Google and Roku today announced that the two companies have reached a deal that will keep YouTube and YouTube TV on the No. 1 streaming platform in the United States and return the YouTube TV channel to the Roku Channel Store. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it’s good for multiple years.
Roku’s Dallas Lawrence, head of comms for platform business, told Digital Trends via email: “Roku and Google have agreed to a multiyear extension for both YouTube and YouTube TV. This agreement represents a positive development for our shared customers, making both YouTube and YouTube TV available for all streamers on the Roku platform.”
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The agreement ends a months-long public battle that saw the removal of the YouTube TV app from the Roku channel store — though as a workaround the YouTube TV service was still reachable from within the YouTube app, and the removal only affected new downloads. In the later stages of the impasse, it was possible that the YouTube app itself would be removed from Roku.
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“We’re happy to share that we’ve reached a deal with Roku to continue distributing the YouTube and YouTube TV apps on Roku devices,” YouTube spokesperson Mariana De Felice told Digital Trends via email, shortly after publication. “This means that Roku customers will continue to have access to YouTube and that the YouTube TV app will once again be available in the Roku store for both new and existing members. We are pleased to have a partnership that benefits our mutual users.”
Roku says that the YouTube TV channel will return to the Roku Channel store by mid-morning on December 8.
It was never completely clear what the disagreement was about. Things flared up in April 2021 when Roku first announced publicly that negotiations weren’t going well and that “Roku cannot accept Google’s unfair terms as we believe they could harm our users.” At the time, YouTube TV seemed to be the sole issue, but Google alleged that Roku was using the negotiations as an opportunity to lump YouTube itself into the discussion, despite those apparently being separate agreements. Roku alleged that Google wanted priority when you search for content on Roku. Google, for its part, said that Roku not supporting open-source video codecs was at issue, and that “Roku requested exceptions that would break the YouTube experience and limit our ability to update YouTube in order to fix issues or add new features.”
At the end of the day, though, it almost certainly all came down to money, of course. And that doesn’t change the fact that neither Roku nor Google’s customers had anything to do with any of this, and there are plenty of comparable options for replacing Roku and streaming all the YouTube and YouTube TV you want. That includes Chromecast with Google TV, which includes 4K resolution, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and sells for just $50.
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YouTube and YouTube TV will allow die-hard NFL fans who pony up a few hundred bucks for NFL Sunday Ticket to watch as many games as they want, so long as you're on your home network. The news came in the form of a couple of tweets from the gold-checkmarked account.
That means you'll be able to watch on as many devices as you have on hand, whether they're phones, TVs, or tablets, in a web browser, or on other devices, like a smart TV or gaming platform.
Google TV slims down and speeds up with recent software updates
If you've been tooling around on your favorite Google TV device and have noticed that it just ... seems faster — that's because it is. Google in a post today in its support community noted some recent updates to its streaming platform that address onboard storage, as well as overall performance.
YouTube TV details fixes for audio sync, better 1080p quality
YouTube TV — the most popular live-streaming service service in the U.S. with more than 5 million subscribers — this week gave an update on Reddit on some bug squashing and upcoming features, plus some welcome improvements. It's an interesting bit of transparency in an age in which app changelogs are all but useless.
Probably the most interesting is that YouTube TV is "testing transcoding changes, including a bit rate increase for live 1080p content." Resolution — that's the 1080p number — is just one part of what makes up the quality of the picture on your screen. Bit rate is another. Basically it refers to the amount of data being pushed to make up that resolution — like the difference between a 1,080-piece puzzle with a picture made up of five colors, or one made up of 500 colors. Think of it like that. The higher the bit rate, the better the picture. And as we've discussed before, we'll take a 1080p stream with a higher bit rate over a bad 4K stream any day of the week, particularly when it comes to sports (which is exactly what we've seen with Apple's excellent MLS streams).
