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Three months now with YouTube TV as my main source of living room media consumption and I can honestly report that I do not miss my cable provider one bit. For those of you unfamiliar, YouTube Tv is Google’s take on the cord-cutting movement that includes companies like Sling, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now and more recently Hulu Live TV.
In select markets, YouTube TV offers a fairly robust channel lineup including your local stations, which is something lacking from some of the other popular services. For me, the mixture of sports, networks and kid-friendly programming was more than enough to make the switch and it cut my cable bill in half.
Along with a good channel lineup, YouTube TV offers unlimited, cloud-based DVR storage to record all your favorite shows. All of this for only $35 is a deal that’s tough to beat.
YoutTube TV is pretty great and thanks to the Google Assistant it just got a little better. If you have a Google Home, Home Mini or have ordered the upcoming Google Home Maxx, you can now control YouTube TV with just your voice.
As with many other streaming services, YouTube TV can now be beckoned using your Google Home speaker to cast to Chromecast-enabled devices in your home. Check out a few examples of commands you can use.
- Play “This Is Us”
- Play the MLB game
- Play MSNBC
- Play the latest episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”
- Play last week’s “NCIS”
- Record “Empire”
- Play, pause, stop, rewind 15 seconds, turn captions on, or fast forward two minutes
In the smart-home department, Google is certainly gaining a lot of ground. Between the Home line of products, Chromecast and the ever-growing list of third-party apps and hardware, there is little you can’t control around the house.
This got me thinking. Will you be able to control YouTube TV with speakers like the newly launched TicHome Mini from MobVoi? With most of the features of the Google Home and the Assistant baked right in, I presumed it should but I wanted to know for sure.
So, I asked.
A pleasant chat with Google Home’s 24/7 support team offered up the answer I was looking for. Currently, there is no support for this function on third-party speakers with Google Assistant. The representative forwarded my inquiry to the engineering department to see if this was something that may be added in the future and I was assured I would be alerted if and when that happened.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to tell my Home Mini to change the channel. Happy streaming.
Source: The Keyword
