YouTube TV Reviews

I don’t understand why this keeps happening on my iPad, but YouTubeTV always worked great until a few months (and a few updates) ago when the video would start freezing but the sound keeps going. Then sometimes everything freezes with the buffering spinner going, or often the show will skip around and it will take you back 20 minutes or so in the show ... sometimes just the picture and the sound is up to date, sometimes both the sound and the picture skip backward. I have very fast internet and sometimes I try to make sure it’s not my WiFi so I switch to Verizon ... doesn’t fix the issue. The only way to get it back to normal is to close YouTubeTV and reopen it. But it will inevitably happen again. I have only noticed it during live programming, and it only happens when watching one show for while, maybe 5 to 10 minutes or more without changing the show/channel. I am not having this issue on my Apple TV, my desktop iMac using Chrome or Safari, and I haven’t noticed it on my iPhone either, but I don’t use that to watch TV as much as the other devices. Please fix it, because I love the service and the freedom I get by being able to have my iPad be my portable TV all over the house as I am getting things done around the house, sitting on the back porch, etc. I did try to hard restart my iPad as well, that hasn’t helped the problem at all. PLEASE FIX THIS! IT IS DRIVING ME NUTS!!!

On the one hand, I could not be happier no longer being a customer of Cox or AT&T. On the other hand, the developers of YouTubeTV don’t seem to care about feedback. I have probably sent feedback over a dozen times about the broken state of their recommendations. Whether you like it or not, your recommendations will be FULL of sports. If you select the “Don’t show me this” option, it doesn’t care, it will still show you that same game as a recommendation. There is no way to get away from sports in YouTubeTV. They assume that everyone is a super sports fan that wants nothing in their life but constant sports games and scores. I am not one of those people. I couldn’t care less about sports broadcasts. I find it ridiculous that the “Top picks for you” is nothing is sports when I never watch any sports, ever.

Maybe the feedback in YouTubeTV is as broken as the recommendations, so I’ll ask here. Please, please, please give us a way to block certain channels from showing up in recommendations. Even better would be to make a cheaper plan that doesn’t include all the sports channels. I feel like I’m paying more than I should just because the people behind this app can’t fathom a world where anyone would not want non-stop sports, all day every day.

I was hoping YouTubeTV would suffice to replace my standard cable television, but unfortunately, I can’t watch an entire episode of anything without a video-killing bug ruining the whole thing. Specifically, about 3/4 of the way through a television series episode, the video glitches and odd things begin to happen: the audio track jumps to the beginning of the episode, the video freezes for a moment and then continues to play under the audio from the beginning. And then the advertisements! Oh goodness! For $50/month, I would expect fewer ads, but there they are every 10 minutes: 2 to 3 ads at a time. And guess what? When you have to close and re-open YouTubeTV to find your place in the episode you were watching, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. You try to track through to the spot where you left off. The episode starts to play, and then a series of ads immediately kicks in. Missed your spot? More ads. It is infuriating and app breaking. I am using a first-generation iPad Pro, for what it’s worth.

It’s honestly the best tv product I have purchased, I’ve been a member for about a yr. However, there are a few things I would love to see added:

1. When browsing through all the movies / series, you can not tell which movies or series you have already added to your library. After selecting the title, it will than show you have already added this to your library, rather than scrolling and selecting only what you need.

2. When you view what is being recorded or upcoming, it appears to be recording new episodes AND episodes I have already saved under my library. I wasn’t sure if this was a glitch, but it prevents a member from seeing what would be new and upcoming, rather than something that is already saved. Plus it only allows you to see 50, half of which you have already recorded and saved to your library.

I believe I was one of the first subscribers in my area. YouTubeTV worked flawlessly, but not anymore. When watching recordings, the program regularly stops after 40 minutes regardless of program watched. The program then starts from the beginning. I have to restart my phone to continue watching from the interrupted part. Now when watching a show that is recording and if I don’t catch it from the beginning and ask YouTubeTV to display it from the beginning, the show repeatedly starts over from the beginning on its own while I’m watching. It is extremely frustrating! My price is scheduled to increase to add more channels I don’t care to watch while the channels I inquired about having added haven’t been added and there is no communication about if they will be added. It seems like soon after I recommended the service and app, the reliability tanked. I’m not going to pay more for worse and not getting what I want. I use an iphone 8S plus with the most updated ios.

I have had this app now for about 5 months and wish I would have made the change a long time ago. So happy to cut the cable and the outrageous monthly cost. I read some of these bad reviews and I don’t understand why people are having issues. I went out and purchased a few Roku’s for my tv’s and had them set up in less than 10 minutes. Now if I want to watch on my TV I just turn it on with my Roku remote and then click this app and it connects right away and I don’t have to stream from my phone. I have found that most times I just lay in bed and watch my shows either live or from my library on my phone or IPad. I have yet to have any issues at all. I also love being able to be out and about and not miss any baseball or football games. Highly recommend this. Keep up the good work this app.

When I open a new channel, it defaults to auto picture quality. And for some reason this means that it is a total blur for 30 seconds until either it figures out that it can do better, or I manually change the quality. It should have a setting for a preferred picture quality to start watching with.

Also, it takes about seven button clicks to change a channel. It is virtually impossible to be watching one game while clicking over occasionally to see what is happening in another game on another channel. Changing channels should be one of the easiest things in the world for a TV replacement, but on this it takes exiting full screen, then minimizing the picture you are watching, then finding the other channel in the guide, then loading it up, then changing the picture quality so it is watchable. It's absurdly hard for a simple task.

i saved all my shows but this service doesn't just record the new episodes, it records all of them from every channel!! whatever channels the show is on it ALL records. theres room for it but then its using up bandwidth constantly & always running. they need to make a way to save your favorites without recording them all, i have seen others reviews where ppl say this crashes well if you are using tons of data like that you will have problems. make it so we can save favorite shows without recording. also i notice many channel like Hallmark & game show network & others are missing? if they raise it at all i will just have to go back ti sling tv. Also it’s quite a bit more pricey than some other services. We enjoy it so far.

Am I missing somewhere here? 16-20 minutes of commercials PER BREAK!
I am VERY glad I got a free trial because this is the worst streaming live TV app!! The selection is great & all of that but I just went to watch my first on demand show, after a few minutes the first commercial break started & I notice there is a counter in the top right hand corner saying there are 7 commercials ahead …. 7 in one break, the commercials are each 2-3 minutes each & there are 3 breaks per half hour show. Are you kidding me?!?! There is more commercial airtime than the actual show!! If each one is 2 minutes & 7 ads per break is 14 minutes of commercials, that happens 3 times during 1 show, that’s 42 minutes of commercials for a 26 minutes show ….. I can’t believe YouTubeTV is still running & people are paying $70 a month to watch minutes of commercials in a 26 minute show, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Canceled it immediately

When I finally said goodbye to cable, it was so liberating! I started using this app shortly after it came out, did the trial thing and was hooked. At that time it was $35 a month, and still is for us early users. As a sports fan, there are plenty of channels to choose from, and when they added MLBtv and NBAtv (at no extra charge) I felt like I had won the lottery! The overall channel selection is good, I don’t watch a lot of television, but when I do I can usually find something on in real time, you can even record shows and watch them at a more convenient time. I’d give it 5 stars if this app carried HGTV, that’s the only thing I miss from having cable. Very rarely have I experienced any technical issues, far less actually than I had with cable. So as for me, I’ve been very happy with this app and will have cable never again!

PROS: you get your local channels, the staple channels such as ABC CBS NBC FOX etc. and a variety of sports channels.

CONS: we have experienced CONSTANT problems despite the fact that we have high speed internet such as not being able to change channels because it will change on the phone but not on the TV and then no longer pulls up the TV to cast to so we are left to uninstall & reinstall YouTubeTV EVERY time and programs not playing just to name a couple. Also not a very wide variety of channels to choose from. While you have options to choose from for sports, there's a deficiency to offer popular alternatives like possibly HGTV, GSN, Lifetime, Hallmark or any type of cooking channels. So when comparing pricing and channels offered with dish networks, it's really not worth the trouble to pay the same or comparable for less channels and less conveniences so I'm glad a free trial was offered to know what the service would be like before buying, although I've heard canceling is just as difficult.

I’m a one subscriber and not sure how long I will be. But I haven’t had Home cable or Internet for five years now, it’s just to expensive to pay for something that keeps you trapped in your home. Think about it folks, these cable companies are making you pay to stay home. To me that’s a rip-off. I’ve seen many things disappear from our lives, wire phone, vinyl records, 8 track, VCR’s, development of pictures.. to mention s few. Sorry to tell you folks but cable is pase. I’m sure their will be a lot of cleanup work to make YouTubeTV work flawlessly with all platforms but I think plugging in your cellphone to your TV is awesome!! I just hope they don’t get too greedy. I still have a lot learn about it before I decide to continue, and see if I still have TV when it’s stormy an of course money is always the deciding factor.

Needs work
When you hide channels that you don’t want to see but every now and then, you have to add them back to your list to watch them. Then I have to remove them again just so I can only see my regular channels that I use daily. Need a list of “your list” and a “view all”.
Would also like to be able to set where I want it to open to. I’d like to set it to open Live TV because that’s what I use the most. But I have to wait for it to load then I have to change it to Live and wait again.
Would also like to be able to view the evening lineup by swiping down the timeline. It’s 6pm but I just want to see what’s on at 9. I have to leave my view and go to the channel. I should just be able to swipe down to 9. If I like it set a reminder to come back and watch at 9. I want to be able to see all channels at once at 9, not click each individual channel to see 9.
Thanks!

First off, cutting cable was a great decision! Thank you for airing all my sports! That was the only thing holding me back from cutting the cord a while ago! Awesome sauce! Okay now that I got that out of the way, here’s the details. The iPhone app is great. It works great on WiFi and pretty good on cellular as long as I have good service at the time. Now the Apple TV app is horrible...that’s why I give this four stars. I have to screen share from my phone to the Apple TV as the TV just sits with the circular loading screen. And when it does decide to display, it is a horrible picture. Please really look into the Apple TV app. I know the most recent gen runs 4K and if you’re looking for a easy way to tell us you need to charge extra to see in 4K like Netflix, just tell us. Please figure out the Apple TV app sooner than later.

The service and the associated AppleTV app have been the perfect replacement for my FIOS TV service here in New York.

I’m giving it five stars simply because I’m so happy with the change— but there is room for improvement:

1. There should be the ability to hide channels you don’t EVER watch, or vice versa, being able to mark channels as Favorites, be able to scroll through only those. Currently in the Live guide, I have to scroll through endless specialized sports channels in order to get to the channels of personal interest to me.

2. The organization of the “Home” and “Library” tabs could be a little more intuitive. Once a show is watched, it should disappear from the “New recordings” list. I also feel like “New recordings” should also group themselves into per-show folders.

3. I find the behavior of the AppleTV remote to be a quite jumpy, especially when going left and right in between Library, Home, Live, and Search.

4. Please support single sign-on on the AppleTV to make using per-channel apps easier! The endless logins are tiresome.

Can’t wait for some refinement to the UI, but overall still extremely happy with the apps and with the service!

I am completely happy with my service, and there only two things I would like answers to. 1 I used to be able to control the streaming quality thru a menu you have on the screen, the option is still there, but it does absolutely nothing anymore to lower or raise the quality when you select a resolution. Can we please enable this again so that I am not burning thru my data in two weeks watching shows on my phone when I am out side of the house?
2nd why can we not get history channel added to line up? I miss some of the shows I watched on there and refuse to sign up for their stand alone service, I already have enough streaming services at this point..
thanks for your prompt attention to these matters..
Jeff.

ok ok ok i LOVE this TV it has amazing pictures and absolutely no glitches!! other people have been saying “oh way to many glitches!” yeah don’t listen to them there is absolutely 0 glitches i had sling before and i’m telling you the tv was so crazy blurry but this has a difference and it’s not hard to use at all! so easy!! it’s simple and easy. also you can fast forward it on most shows unlike most channels. and if your a technically lover than this is for you it’s so upgraded and seems like you could use it on the future. but.... there is only one downside it’s expensive just maybe i bit cheeper but it’s totally worth it!! hope you like this and please if your looking for another tv Chanel GET THIS

I definitely love YouTubeTV, I think it’s a better option than cable and much less expensive. The only improvement I’d like to see is a better way to skip forward while watching longer programs on the Apple TV platform.

The issue is there’s no 15 second fast forward while watching shows using the Apple TV remote and this happens to be a problem because if you are trying to slide your finger forward during commercials you tend to over shoot your mark quite easily. I’ve noticed when I’m using other programs, such as Netflix, the Apple TV remote has a 15 second fast forward option by simply placing your finger at the bottom right or bottom left part of the trackpad on the remote.

Other than that it’s a great way to watch TV and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Update: Just changed from one to four stars. Looking back at emails I see that I did pause my account but I never received an email saying that my account is about to be back restore. Think they have a good way to get back refund and this is a good app which I hope to get back in maybe in the future when I’m able to. Lots of people have a lot going on so would be nice to receive a notification not just hey your account been restored.

Previous one star review: Just got an email saying my account was restored. Only had the free trial awhile ago and didn’t just restore it. Trying to figure out how it even went though since I don’t have enough money in my bank account. Also can’t find how to cancel it again.

Was $40 and now $65! We need tier pricing. I don’t need all those added Chanels NOR the continuous PRICE INCREASES. To watch in my home TV you have to have internet. Well that is around $79 a month then add this app’s outrageous increased price of $65! That makes $144 FREAKING DOLLARS A MONTH!!! WE CAN GET CABLE, INTERNET and a TON more for less money through the cable company now. Yep, for $90 a month. Google/this app has forgotten why we QUIT CABLE! OVERPRICED SERVICE that we can not afford. NOW YOUR DOING THE SAME DARN THING! We are teased into cutting the cord with your original lower price and in a few short years your screwing us. PLEASE START A TIER PRICING PLAN WITH A BASIC MEMBERSHIP NO MORE THAN $40! It’s nice to watch over my phone when I’m not home but we want to watch on our TV and now your TOO DARN HIGH! Come on guys. You’ve gotten GREEDY! We could care less about all the extra FLUFF Chanel’s your adding.

I started off paying $40 a month and now $50. I wanted to ditch cable/satellite but still watch my local sports. That’s the only reason I purchased YouTubeTV. It does deliver on all my local sports. I usually start my live sports late just so I can fast forward through the commercials. I’m fine with the commercials on those since it’s being pulled off major tv networks. I can fast forward through those. However, I tried to watch the movie La La Land last night and there was truthfully more commercial time than movie time. At every commercial break, the movie was shut down and an add for the Venetian Resort would play that I could not fast forward through. Obviously this was ad time purchased and paid to Google. I’m a child of the 80’s. A perk of purchasing cable tv back then was avoiding commercials since we were actually PAYING FOR OUR PROGRAMMING. What’s the difference here. If I’m throwing down $50 a month, why is Google still sticking adds in there. I understand the ads on regular Youtube.....it’s free. They’re providing free content and I understand they have to generate some revenue. There should be no ads I can’t fast forward through if I’m paying for the service.

The service is great-streams really well. I love the On Demand feature as well. The interface is easy to navigate and find what you’re looking for. A couple improvements I would make to the iPad are:
- slowness to close out of a show. Clicking the minimize icons takes a 3-5 seconds and the clicking the exit icon (or swiping the show down to the corner to close it out also takes another 3-5 seconds)
- the progress bar along the bottom to fast forward and go back is not placed well on the iPad - if you try to use the ‘swipe up’ iPad iOS feature to get to the brightness bar to lower the brightness, it always hits the show progress bar and you lose your spot in the show.

I was super excited to download this free trial to watch the World Series. I think this has super great potential. However… In order to watch a show on your TV, you have to screen share from your Apple device. So that means… First, that anytime you want to use Siri to talk to text, your show will end. Next, every time I try to watch a show on-demand and it gets to commercials, it automatically crashes. That makes me have to completely close YouTubeTV and restart it. Very annoying. Last, if I’m trying to browse the web while I’m watching a show, certain sites will make the show crash as well. I tend to multitask a lot while watching TV, so these are relevant problems for me. If you can handle watching TV without being on your phone and letting your phone do its thing while it broadcasts a show, you should have no issues.

The most feature and content rich service available for the money. Hands down. My roommates and I all share access to the service and each person (+ significant others) are added as "family" members. Everyone has their own log in and ability to record shows without conflict. It's amazing. That's $35 divided by 6 people who all have their own set up! I have a Chromecast and a Google Home Mini set up, which is useful for controlling the TV. If I know what I want to watch, I can tell the Google Mini the show, movie, or channel to throw on. I can also tell it to pause, rewind, or fast forward. What I'm trying to say is that I've tried other services and nothing even remotely competee from my perspective.