Top cord-cutter service YouTube TV gives people a clean and elegant cable TV alternative, and it's also gained one of the competition's best features. YouTube TV introduced multiview this past spring as a perk for March Madness viewers, enabling them to watch multiple channels at the same time.
But since that was rather limited, YouTube TV just announced that this feature is expanding out of the sports arenas. In a post dated yesterday (June 21) on the YouTube TV sub-reddit, user TeamYouTube_Jessie explained that "a small portion of members will see us testing our brand new always-on multiview streams."
These streams will deliver combo streams for sports, deportes (Spanish-language sports), news, business news and weather. You can find these multiview stream options in the Home tab, under the "Watch in multiview" section. Here's a tweet from YouTube TV that visualizes the feature in a GIF:
And, we’re ROLLING 🔴🎥Starting today in the Home tab, a small portion of members will see us testing up to 5 brand new multiview streams that will be available to watch 24/7 across news, sports, business news, weather, and Deportes. pic.twitter.com/wYDPjWWmDzJune 21, 2023
We originally expected updates to multiview this fall, in time for YouTube TV's NFL Sunday Ticket offering. Jessie said multiview will be coming for Sunday Ticket, which makes sense as as access to all the games means you'll want to watch them all. And not everyone has that many TVs.
But what if you don't see this feature? Jessie noted that you'll need to just wait, as this feature is being "gradually" rolled out to all subscribers during the summer. There is no way to opt-in or gain early access. Don't hunt for multiview on your phone, as the post notes that "Multiview is currently only supported on living room devices."
YouTube TV's continued work on multiview helps it hold onto its title as one of the best cable TV alternatives. This welcome feature comes after an $8 per month price hike.
Competitor Fubo also offers multiview, but only on Apple TV devices. Speaking of which, the Apple TV 4K hardware supports multiview in Apple's MLS and MLB sports streams, too.
Analysis: YouTube TV's multiview still has room to grow
YouTube TV's only basically dipped a leg into the pool when it comes to multiview. Until it offers users the ability to select their own sets of channels, this will still look like a public beta test.
The aforementioned Reddit post subtly acknowledged that this is something we should expect to change, with the note "We're currently only offering pre-selected multiview streams." Hopefully that "currently" doesn't last long.
Sports fans could easily also have a need to keep an eye on the weather, especially if they have plans to go see an outdoors game or play one themselves. Heck, you might want to watch your favorite sitcom on one part of your screen while you have the news open in the other corner, as you wait for updates.
Multiview, though, is a feature that should also be adopted at the hardware level. Speedy devices such as the Apple TV 4K (2022) and Amazon Fire TV Cube (2022) seemingly pack the performance to run multiple apps at once, and this feature would help both make their higher prices make more sense. As someone who's recently used a laptop to watch combat sports in the Fite website while watching the NBA Finals on Hulu + Live TV on my TV, I believe the need is there.
