YouTube TV has launched early access to multiview, a feature that allows viewers to watch up to four different sports streams at once, as part of its efforts to attract more sports fans.
While enjoying multiview, YouTube TV said, people can “switch audio and captions between streams, and jump in and out of a full-screen view of a game”. The feature is now only available to select members, but the platform plans to introduce it to all subscribers in coming months.
Usually, a multiview experience would rely on a user’s high-end device to process and playback multiple streams at once. But that’s not the case with YouTube TV.
“In the absence of relying on end user devices, we moved the processing requirements to happen on our side, on YouTube’s servers,” said German Cheung, the engineering lead for the YouTube TV core experience team. “This allows all subscribers to use the feature, regardless of their home equipment, because when it’s streamed to them, their device sees only one live feed, instead of two or four.”
YouTube TV is collecting feedback from subscribers while gradually introducing the multiview feature. It seeks to improve and add more functionality to it, including options to customise the multiview streams.
“We’re looking to bring this multiview experience to the main YouTube app across TVs later this year,” said Cheung.
Apart from multiview, the platform has introduced a number of features and technologies to draw sports fans, from key plays to fantasy view and 4K streaming.