The end could be in sight
Thanksgiving is right around the corner and that means two things: family and TV. Many households have been ditching cable and moving to online services for their TV needs. Unfortunately for users of YouTube TV, that idyllic Thanksgiving could be under threat as its live TV service seems to be having some problems.
Over the last few days, users of multiple smart TV platforms have been reporting that the YouTube TV app — not just the stream — was freezing in the middle of playback (spotted by 9to5Google). Getting things working again tends to involve exiting the app and restarting it from the home menu.
TV fans on Reddit have reported the issue on their smart TVs (Samsung, Sony, LG), streaming boxes (Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast, Apple TV, Nvidia Shield), and game consoles (PS4, PS5, Xbox One) alike. Oddly, this issue doesn’t seem to be affecting phone and tablet users.
Although this issue affects YouTube TV subscribers with all sorts of hardware, we first heard about it in the context of Roku users in particular, and it sounds like they’re having a particularly hard time of it. A common troubleshooting step for issues such as this would be to remove the YouTube TV channel from the Roku device and then reinstall it, but that’s just not possible as things stand today.
Roku and YouTube are still feuding, which has left the YouTube TV app unavailable on the Roku Channel Store for months, with Google inserting a clever workaround in the standard YouTube app to keep the service available to new and old users. And even that’s not going to last, as the standard YouTube app is due to be removed from Roku next month.
Fortunately for YouTube TV subscribers the issues appear to be subsiding. Reports of problems on Downdetector peaked yesterday evening but have gone back to baseline levels as of this morning. Hopefully that means smooth sailing for turkey day!
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