Are we beginning to see a pattern yet? Just when we thought (or at least we were hoping) that Fox was going to be the last major network to block Google TV, Viacom has arrived just in time to rain on our parade. That’s right folks, Viacom is now blocking Google TV devices from streaming full episodes across their entire line of properties.
Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, and Nickelodeon are just a few of the Viacom owned networks that bring up the dreaded “sorry, this content is unavailable for your device” when attempting to stream a full episode from their websites. The only upside to all of this is the fact that the user agent fix (that still works on Fox.com mind you) allows you to get around this little hiccup.
I’m honestly a little surprised that this didn’t happen sooner, especially given Viacom’s rocky history with YouTube. I should also point out that you can occasionally get short clips and snippets to work, but full episodes are a no go. It will certainly be interesting to see how long the user agent fix continues to work, but for now we can officially cross Comedy Central and all other Viacom networks off our list of sites that still allow the streaming of full episodes on Google TV.
10 Responses to Comedy Central, MTV, Nick, and other Viacom properties blocked on Google TV
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all they’re doing is hurting themselves by showing the world that big media is looking to the past to keep their broken businesses alive.
If a program has advertising, what difference does it make which screen you watch it on, TV, PC, iPad, Google TV??? Why is it OK to watch on my 27″ Mac LCD screen but not on my 55″ LG LCD screen?
The only technical reason that allows networks to block Google TV is that the Flash Plugin User Agent on Google TV is set at “Google TV”, but it would be trivial, if Google and Adobe wanted to, to simply switch the User Agent not only for the browser but also for the Flash Player to “Generic”. Then the only way networks could block Google TV would be by not providing any online versions of their videos.
They’re only shooting themselves in the foot. They remove easy legal access, and what’s left is easy illegal access, where they get $0. You’d figure something would be better than nothing, and getting illegal file sharers into legal channels would be preferable. Guess it’s back to the Pirate Bay.
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Because on your PC, you can click on the ad and go straight to the advertiser’s website.
On a Google TV, you can’t really do that (and it’ll drive down clickthrough rates, decreasing ad rates overall for them).
Google and Adobe don’t want to. They aren’t trying to intentionally piss all over content providers
They’ll first try to get deals. But if content providers don’t want VOD at all even after months of negociations because they simply see it as too disruptive, then Google and Adobe will have no choice but to go totally User Agent: Generic on both browser and flash.
I am so furious about this. I paid $300 [explicative removed] dollars for this [explicative removed] paper weight!!! Google needs to address the status of this piece of [explicative removed] soon. I understand google has no control over these networks decisions, but the fact that google themselves has said next to nothing about the future of it is even more unnerving. We watch two shows in my house, I watch the daily show and my girlfriend watches 16 and pregnant. I asked myself “Why am I paying $100 a month to watch two shows when they’re available online?” Along comes google tv – so I THROW AWAY $300 and soon I’m going to have to re-instate my stupid ass dish network which is turned OFF 23 out of 24 hours every day. /RANT
On a Google TV, you can’t really do that (and it’ll drive down clickthrough rates, decreasing ad rates overall for them).