Android TV device owners who also happen to be subscribers to YouTube TV will be happy to know home screen channel support is now being added.
YouTube has not officially announced the change yet, but there are multiple user reports now coming through confirming the software support is in the process of arriving.
With the change in effect, Android TV users will no longer have to launch the YouTube TV app and then manually navigate to their favorite channels. Instead, the most frequently-accessed channels will be visible on the new YouTube TV dedicated row on the home screen, and tapping the channel will instantly launch the app and channel.
An overdue Google feature
YouTube TV and Android TV are both Google products and while it is not surprising that the channel support has now been added, what is surprising is just how long it has taken. YouTube TV has been around for some time, and Android TV for even longer, and it should have been expected that such tight software integration between the two would have already been there, except it wasn’t.
Of course, Android TV is not the only way to access YouTube TV, and unlike the live TV streaming service, Android TV is not a first-party Google product. In fact, at times it has felt like Android TV had taken a bit of a back seat from Google’s perspective, with the company seemingly less interested in the TV-optimized platform compared to its other platforms.
Whether or not that’s the case, YouTube TV is a service the company is increasingly becoming interested in supporting. Which is not surprising considering it has risen the ranks over the last year and is now one of the most subscribed to live TV services around, along with Hulu Live TV.
The fact that YouTube TV has now gained this feature should make the entire YouTube TV experience on Android TV more fluid going forward. The use of channels on the Android TV home screen is one of the biggest changes to hit the platform recently and an increasing number of apps now support the feature.
Source: Reddit
