YouTube TV is readying the launch of a fully-customizable multiview option that will allow users to select up to four live channels to watch from a single screen.
The feature has been offered for a limited amount of channels on YouTube TV over the past few years, offering pre-selected aggregation feeds of news networks, business channels and sports channels like ESPN.
A version of YouTube TV’s multiview feature has also been available to subscribers of the NFL Sunday Ticket, which allowed football fans to choose from dozens of pre-built feeds offering live games from CBS and Fox, as well as the NFL Sunday Ticket if that channel is part of their package.
Since its multiview feature launched, YouTube has chosen the feeds and the options that are available to subscribers — which meant some live football games weren’t available in multiview on mobile devices, since the company prioritized TV viewing, according to some of the service’s customer support specialists.
That will change in the coming months, with YouTube TV set to launch “fully customizable multiview” options, YouTube TV CEO Neal Mohan wrote in a letter to customers on Wednesday.
It isn’t clear how YouTube TV plans to accomplish this. The pre-selected feeds offered over the past few years were largely intended to accommodate YouTube TV subscribers with low-power streaming devices, including cheap Roku and Amazon Fire TV sticks and streamers.
Fully-customizable multiview options have been available to Fubo subscribers for some time, but only those who use premium streaming devices like the Apple TV 4K or the Roku Ultra, though that service has also made efforts to bring multiview features to other devices.
In addition to the multiview feature, Mohan reaffirmed an earlier announcement that YouTube TV will soon offer more than 10 flexible programming packages that curates live TV channels across different themes, including sports.
YouTube has not offered insight into what these packages will look like, what specific channels they will offer or how much those packages will cost. The service gained the ability to move channels into differentiated programming packages after reaching new distribution agreements with Comcast’s NBC Universal and the Walt Disney Company last year.
