YouTube app (not the YouTube TV app) and look for the “Movies and shows” section in the main menu on the left.
A day before Google was scheduled to remove YouTube from the Roku appstore, Google and Roku have reached an agreement that will keep YouTube accessible on Roku devices and will return the YouTube TV app to Roku’s channel store. The deal is said to be a multi-year agreement between the two companies, but nothing else has been said about the specifics of the arrangement. Read more ›
The YouTube app on Fire TV and Android TV devices has started rolling out an, in my opinion, annoying feature where it autoplays videos, with sound, as you browse around. By default, if you highlight a video on the home or subscription feed, the video begins to play within the thumbnail at full volume. Selecting the video at that point will make it full screen at the point where the autoplaying preview has reached. This appears to be slowly rolling out, since the new behavior is not yet available on all devices. Thankfully, it’s easy to disable the feature and return to the previous behavior of silent looping previews. Just go into the YouTube app’s Settings tab, found at the bottom of the sidebar, and turn off the “Previews with sound” option.
History repeats itself, only this time it’s not Google leveraging the popularity of YouTube against Amazon and Fire TVs, but against Roku and new Roku devices. Google has stated that it will be removing the YouTube app from the Roku channel store on December 9th, which will prevent new and factory reset Roku devices from accessing the video service, according to Variety. This is a result of negotiations between Google and Roku regarding app distribution terms going nowhere for the past 6 months, which has already resulted in the removal of YouTube TV from the Roku channel store. Read more ›
Google has announced that they are adding access to YouTube TV through the standard YouTube app. This allows them to, essentially, get around Roku’s removal of the YouTube TV app since the YouTube app is still accessible on Roku devices. At the bottom of the YouTube app’s left-side navigation menu will soon be a button “Go to YouTube TV” button. Read more ›
Roku has dropped YouTube TV from its channel store, making it impossible to install the service on any Roku device. This is due to a dispute between Roku and Google regarding the terms of their contract renewal which the two companies have not been able to agree on. Roku has chosen not to remove the YouTube TV app from devices that already have it installed, but they warn customers that there is no way to reinstall the app, should they choose to uninstall it or reset their Roku device. Read more ›
Roku and Google are currently in a dispute which may result in the YouTube TV app being removed from Roku devices. At the core of this dispute are features that Google wants Roku devices to support. Neither company is being overtly specific about the features in question but Roku says they “harm users” and are “anticompetitive,” while Google says the features “ensure a high-quality and consistent experience for our viewers.” The more we learn about these requested features, the more it seems like Amazon’s Fire TV devices already support them, and rightfully so. Read more ›
Another month, another dispute between streaming services and streaming hardware manufacturers. This time it’s between Roku and Google over the presence of YouTube TV and YouTube app on Roku devices. It looks like the agreement between the two companies is up for renewal shortly and negotiations “have broken down,” according to an email Roku sent to its customers in hopes of garnering support that they can leverage against Google. Read more ›
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