YouTube TV, Google’s new streaming television service, is the company’s first major attack on cable and geared toward the younger millennial demographic that isn’t all that keen on paying for cable (or anything). To be fair, my parents, both we into retirement age, cut their ties with cable and are now using PlayStation Vue. I’m not even using PlayStation Vue and I write about technology!
The streaming television service is now officially out, but only in five major cities. This is more of a soft launch in densely populated areas to see if Google’s internet tubes can handle all the traffic and work out the few expected kinks. Still, this is a huge step that can’t have the major cable providers all that happy.
But there seems to be a bit of an issue after the initial roll-out of the service. You see, people just don’t seem to be jumping on-board at the rate Google expected in these major markets. Google seems to be trying to capture a younger demo, of which don’t have, or normally subscribe to cable TV in the first place. This seems to be a hard sell as those users who don’t live off of live TV are comfortable using services like Netflix and Hulu.
But the service does offer up some neat features that do seemed to be geared to the younger market. You get unlimited DVR recording and a ton of sports as well, but the real magic is in the search. As this is Google, the search functionality is going to trump all others. Not only can you do basic searches for shows, but YouTube TV also offers up topical searches as well.
YouTube TV, as you would expect works on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. You can also watch it via your prefered browser, but Google Chrome is probably you best bet as it’s also a Google product (and probably the best browser anyways, so you should really be using it).
Where things get a little complicated for those, say, over 35 years of age is in getting TV, well, on your TV. You are going to need a Chromecast stick to beam over your content from your phone or tablet to the device. In essence your mobile device serves as the remote for the TV experience. If you are an early adopter to the service, Google will toss in a Chromecast stick for free.
I’m not sold on this yet for a number of reasons. Phones tend to die, especially toward the end of the day and I don’t think it very “cool” to have to have my remote control to my television plugged in to a wall outlet at all times. This also means that you are going to need another free HDMI port, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve already had to resort to a splitter just to get everything connected.
One final note, and something that I really do like is the sharing feature that comes with the $35 YouTube TV. You can share a single subscription with five users in your home, with three concurrent streams going on at the same time. It’s a nice feature that most TV streaming services lack at that price point.
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