In a recent blog post, YouTube TV has announced the debut of its multiview feature, allowing viewers to watch up to four streams at the same time. The feature begins to drop just in time for March Madness, but only a select few subscribers will have access at first.
The streaming giant says that a main goal of theirs is to open up multiviewing capabilities to all users, not just those that possess the high-powered equipment typically required for the feature. German Cheung, Engineering Lead at YouTube TV, states “Typically, when you think about a multiview experience, from a technical perspective, it requires a high-end user device to process and playback multiple streams at once and show them as one cohesive view on the screen. But the great thing about YouTube TV is that it doesn’t require any high-powered equipment, so we had to get creative in how we brought this to life.
In the absence of relying on end user devices, we moved the processing requirements to happen on our side, on YouTube’s servers. This allows all subscribers to use the feature, regardless of their home equipment, because when it’s streamed to them, their device sees only one live feed, instead of two or four.”
YouTube TV’s multiview is slowly rolling out over the next few months in an effort to receive and implement user feedback before the feature receives a full release in conjunction with the service’s NFL Sunday Ticket this fall.
See also: Microsoft adding 3D avatars for Teams if you’d rather not be on camera
