YouTube TV moved a major channel to a $15-a-month add-on

By Phil Nickinson August 5, 2022

YouTube TV this week shot an email to subscribers warning that it’s moved a major Spanish-language channel from its base package to an optional add-on. The change took effect on August 4.

Universo, which is owned by NBCUniversal, now resides in the “Spanish Plus” add-on. It costs $10 a month for the first six months before jumping to $15 a month. The add-on has a free seven-day trial. In addition to the Spanish Plus add-on, YouTube TV also has a standalone Spanish Plan — simply called “The Spanish Plan” — that gets you more than two dozen Spanish-language channels for $35 a month. You can subscribe to that plan without also subscribing to the YouTube TV base plan.

YouTube TV app icon on Apple TV. — Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

The good news for folks who have enjoyed Universo until now is that anything you’ve recorded from that channel will remain in your library for up to nine months. So set a reminder for April 2023, perhaps, if you’re worried about those recordings.

YouTube TV has more than 5 million subscribers at last count, with a single base plan of about 100 channels for $65 a month. It’s also one of the only ways to stream any live TV in 4K resolution — specifically, sports — and there’s a fair amount of on-demand content available in 4K, too, as part of the “4K Plus” package that adds another $20 a month to your bill.

There also are a fair number of other optional add-ons available for YouTube TV, including a Sports Plus package, HBO Max, Showtime, and AMC+, to name but a few, which should help if you’re trying to decide between YouTube TV and Hulu With Live TV.

YouTube TV is available on every major streaming platform in the United States, including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Android TV, Apple TV, on smart TVs, and in a web browser.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Section Editor, Audio/Video

Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…

Audio / Video

This long-awaited YouTube TV feature is a channel-flipper’s dream

The previous channel feature on YouTube TV on a TV.

The move from cable to streaming for live TV changed a lot of things. Choice, for one. (We have more.) Price, for another. (You're likely paying less.) But not all changes were great. If you're of the channel-surfing variety — or love to flip back and forth between two channels — you've likely been missing that feature.

YouTube TV — the most popular streaming service in the U.S. with more than 8 million subscribers — has addressed the latter. After having been teased in some A/B testing for a while now (that is, some folks saw it, and most didn't), it looks like the ability to hop back and forth between two channels is now rolling out more broadly.

Audio / Video

If you don’t see CBS in 4K on YouTube TV, try this

Super Bowl in 4K on CBS on YouTube TV.

A quick heads up if you have the 4K add-on for YouTube TV but aren't seeing the option to watch Super Bowl 2024 in 4K on CBS: It's likely because you're using a custom sort on your live channel listings. (Which is something you might have done if you want to hide YouTube TV channels that you never watch.) That'a bad enough for the game itself, and it also means you won't be able to enjoy the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 4K.

This is a known problem — and has been for years — anytime YouTube TV adds a new channel to the listing. If you're not using the default sort on the live channel listings, a new channel will appear at the bottom of the listings, which is bad enough. But worse is that it's hidden by default until you actively go in and unhide it.

Audio / Video

YouTube TV: plans, pricing, channels, how to cancel, and more

The YouTube TV on a Roku TV.

When you think of streaming video, you think YouTube. And so YouTube TV — Google's live TV streaming service — very much just makes sense for a lot of people. Designed for those who want to cut the cord and ditch their cable or satellite subscriptions (and known in the industry as a multichannel video programming distributor, or MPVD), YouTube TV competes in the same arena as other streaming television services like DirecTV Stream (formerly known as AT&T TV Now and DirecTV Now), Sling TV, FuboTV, and Hulu With Live TV.

And YouTube TV offers a unique mix of features that make it very appealing, so much so that it's now the No. 1 service in the U.S. in terms of the number of paid subscribers, with more than 8 million subscribers as of February 2024 — up more than 3 million since Google last gave an update in mid-2022. The popularity is due to several factors. YouTube TV is easy to use. It's got a selection of channels that's competitive with all its rivals. And the YouTube TV price is competitive, too. You're able to watch YouTube TV on pretty much any modern device. And the fact that parent company Alphabet (aka Google) has been marketing the heck out of it the past few years certainly hasn't hurt, either.