After years of development, YouTube TV is finally rolling out a customizable multi-view feature for subscribers, allowing them to watch up to four channels of their choice from (almost) all channels in the lineup on one screen.
Multiview on YouTube TV, first introduced in March 2023, was previously limited to a preset list of sports and news channels. Multi-viewing on YouTube TV was initially limited to events like March Madness and NFL Sunday Ticket content. The service then launched several “always-on” multiviews: four preselected streams of news, business, and weather. Last year, YouTube TV began expanding multiview to include more content than just sports available on popular channels.
Going forward, customers on either the main YouTube TV plan or the recently introduced lower-priced genre plans will be able to build multi-views using any of the networks available as part of their subscription, including add-ons like NFL Sunday Ticket. (A YouTube representative said some “family-friendly” content is not available for multi-view customization.) YouTube TV’s basic plan, which costs $82.99 per month, provides access to more than 100 channels, including local feeds from ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC.
YouTube TV also received some design updates. Users can now create multi-views in the new staging area and choose from content categorized into categories such as Featured, Sports, and News. In the YouTube TV interface, users can click on the multi-view tab at the bottom of the screen and select up to four different programs available as part of their subscription.
“Today, we’re officially launching fully customizable multiviews on @YouTubeTV,” YouTube CEO Neil Maughan wrote in a post to X on Tuesday. “Our @youtube team has made one of our most popular features even better. The new multi-view builder gives you complete control over your live streams (including add-ons like @nfl Sunday Ticket) and lets you build the personalized viewing experience you’ve been looking for.”
According to YouTube, YouTube TV handles all processing for multi-view functionality on the server side, rather than stitching together multiple channels on the end user’s device. This will allow the service to offer a multi-view streaming experience without requiring special hardware in customers’ homes.
