YouTube TV Update: You Cannot Skip Ads On YouTube TV, DVR Or Otherwise

By Edwin Kee
YouTube TV goes live
Fancy another entertainment channel to keep you occupied as you rest and relax after a hard day at the office? YouTube

How often do you watch TV? If you spend plenty of hours in front of a TV, then surely you would be familiar with the trappings of a DVR (Digital Video Recorder). DVRs offer the option of recording whatever shows that you are unable to catch, or perhaps there are two good shows being broadcasted simultaneously, and since we only have a pair of eyeballs and one brain, it would be impossible to concentrate on two shows at once, hence the DVR coming to your rescue. Another great advantage of having a DVR? You can skip through the ads by the fast forwarding function. However, the recently launched YouTube TV service makes sure that you have to sit through the tedium of viewing ads, since those remain unskippable even on DVR.

Yes sir, this might very well be YouTube TV biggest “weakness” that we can think of at the moment. While there are more than 50 live channels to choose from, in addition to giving you, the user, unlimited hours of cloud DVR recordings, there is a catch to all of this. You are unable to skip through the ads, even for those shows that have already been recorded on the cloud DVR.

This “discovery” has certainly left a bitter taste in the mouth of many, since it is something that folks who are used to traditional DVRs take for granted, offering a vast advantage over on-demand viewing options. The Wall Street Journal has reported that in the event of an on-demand version of a recorded show from YouTube TV is available, the user will still need to go through the ads -- and there are no two ways in going around it.

Needless to say, this “feature” was not mentioned at the YouTube TV launch for obvious reasons. Why tout a weak point in the entire setup at launch? No sane business or enterprise would do that for any new product that is being feted out to a starry-eyed market. A YouTube spokeswoman has confirmed that this is not an oversight or a bug, but rather, it is so because of the content deals that YouTube TV has agreed to with selected content providers such as ABC, NBC, and FOX.

One of YouTube TV’s rivals, PlayStation Vue, comes with DVR as well as on-demand options. The beauty of PlayStation Vue? It opens the door for users to select just which particular one that they would like to watch, and ads can be skipped totally in the DVR recording. YouTube TV users are certainly not too happy with the existing arrangement, that is for sure.

If it is of any consolation, the on-demand version of just about any episode would normally not be shown until the next day once it is aired -- so if you are one of the early birds, you would still be able to enjoy an ad-free experience. Still, chasing down such narrow windows of opportunity is not the reason why DVR was invented in the first place, be it on the cloud or otherwise.

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