As you attempt to watch the World Cup this summer, you may have noticed that YouTube TV isn't performing as usual on your Roku streaming device. It's possible this could be due to a recent May update from Google. It's affecting many of the best Roku devices.
The degraded performance appears to affect Live Guide in YouTube TV, with both a restriction on your Live Guide list and pausing background play when you search in Live Guide.
I dug through the YouTube TV community support forums and complaints started appearing in late May when the last YouTube TV update went live. The complaints concern a shortened Live Guide list going from multiple days out to only a few hours at the worst.
What we found
According to one of the product experts in the forum, YouTube TV intentionally degraded performance and background playback to "prevent crashing and create a more seamless experience for those devices."
"A change was made recently for older and less powerful devices and smart TVs. For these TVs and devices, background play is no longer supported. The amount you can scroll into the future is also impacted," 'Diamond Product Expert' BryanGR86 has posted under multiple threads.
They claimed that it should only affect older, lower-end devices. However, I have seen reports from owners of newer Roku Ultra devices that are having the same problem.
Additionally, BryanGR86 mentions multiple devices including Apple TV 4K, Amazon's Fire Sticks, the Google Chromecast and more, but on the whole it appears this issue is mainly affecting Roku owners.
Recommendations: Consider upgrading
The advice is to upgrade your streaming device to the newest hardware to get the full YouTube TV experience. If you go that route we have picked the best streaming devices that will give you access to a wide range of services beyond YouTube TV.
It's unclear how many streaming devices this degradation actually affects. Google's compatibility page does note that "select devices with 512mb or less of memory may have a slightly different experience and some features may not be available."
Tom's Guide has reached out directly to Google and Roku about the degraded performance. We will update this article if either company responds.
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