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Rant

Discontinued Availability of YouTube

by DD1948 Apr 20, 2015 11:55PM PDT

So, 2 years ago when we built a new house, we bought 3 new "smart" Panasonic TV's ( two 42" models and 1 65" model) and had the house wired with cat 5 cable to take advantage of all the features, especially YouTube. As of yesterday, YouTube is no longer available because of a marketing decision by them. Panasonic's reply and/or response - NOTHING!!

Why bother buying a smart TV if the features you bought it for can be made defunct by a third party? I don't believe most people buy new TV's more frequently than every 6 or 7 years or longer. If nothing can be done from a technological viewpoint, then TV manufacturers would be better to go back to "dumb" TV's at a lower price rather than add features (which increase the price)that will be defunct anytime some 3rd part decides they want to change their software in order to increase ad revenues.

Discussion is locked

2 Posts

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Good point.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Apr 21, 2015 12:13AM PDT

We've seen this happen on other smart TVs. However the small boxes like Roku and new BD players can add this back in for not much. Not that makes it right.
Bob

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Good Point

by DD1948 Apr 21, 2015 7:46AM PDT

That's probably the route I will end up taking, but it means buying three boxes for the 3 TV's. I'm most disappointed in Google for deciding to upgrade YouTube and no longer provide access to the older version, without any thought for customers who only had access to the older version due to the hardware configurations of the TV. I would also hope in future the TV manufacturers would simply build TV's and no longer bother with the smart features over which they are at the mercy of 3rd parties. This might bring down the cost for consumers.

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