New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on January 6, 2023) follows:

YouTube TV is a popular streaming service from Google that has attracted subscribers from other platforms in a short period of time.

It offers one the ability to view live TV channels and also supports playback of on-demand content such as sports matches, and recorded TV programs like daily soaps or news.

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Every now and then, the company keeps on adding new features to the platform’s feature set in order to stay on par with its competitors.

However, such frequent changes can sometimes ruin things or create bottlenecks, which may end up ruining the viewing experience.

YouTube TV users want Google to stop adding features and focus on fixing bugs

YouTube TV has been in the news since it bagged the rights to air the NFL Sunday Ticket. However, given the issues that repeatedly pop up, some appear concerned.

Users believe that YouTube TV has been significantly buggy and unreliable in the past few months, which has made their viewing experience terrible.

We recently covered some related issues in which the viewers experienced oversaturated colors while watching 4K content, random video playback rewind, or restart, and poor video quality and bitrate on the platform.

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Some have also reported an issue where the app freezes during ads or commercials and while using rewind or fast-forward. Some Apple TV owners also complained about choppy or stuttering video playback issues.

These bugs seem to have been around for ages, and it doesn’t look like the company has put in all its efforts to get rid of such issues. Instead, the focus seems to be on adding new features.

For instance, a Redditor complained that they experienced difficulties trying to watch the World Cup games on their television, as the playback would get motion blur and frame rate issues in just about 30 minutes.

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This made the picture/video quality unappealing to the user. Even though they had complained about it to YouTube TV support, nothing more than the usual forwarding and waiting thing happened.

Also, it appears some issues still remain on the Apple TV as another user complained that the 5.1 audio sync bug has remained unfixed for several months.

Another one was also of the view that YouTube TV devs seem to have deprioritized support for Apple TV over the past year.

Why does this feature still not work properly, audio is not synced with 5.1 on Apple TV. This has been reported as a bug for months. How can the solution be just done use the feature lol, ridiculous
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Other reported issues are with wrong metadata on recorded programs, mostly with Discovery-owned shows that made episodes end up in the ‘extras’ section. There have also been constant issues with 4K HDR video content.

While regular YouTube offers this on AppleTV, YTTV does not. If you tune into an HDR 4K event or show, it will not look right, because YTTV doesn’t switch to HDR automatically. It doesn’t support matching dynamic range on AppleTV. So you have to go dive into AppleTV settings each time and manually change this.
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Such issues have left most people disappointed, as they end up soiling their experience when tuned into their favorite TV shows, series, movies, or while watching live sports matches.

Affected users have taken to social media and web forums countless times to highlight the irritating issues and have often requested the developers to permanently resolve these issues beforehand as well.

But since no proper solutions were offered, several have criticized the platform for taking such a causal approach to recurring YouTube TV bugs.

They also feel that paying extra for premium services doesn’t offer any advantage if issues are going to pop up every now and then.

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Considering all this, users are demanding that Google abandons its obsession with adding new features, as it’s useless if the current ones don’t work properly.

YouTube TV instead needs to focus on fixing existing bugs and should ensure that the experience remains as flawless as it was intended to be. Only then can they embark on adding new features.

Official Response

It is also worth noting that, a YouTube engineer responded on the matter and conveyed to users that they have several Apple upgrades in progress and planned for Q1 2023, which will help resolve some of the issues.

Since there are separate development environments and app store requirements, it makes it difficult for them to address the issues simultaneously.

YouTube TV bugs-ACK
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Until then, keep tabs on this story, as we will update it with further developments.

Update 1 (March 21, 2023)

07:00 pm (IST): It looks like YouTube might have fixed the HDR issue with the v1.13.1 update. So if you are facing this issue update now.

Update 2 (April 21, 2023)

05:50 pm (IST): YouTube team has confirmed that they’ve mitigated the primary cause of the a/v sync issues when surround sound is on and they’ll be testing a fix soon.

5.1 Audio/Video Sync: After extensive investigation, we believe we’ve narrowed down the primary cause of the a/v sync issues when surround sound is turned on and will be testing a fix soon. (Source)

Moreover, they are testing some changes for the live 1080p content.

Picture Quality Experiments: We’re testing transcoding changes, including a bitrate increase for live 1080p content over the next several weeks. These will target devices that support the VP9 codec with high-speed internet connections. If these go well, we plan to make them permanent by this summer. More info to come!

Update 3 (June 7, 2023)

05:59 pm (IST): YouTube TV users can rejoice as support is gearing up to roll out a series of fixes in the coming weeks to resolve A/V sync issues during Live playback:

5.1 Audio/Video Sync: We’re rolling out some fixes over the next few weeks to address A/V sync issues across Live playback. We continue to welcome feedback! Feel free to leave a picture of your Stats for Nerds and your device information on this thread if you’re still experiencing issues. We’re also actively working on a separate follow on fix for VOD audio sync issues.
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PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.

Kanav Sood
740 Posts

I love technology and like to talk about the latest news in the Tech industry.

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