Earlier today, Cord Cutters News started to get reports that a new YouTube TV guide is being tested. This new guide has bigger spaces between channels to help make reading the guide even easier. It seems Google wanted to make reading the guide easier and help you better see what shows are live on each channel.
Now a user on Reddit has posted an image of the new guide. Helping to confirm the reports we have heard from our readers about this issue. Earlier reports suggest this new user interface is live on some Google TV and Fire TV devices. Sadly it seems to only be a test with a handful of customers getting early access to it. If you don’t have access yet, you will need to wait for Google to roll it out to more customers.
YouTube TV typically introduces new features to small test groups before making them public. This helps Google test new features and find bugs before they impact all subscribers.
This comes as Google recently announced new features for YouTube TV, including improvements to multiview, a new library, and improved picture quality, among other improvements.
Here is the full announcement from YouTube:
Hi all! We’ve been keeping busy with the FIFA Women’s World Cup, WNBA, and getting ready for the NFL season, but we’re back for another update!
Multiview: We’ve launched our multiview “always-on” streams to all YouTube TV subscribers! We’ll also be launching multiview for the upcoming football season. You’ll be able to choose from an extensive assortment of multiview combinations, including local NFL, college football, and NFL Sunday Ticket games (if you’re a subscriber).
NFL Sunday Ticket Billing Options: You asked for more flexible billing options for NFL Sunday Ticket and we listened!
- Monthly Payment & Student Plans: We’ve started to roll out the option to pay for NFL Sunday Ticket via monthly payment plans for subscribers signing up on web in most states. We’ll also be introducing student plans soon! Read more here.
- Integrated & Google Play Billing: You can now sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket through Frontier, Verizon, WOW!, and Google Play Billing.
Library Experiments: We continue to hear your requests to improve Catch Up on your Favorites relevancy and Watch badging. We’ve been testing a new version of the Library (which many of you have seen) and are listening closely to your feedback to continue to improve the experience.
NFL Sunday Ticket Preseason Early Feedback: While preseason games are not part of the standard NFL Sunday Ticket package, we’ll be testing a small set of games this weekend. For existing Sunday Ticket subscribers who want to help share early feedback, feel free to tune into the follow games:
- Saturday, August 19th at 8PM ET: Tennessee Titans at Minnesota Vikings and
- Saturday, August 26th at 1PM ET: Buffalo Bills at Chicago Bears, Seattle Seahawks at Green Bay Packers, and Arizona Cardinals at Minnesota Vikings
Video Quality: We continue to invest in improved feeds and bitrate improvements. Many users with eligible 4K compatible devices that support VP9 codecs are now seeing higher quality 1080p content with more device coverage and improvements on the way this fall.
Separately, NFL Sunday Ticket games will have distinct source feeds broadcast in 1080p (a mix of native and upscaled) compared to 720p local broadcasts. We’re working with our partners to bring more 1080p HDR and 4K games to you in the future.
5.1 Audio/Video Sync: We rolled out some fixes over the summer to address 5.1 A/V sync issues across Live playback while we work on some remaining VOD fixes. We also fixed an issue where the 5.1 toggle was not persisting. We’re aware of some related stuttering feedback on some devices that we continue to investigate.
Samsung 2020+ TV Rewind/Fast Forward Issue: We’re working with Samsung to issue a firmware update to address some playback issues when scrubbing TV.
Amazon Fire Stick Pause/Resume Issue: We’re working with Amazon to release a fix to address an issue where pausing and resuming may result in a spinning wheel or jump forward.
Thanks again for all the feedback and we’ll be back with more updates soon!