YouTube TV is about to get even better for fans of live sports, thanks to a much-needed upgrade to the multiview feature. Now, instead of being stuck with whatever curated games YouTube TV has decided people want to watch, you’ll soon be able to pick them yourself and build a custom multiview screen.
Multiview first launched last year as a preview feature during March Madness. This offered users the chance to simultaneously watch up to 4 live sports games on a single TV screen. It expanded over the following months, offering some non-sports content and an even wider range of games.
But you were stuck with pre-set viewing options, which is less than ideal. Fortunately, it looks like that will be changing. One Reddit user (via 9to5Google) spotted that a new “build a multiview” option is rolling out to select users.
So if you’re streaming one live game, you can choose the “build” option to add up to three more live games. However, if you like the curated list, that will still be available for you to choose. It also looks like this feature will let you choose from any game that’s currently playing, rather than restricting you to NBA games.
However, Google told The Verge that this feature is currently restricted to NBA League Pass and NCAA basketball games. YouTube TV will be adding more live sports “over the next few months”.
But that’s not all YouTube TV has in store for subscribers. Google is also making a change to a feature that’s designed to reduce latency for live streams — which are notorious for the bigger delays compared to live TV broadcasting.
Previously you could choose to “reduce broadcast delay” in the three-dot menu, but this would only stay active for 48 hours. Now you can keep the feature toggled on indefinitely should you choose. Though YouTube does warn that your video playback may be choppier than you’d like.
So it’s currently a good time to be a sports fan with a YouTube TV account. Especially if you’re really into basketball. Let’s just hope that more games come to the new build a multiview feature, and Google works to keep shaving off whatever latency it can on live games.
