This week on TechHive: What to do about Roku and YouTube TV

Jared Newman
|
May 7, 2021
YouTube TV as seen on a Roku television

It’s been just over a week since Roku and Google had a public falling out, culminating in Roku’s decision to remove YouTube TV from its Channel Store last Friday.

Since then, a bunch of you have asked me what to do about it, and for good reason: Some of Roku’s previous carriage disputes have stretched on for months without reaching a resolution, and so far, neither Google nor Roku have indicated that they’re close to an agreement. (You can read more about why they’re fighting in last week’s column.)

Now that one of the biggest streaming platforms is missing one of the most popular cable TV replacement services, figuring out your cord-cutting strategy has become a bit more complicated. For a rundown of options until the two companies work things out, read the full column on TechHive.

Weekly rewind

Hulu’s new live channels: Back in January, Hulu announced that would add several ViacomCBS channels to its $65 per month live TV service. Those channels are now available, including BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Paramount Network, VH1, and TV Land in the base package. If you want BET Her, MTV2, NickToons, TeenNick and MTV Classic, they’ll cost $8 per month extra as part of Hulu’s “Entertainment” add-on. Hulu raised prices by $10 per month last December, so hopefully the new arrivals don’t signal another imminent price hike.

The state of sports unbundling: If you’re patiently waiting for more sports coverage to become available outside of big pay TV packages, this week brought some interesting—but not exactly encouraging—news. According to the Wall Street Journal, NBCUniversal has considered offering NBC Sports Philadelphia to Peacock subscribers without a pay TV bundle in time for the current MLB season, but balked in part over pricing issues.

Apparently NBCU wanted to charge a higher price for Peacock customers in the Philly area, but was also worried that this would conflict with broader attempts to market the service. While NBCU hasn’t sworn off the idea of integrating regional sports with Peacock, it’s also reportedly thinking about selling off those channels, perhaps to local sports teams.

Meanwhile, Sinclair continues to slow-walk its plans to offer Bally Sports networks on an a la carte basis. The company says its standalone streaming service won’t happen until the first half of 2022, leaving cord-cutters without a cost-efficient way to watch local baseball in many markets. As of now AT&T TV is the only streaming option for Bally Sports, in packages that start at $85 per month. Other live streaming services such as YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV show no signs of bringing those channels back.

New HDHomerun options: SiliconDust’s HDHomerun tuners are still essential hardware if you’re setting up a Plex or Channels DVR for recording over-the-air channels, and now the company has quietly released a couple new models. The $100 Flex Duo is has two tuners with ATSC 1.0 support, while the $200 Flex 4K has four tuners, two of which support the emerging ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard. (As I’ve said before, it’s very early days for ATSC 3.0, so the latter model is more about future-proofing than enjoying 4K broadcasts right now.)

Despite the new names, the new tuners are nearly identical to SiliconDust’s previous HDHomerun Connect Duo and Connect 4K, with one difference: They both have USB ports so you can plug in a hard drive and use HDHomerun’s DVR service. I still recommend avoiding that service anyway and using the aforementioned Plex or Channels if you’re looking for a robust roll-your-own DVR solution. Alternatively, you can opt for a simpler over-the-air DVR system such as Tablo or skip the antenna setup outright.

More catch-up

Save more money

The new Apple TV 4K with updated Siri remote

I’m seeing a bunch of streaming device deals out there this morning, so let’s round them up in no particular order:

Thanks for reading!

It’s always a pleasure to write a column based on your questions and comments. Please keep them coming by replying to this email. If you’ve emailed me recently, I’ll do my best to get back to you soon!

Until next week,

Jared