[Updated] YouTube TV users want Google to stop adding features & focus on bug fixes: 5.1 surround, wrong metadata, HDR, & other issues

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Until then, keep tabs on this story, as we will update it with further developments.

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.

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