All right, guys, let's get into why we switched to YouTube TV and what we found that was good and bad. Obviously, part of the reason we switched was, cost. Now, I know if you go to the directive's Web site, you'll see sixty-nine, ninety-nine for probably their most popular package. But the reality is, is that's only for the first 12 months. When we quit direct TV, we were paying one hundred and seventy dollars a month in comparison to fifty dollars a month for YouTube TV.
Now it doesn't take a math genius to find out that we're saving over fourteen hundred dollars a month on just TV service and we are using direct TV. We found that we were only using a select amount of channels. I needed my sports and local programming, my wife, the nude, or trashy TV through Bravo, and my son needed his Cartoon Network and other various channels to watch cartoons. We could get all that with YouTube TV at a significant discount. Any money that you can save off of these subscription services that you paid for every month as money back in the house versus funneling it back for stuff you don't use.
So let's just get that obvious right out of the way. It's a huge cost saving over the course of the year. And that was the driving force for the change. The other thing is that there's no contract associated with YouTube, TV versus like with direct TV. So you're not locked in for that period of time. If you feel like switching to Hulu or some other streaming service at any point in time, you just cancel and jump. It's really not that big.
Another really cool part about YouTube TV is you remember those days where you called direct TV when you're having an issue and they say, oh yeah, I'll be there between nine and 12 and they show up at four 30 with not even the right tools to do the job. Those days are gone. You're no longer locked your house when it comes to tech support on hardware because you're using something like a root acoustic or the app for your TV. There's no satellite to worry about.
There's no cable lockers to install. All of that is handled through the Internet. So those really frustrating days of waiting on text service is no longer a problem. As I mentioned before, the channel selection, a local programming is still there, like you get with Direct TV or some other service that used to be in the past. You aren't able to get those local channels. But that has significantly changed over time. It has even gotten to where when I travel, it'll actually alert you that you've changed into another local segment.
Then you will get that local programming.
That means I get in Atlanta area, my s.E.C. And ACTC networks I can cut follow my college football, but also means we get all of our local Atlanta news channels as well. One of the great things about YouTube, TV as well is that you get unlimited DVR recording. Now, I know some of the services are trying to do this as well. Most of your DVR recording is done locally on a hard drive in your house.
Now you can get it from anywhere and it's unlimited. So you basically get to scroll through it just like you would on YouTube with all the channels that you recorded. Now, this kind of segue ways into another popular thing with YouTube that we found incredibly useful when you can add up to five accounts and that is location independent. So you can add five users per account for the $50 a month fee for our house, we added.
Myself, my wife and my son. So we each get to have our own personalized programming suggestions as well as our personalized DVR as an added bonus. I can see exactly everything my son's been watching on TV, but just what? Logging into his account. Those accounts follow you. So if you need to sign up a grandparent or someone else, as long as they had their login and you set it up to their user account, it could be in their house and you can be in yours.
It really just depends on how you want to set it up. One of the biggest benefits I found out a YouTube TV personally, which might just be a single case scenario, but I travel a lot. So YouTube TV follows me on my phone, on my tablet, on my laptop.
I'm able to access my DVR, my channels anywhere. I have an Internet connection. The apps are also very easy to use and so is the Web interface. YouTube has a lot of experience dealing with Web apps, obviously because of YouTube. So now that we've gone through some of the positives over this, take a look at the negatives. As with any switch, you are going to find some things that might annoy you a little bit. So let's take a look.
First, is your TV ready for YouTube? TV? So most TVs are ready for you to TV at this point in time, I'd argue to say all of them, even your bargain-basement Black Friday deals from Wal-Mart. However, if you have some older TV's in the house, you will need to add a Roku, an Amazon fire stick, an Apple TV or some other secondary device to be able to stream YouTube TV to your TV. It plugs into an HDMI port and then you plug it into the wall and you're set to go.
Now we got Roku's for the TV's in the House that we're not ready to take you to TV. That was before the Amazon fire stick actually released their compatibility. I probably will start to switch some of those over the Roku TV. Could be a little bit buggy and sometimes has an issue with buffering. So I'm hoping the Amazon sticks will be a little bit more reliable with the added bonus of being Amazon, Alexa, which you already have throughout the house.
Another little kind of funny issue we ran into is that there are no channel numbers on the YouTube TV guide. Really wouldn't think they'd be that big of an issue. But we ran into two things. One, you can't just tell someone hate sync, change the Channel 46. That's not happening. They've got to scroll through and look up the channel by the name. So there's no just easy switch if you just know what channel you need to switch to.
Second thing we ran into is that there's no just return to your previous channel button. You have to hit down twice on the arrow and it gives you your recently viewed channels, which is actually kind of a cool feature. But if you're watching two sports channels at one time, there's no just single button to tap and flip back and forth between the two games. Another thing is setting up some arbitrary most is a little bit more difficult. Remotes like the Harmony are very used to saying.
Switched inputs, not switched apps. So when you set up a harmony, you wrote remote. It's a little bit more complicated because it's really designed to turn on and turn off and change settings of devices and not scroll through software.
So if you're really used to using the harmony remote, you're going to find a little bit more complications with that. Another thing is you can only stream three devices at a time. Now it's just me, my son and my wife in the house. So it's really not that big a deal.
We haven't run into any issues, but if you have a larger family or you're wanting to add more people, you know, and actually fill out those five profiles, you could run into an issue where you can't stream on a certain device. It'll come up with a promising you need to pause one TV before you can start the other. With Direct TV, we were able to stream four live broadcasts and do eight off the DVR. Now, while it's rare, we do run into streaming issues from time to time.
I have an excellent connection at the house here.
Run AT&T Fiber. I get a gig download speed. So we typically don't run into streaming issues. But keep in mind, you're going to be taxing your Internet connection more than you were before. So you're going to want to either upgrade your Internet connection and in addition to that, make sure your Wi-Fi network at your house is really good. I use the Amplify HD mesh router system to get that five gigahertz signal to all of my TV that are on Wi-Fi.
It might be something you want to look into because you're going to need the fastest download speeds you can get to your TV so that your streaming is not interrupted. One of the kind of rule random things we found out because of the buffering issue is that when you started channel, it will start to buffer and build you some times that you don't get paused in the middle of channels. So when you first start up a program like a sports channel or TV channel at Buffer's for a minute, build you up some seconds.
So it's not just constantly trying to get the next second. What happens with this is you're not able to sync TV's within the house. Now, this is a single use case scenario. So we had our Georgia Georgia Tech party that we throw every year and we have multiple TVs on the house playing the same football game. They're not even close to being on the same part of the game as the other teams. So you're not able to lock in all those TVs or pause and play to get them sinked up like you were with other services.
Now, this is a really weird case scenario that a lot of people use. So it might not be an issue for you, but it was an issue for us. And it has been a huge feature request on YouTube to be able to lock those TV together and have them streaming at the same time.
So if you're a huge fan of Sunday ticket NFL, you're out of luck. You've got to stick with direct TV. There's a way to kind of finagle it, signing up for, like one of their mobile programs or something.
I haven't really looked into it, but that is one of the downsides with YouTube TV. You are not able to get some of those premium sports packages or movie packages that you would be able to with your other services. The other thing is there is zero for K on YouTube TV. Now the direct TV four services were really limited.
There was only three channels and it was rarely anything I really wanted to watch, but at least it was trying. With YouTube, they're not even there yet.
I have to imagine it won't be that hard. Once there is more Fourcade broadcasting because YouTube is already used to streaming for Fourcade on YouTube itself, it should just be a switch on. So what was our overall experience? I can't say saving over fourteen hundred dollars a year is a really good experience.
But on top of that, for what we need to watch in the services, we need YouTube. TV fits the bill perfectly. I don't miss anything from direct TV really for our size family and our service need. So really, we ended up saving a lot of money to get the service we needed without the junk we didn't.
I also do not miss having all that hardware in the house. We are able to ship that off and we were good to go.
So if you have any questions or comments about YouTube, TB hit up the comment section. I'll be sure to respond as much as I can. Be sure to like and subscribe. And until then.
Onto the next one. Thanks, guys. Hi, guys. So here's that protest that I mentioned at the beginning of the video. When you want to switch from a direct TV or other cable service provider that has you locked into a contract, they are going to charge you a fee for every month until the end of that contract.
So you're left with the bill when you want to switch, which has really kept a lot of people from switching sooner. My wife has figured out if you tell them that you are moving in with your in-laws and they already have direct TV, they will just have you shipped back all your equipment without any of the cancellation fees. That really saves a lot of money at the end and makes it so you can switch a lot sooner.
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