Category: Base Trade Seat

Comcast is introducing YouTube TV to its Xfinity Flex devices, providing users another avenue for opting out of traditional cable.

YouTube was previously supported on Comcast’s Flex boxes, but the addition of YouTube TV gives users the ability to get some 85-plus live television channels for $65 per month. It’s not the first live TV streaming service to arrive on the platform — Sling and Hulu with Live TV were already supported. But it does diversify the streaming options for people who don’t want to pay Comcast for cable.

Colin Petrie-Norris, senior vice president of consumer entertainment at Xfinity, said in a statement that the addition of YouTube TV “is another example of how we surround our broadband service with value, giving our customers access to all their preferred content and subscriptions on one device.”

It’s a curious move from a cable provider, but it also makes sense if Comcast wants to stay competitive against other over-the-top boxes like Roku, Fire TV Stick, or Chromecast — all of which support YouTube TV. Currently, Comcast provides the boxes to its Xfinity Internet customers at no additional cost, but it does need people to use them. And that means supporting popular apps.

YouTube TV is available to Flex users beginning today.

Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.

YouTube will host a 24-hour interactive live event featuring musicians and creators to look back on the platform’s biggest trends and videos of 2021, the company announced today. The event, called Escape2021, will have three chapters, the first of which begins on December 16th at midnight ET. The goal of Escape2021: liberate Lofi Girl from the confines of her bedroom and studies.

Escape2021 comes after the company pulled the plug on YouTube Rewind, the high-production recap videos the company published at the end of each year that had been derided by creators for sanitizing the platform to appeal to advertisers. YouTube said in October it would “refocus our energies” to create different kinds of productions instead. Escape2021 isn’t meant to replace Rewind but offer a new way to celebrate the year’s biggest trends, Lauren Verrusio, a YouTube spokesperson, tells The Verge.

The event seems to be an attempt by YouTube to offer more immersive online experiences, like when fans watched butter melt ahead of a new BTS song. YouTube says there will be trivia questions, trend-based challenges, and “real-time live experiences,” all leading up to musical performances. One example of a challenge, echoing the BTS livestream, will require viewers to identify what butter sculptures the band has melted.

YouTube says the event will include performances and appearances from BTS, Doja Cat, and Mark Rober, among others.

Update December 9th, 4:15PM ET: This story has been updated with a comment from a YouTube spokesperson.

Roku has reached a deal with Google to continue distributing the YouTube and YouTube TV apps on its platform. The two had been at odds over a contract extension, sparring over what Roku described as onerous demands by Google for more data and more prominent placement on its devices.

If they hadn’t reached an agreement by tomorrow, Google planned to pull the YouTube app from Roku — a loss for basically everyone involved, but especially Roku users who would have no longer been able to download a key video service.

“This agreement represents a positive development for our shared customers, making both YouTube and YouTube TV available for all streamers on the Roku platform,” Dallas Lawrence, a Roku spokesperson, wrote in an email to The Verge. Google confirmed the deal to The Verge and said both apps will be available through the Roku store.

Roku described the deal as a “multi-year extension” for YouTube and YouTube TV. YouTube TV was pulled by Roku from its channel store in April as tensions between the two parties escalated. After months of stalled negotiations, Google said in late October that it would pull the YouTube app on December 9th if a deal hadn’t been reached.

An escalating feud that has pitted YouTube, one of the most popular streaming apps in the world, against Roku, a leader in TV streaming devices, could be about to boil over. Both companies have said that unless they can reach a new distribution agreement in the coming days, the YouTube app will be removed from Roku’s channel store for new users on December 9th.

The major development would follow months of stalled negotiations, and there have already been consequences for consumers caught in the middle: the YouTube TV app was pulled from Roku’s channel store earlier this year, though it can still be accessed by customers who already downloaded it. Now the much more popular YouTube app, a portal to the world’s largest video sharing platform, faces the same cutoff and store removal.

With the deadline for a new YouTube deal looming, Google and Roku have continued publicly bickering and expressing frustration with each other over the last several months. Roku has accused Google of anticompetitive behavior and says the company’s terms and requests go beyond the asks of other major streaming services, while Google has maintained Roku’s claims are baseless and criticized the company for trying to negotiate new deals for YouTube TV and YouTube simultaneously instead of handling them separately. Google also added a YouTube TV backdoor directly to the regular YouTube app to preserve live TV access for subscribers of the $65-per-month service; Roku responded by calling this the behavior of an “unchecked monopolist.”

Losing YouTube would be a significant blow for Roku’s platform, though it’s one that others have faced. Amazon’s Fire TV devices went without an official YouTube app for more than a year before the two sides came to a deal in that case and the app returned. Apple has managed to keep YouTube on its Apple TV set-top boxes from the start, though its own differences with Google have sometimes delayed features like 4K playback.

Still, one of the core appeals of Roku is its simplicity and vast app selection. Having a hole the size of YouTube in its app catalog would throw a wrench into that reputation. This type of situation always comes down to the wire — just as it recently did when YouTube TV and NBCUniversal managed to settle tense carriage talks without any channels being lost. So stay tuned, and it’d be a good idea to download YouTube to your Roku devices now just in case things go sideways.

Update December 8th, 9:45AM ET: Roku and Google have reached a new multi-year deal to keep YouTube on the platform and bring back YouTube TV. You can read more about the resolution here.

Over 2.2 million copyright claims hit YouTube videos before later being overturned between January and June of this year, according to a new report published by the company today. The Copyright Transparency Report is the first of its kind published by YouTube, which says it will update biannually going forward.

The 2.2 million incorrect claims represent less than 1 percent of the more than 729 million total copyright claims issued in the first half of this year, 99 percent of which originated from Content ID, YouTube’s automated enforcement tool. When users disputed these claims, the case was resolved in favor of the uploader of the video 60 percent of the time, according to the report.

Though mistaken copyright claims are a drop in the bucket on a larger scale, YouTube creators have long complained about how the platform handles claims, saying overly aggressive or unjustified enforcement can lead to lost income. Copyright claims can result in videos being blocked, audio being muted, or ad revenue going back to the rights owner. This new report gives shape to a problem that YouTube itself has acknowledged needs updating.

In 2019, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in a blog post that the company heard the concerns from creators and that YouTube was “exploring improvements in striking the right balance between copyright owners and creators.”

The new report notes that “no system is perfect” and that errors happen even with established guardrails in place to prevent abuse of enforcement mechanisms. “When disputes take place, the process provided by YouTube provides real recourse, and over 60% of these disputes were resolved in favor of the uploader,” the report says.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated 2.2 million videos were hit with copyright claims that were later overturned. In fact, 2.2 million claims were issued that were later overturned. YouTube did not provide the number of videos that were subject to overturned claims. We regret the error.