Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- YouTube TV has begun a limited rollout of its fully customizable multiview feature, moving away from restrictive preset channel bundles.
- The new “Add to multiview” option lets users select up to four streams from categories such as sports, news, and movies.
- The feature is currently account-specific and has started appearing for a small number of users in the US on both TV and mobile platforms.
YouTube TV, not to be confused with YouTube on TVs, is Google’s live streaming service that offers cable and local content. One of the great features of YouTube TV is multiview, which lets you display two to four live streams on your TV at once, with all processing handled on YouTube’s servers rather than your TV. YouTube promised a “fully customizable” multiview was coming soon, and it seems that the time is finally here.
Reddit user Chief_Wahoo_Lives reports seeing a new multiview selection process on YouTube TV. The feature now seems to include all channels, with sections for recommended, sports, news, movies, shows, and others.
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The new multiview selection process is also available to the user on mobile:
A couple of other Reddit users also mention receiving the feature in the post’s comments, indicating that a small rollout is definitely underway. However, before you get too excited, such rollouts are often account-specific and not device-specific, and they take their own sweet time to reach more users.
The reaction on Reddit has been positive, with users in sports-heavy markets like Philadelphia noting they can finally pair their local RSNs with national broadcasts — a feat previously impossible under the preset multiview system.
To check if you’ve received the new multiview selection process, open a livestream and press the down button on your remote (or tap the player on mobile). This will open the multiview selection process, where you can select the new “Add to multiview” option. If you see a wide variety of new channels across sports, news, movies, and more, you have the feature, and you can pick up to three additional channels to fill your grid. If you don’t see the new option, be patient and cross your fingers for a swift rollout.
YouTube TV’s fully customizable multiview is a game-changer. It does away with the preset nature of the feature, as YouTube previously chose the channel combinations for the users. Customizability is even more impressive in the context that the livestreams are merged on YouTube’s servers and delivered to the user as one livestream. You can imagine the magic the service had to employ to scale its processing power to handle such a large number of possible customizations.
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