Gadgetory

good morning from the scene at New York Studios it is Wednesday march first my dudes and it's time for episode 187 of the 359 podcast and on today's show hosted by alfred eng we feature our good friend David Katz meijer back from a long hiatus it's been wait wait way too long since you've been on the show Alfredo how are you doing what are you doing on the show today today we're gonna be talking about youtube TV yeah very meta right now well youtube decided that it wants a piece of the cord cutter action so we're gonna take a look at if it's actually worth getting for thirty-five dollars a month and also uh motorola deciding they're not giving up on modular phones so that should be interesting to look at personally I've never put them out on my phone but I'm interested in it so who doesn't like Legos I mean if it worked like Legos I would totally get that but it's this whole thing I'm just not interested in it that much yeah but Motorola loves them and they're doing pressing on with them that could be their niche I mean it probably it's gotta be their niche because no one else is used is doing it all right so we're gonna go ahead and get into the show recording the four minute podcast or to be more deadly accurate three minutes 59 seconds exactly please go ahead and submit your comments and questions are interested to see what everyone's perspective is if you would be a subscriber to you tube TV if you yourself mod your phone or would mod your phone more accurately and we'll be back to hit you up in the chat in a exactly three minutes and 59 seconds from 32 welcome to the 359 where we talk about the top tech news of the day I'm Alfred Aang I'm David Katz Meyer youtube announced yesterday would be launching its own live TV channels for thirty-five dollars a month taking on services like sling TV DirecTV now playstation view not to mention you know traditional cable companies you get unlimited cloud DVR and you can watch across all your devices but what I'm wondering is you know there's so many different services out there already what advantages does YouTube have over its competitors now the big one is it's YouTube so you know everybody knows YouTube YouTube street at billion hours a day that recently announced so they are huge and they're bigger than anyways others you mentioned so YouTube has the potential you know to get that brand recognition people who know YouTube's you know what I'll just try it out for 35 bucks a month I don't like it I can always quit that's really the main benefit of all these guys but whoa sorry I mean what I'm wondering those but when it comes to services how does that work you know it doesn't have advantages in terms of that I know that YouTube is a much bigger name than all its competitors yet what can it actually provide me I'm not a name brand guy yes so once you've cut through the name thing you look at the for services now if you include YouTube and the main differentiator for YouTube is that cloud DVR so the other two main services directly now and sling don't offer the cloud to be our PlayStation view does but it's reportedly less popular so that right there is really cool you can basically pretend that you know you have a DVR except it's in the cloud if YouTube does it well it'll be a great service that it to have all that storage and they haven't announced the numbers or anything like that but you know basically you just say all these shows to watch later on your own time which is really cool the second big thing with YouTube is that you do have simultaneous streams so they announced that you can do three simultaneous streams at once other services PlayStation view offers that directly notice to it as well you can have different bunch of people sign into the service at once we're sling TV only allows you to do one sanal taenia stream so somebody starts watching to the part of the house that $20 month service cuts off but sling does have a second tier where you can add those simultaneous streams so we'll know more later but right now YouTube has announced local TV channels on a bunch of different markets and they're going to launch you know major markets early and you get your major channels but they do have some holes of the thing for example there's no CNN there's you know a couple of other channels missing so they night had those before they launch well I'll not know with the lack of channels in terms of price range versus what you get how does you know you tube TV compared to its competitors especially for cord cutters who are looking to save every sign yeah we don't know yet again with cord cutters music is really popular because it allows you to kind of slice and dice taz this fewest channels but also the cheapest 20 bucks a month DirecTV now has a lot of different channels and they have you know generally really good channel coverage but you know they've been some technical difficulties with that service so you got to kind of look at the channels again YouTube hasn't launched yet they have been finalized yet about their channel services we don't know how exactly they stack up but I think they're going to be pretty good when they finally launch all right on the next note we've got some news coming out of Barcelona Motorola is not giving up on its mods which is a key feature of its phones especially the Moto z2 one of the more innovative moves for phones in recent memory on Sunday motorola showed off a new power pack another mod that you can attach on to bring Alexa onto your device and another one the gamepad for a mobile gaming do you see this as a risky move as something that people would actually you know by or is it it hasn't really caught on with any other companies yeah I think there's a reason for that I mean personally I don't use even a case on my phone you know it's it once you start adding different things to your phone you go where's the cost benefit here usually the base phone is the selling point so you know until they can guess it popular over there the real problem is that they're competing against you know Samsung Apple everybody else has a lot better market share so it's going to be tough I think LG floated some mods on their phones for a while maybe something that can really get your battery up without make the phone too bulky would be really cool but beyond that I don't really know that people want that kind of stuff i mean i think it's interesting i think you know android users have always wanted to mod their phones i think that's why they prefer android / iphones where they can you know put all these different widgets and things like that on their screens but now it's coming down to hardware so if you like this story please check us out on cnet com thanks for listening all right I for one am hella on board with YouTube TV nice just as an avid user I've been a cord cutter for a long time loud and proud but we've got some good questions in the chat about comparing its side by side for so for a lot of people like myself and like Matthew in the chat we've already got netflix paid amazon paid hulu um and then like at best maybe pair rabbit ears in the house kind of thing too much what I do yeah and and the whole question is does live TV appeal to people still like now when you think about TV it's not live it's I want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch totally on demand whether it's from a DVR whatever I think that's maybe where the the cloud DVR comes in because you know you set up your your shows to record all the time they're always going to be available you know to do some searching for them you don't have to come up empty I mean if you get two channels you know you can record the shows on DVR no that's pretty cool if they make the interface as easy to use as Netflix something like that I think that's a big deal you know a lot of times youtube is pretty overwhelming yeah with the amount of stuff they throw at you and finding what you want to watch it's pretty tough one of the interesting but that's YouTube proper would write you think they'd kind of refine youtube TV into its own identity you'd think but what I was about to say one of the things that they announced is that they're actually going to integrate search results from regular YouTube so you search you know for NCIS or a regular network show and you're going to get not only the results from YouTube TV you're also going to get countless clips or whatever that you know use that that search term so you're going to get all that at once it's going to do a little like a fire hose they're gonna have to do a really good job of keeping that manageable and not overwhelmed I think it'd be interesting if you could watch live TV without having to DVR right through the search function like if I wanted to watch an episode of Jeopardy that aired yesterday but I didn't personally record it right I can be able to go back and then you know put that on as if it were a live TV and and and that's a served that's available on a lot of the other services and just linked TVs they allow you to do what they call like a 72-hour jump back where you know something aired in the last period of time you can go back and immediately do it whether or not you recorded it and that's kind of the antithesis of hulu who make you wait an extra X amount of days before recently broadcast can be made available to you yeah yeah the 24-hour delay at least a lot of times though it's contractually negotiated so we'll see what happens by bringing up who I think they Derek said that they're coming out another live TV service later this year yeah they magnetic 11 months ago right yeah so I got a good look at that at CES in january and i was really impressed because hulu obviously is the king of the on-demand shows that you know you want right now so you know netflix doesn't have current shows generally amazon you gotta pay individually for them so you got prime is again not necessarily current shows but with who really rules that niche and if they can combine their you know their awesome on-demand library with this live TV service and make it all great then you can cancel that other stuff i mean that's the real goal here is if you're a cord cutter you don't want to pay for you know 30 different services and again adding something like a youtube live for 35 bucks a month that's a big ask if netflix costs you know 15 or less now to just clarify to some late comers to the chat this is different than youtube red yeah this is about YouTube itself becoming its liable net yes sorry this is YouTube giving you ABC NBC you know Fox all of these channels versions of those channels yep absolutely and so these are live you know you turn it on you get your local news for example you get you know you get the news services you get Fox Sports um you know looking here they got golf they got National Geographic so you know there's all these services there of course it's not as much as your normal cable TV Live service has it's not even as much as directive you now and places view right now they're still in negotiations so there's still you still got to tie down deals with for example CNN right and TNT and these big cable services they don't have yet right and Dwight in the chat he's pointing out the youtube has already had a robust experience with live broadcasting but it's different this is actually about carrying official network channels through a youtube streaming service in real time yep this is just like regular cable TV official commercial television coming to you via a YouTube portal yeah and one of the things i didn't get to mimic podcast but it is a big deal for youtube is obviously it's all about mobile so everybody watches youtube on the phone so the idea here is you be able to watch all these live channels streaming on your phone to again the same thing that's link TV and all those other guys offer and and they're gonna obviously I think and when they first launched accent mobile the only device they mentioned for TV that will carry it it launches chromecast which makes sense because Google makes it and chromecast and youtuber really easy to use together mm-hmm I mean it that's one of the quintessential chromecast experiences you have like a phone and everybody can login to the chromecast on the big TV and everybody can pass her on the phone and throw big videos up there everything like that you'll be able to do the same thing with YouTube TV and you know it's it's a pretty intriguing marriage between youtube and you know it all the videos of them before and this live TV thing I think it'd be really cool Danny in the chat as asking if it's um 100% pre bundled services or how much a la carte do you think they'll allow zero Danny you get what you get and you don't get upset oh they have like I said that they're launching with Disney ESPN NBC CBS fox the weather channel so you know you you get a handful of channels largely similar to a sling TV packet really absolutely so again it's a you're gonna have to compare these quote-unquote skinny bundles you know it's skinny because it's cheaper than cable and there's fewer channels but it's still a bundle there's no ala carte yet I mean the exception of course is premium channels showtime they've announced for youtube they don't have HBO yet interesting Lena but I think they probably will by the time they launch showing HP would play that close to the chest with HBO going all that well HBO is also on these other channels too so you can as a view subscriber you get HBO package same thing with sling so you know they're already playing ball with the other competitors in the reason why they wouldnt already do with YouTube to as long as they can charge for a premium yes they're there all the things of 15 bucks and what up what I'm wondering is you know you know when you're subscribed to a cable company you can kind of log into another website using your cable subscription you can just live stream it through there right where's somebody else's cables yeah pretty much so what I'm wondering is you know if I have a you tube TV subscription would I be able to theoretically be able to do that if I wanted to watch I don't know the FXX like marathon yeah so that's another little weird thing that happens with all these services so that's called authentication hmm and the idea is you know if you're a subscriber with cable TV and you you know ESPN you can always log onto ESPN now and watch stuff from there they have a great yes peon that was really good but you know you got to have the cable authentication you know view places view is really good about offering authentication for almost all the channels that they support so you can watch those apps really well with you sling TV on the other hand only has a handful they have a bunch of channels that should support authentication like TT a lot of sports stuff but they don't actually do it I think ESPN is the exception so with that's still up in the air with with YouTube TV if they're smart yes they'll support authentication for all the channels that they offer all that stuff is part of the negotiation so yep you know to turn the green light on for that kind of capability is still up in the air a lot of times you got to go in and check it out yourself a lot of times you know they don't offer as much authentication as they should Tyler and the chat wants to know do you think that fiber would play any part in to this service ah good question maybe they do a bundle or whatever google fiber's pretty limited and availability but it's been kind of stalled right yeah and I feel like they've backed off it a little bit and and but you know again youtube TV won't be a villain nationwide either when it launches its going to be restricted to the major markets where they're able to get FOX NBC ABC affiliates and CBS to sign on so I think that's the real limiting factor that's historically which probably stopped apple from from rolling out a similar live TV service and it's it's you know there's a lot of these other services i mentioned do offer those local channels but only in specific markets I'm just kind of interested how would play out i'm definitely got my attention just as like i said a cord cutter but it would be kind of nice to be able to go back to the art of flipping i forgot what that was like you know yes what would you be doing that though with YouTube TV though if it's chromecast it's not like you're I mean is that how you'd be flipping it when I would home and that would be kind of part of the experience because that seems kind of quick to say yeah that's what I was just like I get plenty of satisfaction of the programming I enjoy so many non-red YouTube channels for original content but I'd sometimes I'd love to watch like agents of shield in real time kind of them just being the comic book geek that I am but I haven't done that ever yeah so bringing that experience back into my life without having to pay you know let's leave the corporate names out of cable services some of which we have expressed prior disinterest in that would be nice but aging I think food we said 35 bucks yes that's a fair price and and and if you if that's if you watch enough live TV to justify that price then yeah you're you're in good shape and and again if if if you really want that look at sling because they start at 20 bucks a month and see if they got enough channels for yeah because that's a big savings and I enjoyed the sling I did trial sling it but I legitimately was able to kind of step back and like I'm still not using it as much as I probably should and if I paying for it and a lot of people are in that boat where it's all about what habits you have which shows you want whether you want to sit down and do it and also you know family members like I got a wife and kids and my wife can't live without Bravo so that's a consideration for a lot of people to it's like do they offer the stuff that my family does and that's where this whole simultaneous streams comes in so again sling you get the base back in front of us so much you only watch one at a time so so many other part of the house or even on another phone or something turns on a stream on the same channel yours turns off yeah so one of the things that YouTube negotiated is this ability to watch three simultaneous streams for the 35 bucks a month again view and DirecTV also allow those simultaneous streams so is it also three for them uh view is up to five and the I think DirecTV now is to base package so those are all contractually negotiated with all the guys so again those things those details are pretty important and the kind of thing where you discover at the end of the day like wow this isn't exactly like cable TV there's a lot of restrictions here there's other restrictions on mobile for example NFL games are highly restricted there's a lot of things out there that you did aren't really an issue with cable TV that you've got to consider with all these services a lot of people in the chat are bringing up antennas and how playing with local channels yep um a couple things on that antennas are fantastic I myself have a pair of rabbit ears but I have live in a basement apartment in my reception is crap yeah and that's a lot of times the problem with that service even when you get an extender or the higher better antennas the outdoor antennas you're still kind of screwed to certain extent in certain markets local channels would be included yeah in the YouTube TV but i'd be curious you know what be kind of cool is if you could change your locality right right so for those of us who maybe grow up into place now live in a different place if I could like tune back in and get my hometown for a minute that be kind of neat yeah you no yeah that's a big negatory that they would offer they probably offer all a car before they offered that did Asia again that's that's the negotiation thing and these guys want you to see the things that you want to see I think of it's similar to out-of-market restrictions for mlb.com where you know you can't watch your local team and I'm using streaming although sometimes you can now with authentication but at the end of the day those things are pretty highly regulated I should be cool a premium level though like throw extra five bucks in any other market and the what the workaround for that is to go to your local news channel's website and then just chromecast the entire tab touche have done that but i'm from a time i'm from a tiny town where that's not website mmm they barely have a TV channel they're uploading you know the fatigue is gone abroad yeah on a dial-up modem fret there so on the 2012 election right now all right that's as curious to see where this is gonna go I think that's probably a good spot to leave it for the day we're just about out of time thank you David anytime Thank You Alfred let's tell them where to find this well if you liked what you heard here the 359 podcast is available on itunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner google play music and of course cnet com thanks everybody we'll see you tomorrow you