YouTube TV, the most popular live-streaming service in the U.S. with over 5 million subscribers as of mid-2022, announced that it’s expanding its multiview feature to more than just sports. In addition to sports, viewers will now be able to watch multiple streams from news, business, and weather categories at once.
The multiview feature, which was first implemented in early spring, allows viewers to watch up to four things at once, a feature that proved to be extremely popular, particularly during March Madness, a significant event in college basketball. However, for now, viewers are limited to preselected multiview groupings that YouTube TV chooses, without the ability to customize the streams themselves.
Users can watch multiple streams at once, but they don’t have control over what’s included in the streams. This is due to how YouTube TV built the multiview feature; everything is handled on the backend and streamed to viewers, eliminating the need for devices to juggle multiple concurrent live streams.
Some have questioned why a service that costs $73 per month hasn’t yet offered more flexibility to multiview, with PlayStation Vue having implemented a customizable multiview feature back in 2017. There is speculation about possible licensing restrictions, but no concrete information on this topic has been provided.
The expanded multiview options are rolling out to all users over the summer, according to an email from Google. However, YouTube TV customer support indicated that these new multiview groupings will be rolling out “gradually this summer” following a test phase with a small group of customers.
As an added bonus, YouTube TV is also turning on multiview capability for the standalone Spanish Plan, which includes several dozen Spanish-language channels, as well as for the Spanish Plus add-on.
Despite the expansion, it’s worth noting that the multiview feature currently remains available only on living room devices and not on phones or tablets. It will also be available for NFL Sunday Ticket, which is making its debut on the streaming service later this year, allowing viewers to watch multiple games at once.
YouTube TV continues to be available on every major streaming platform, including Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV, and Chromecast with Google TV, among others. It can also be watched via a web browser or on most major smart TV systems.
