Skip to main content

YouTube TV recovering after apparent licensing error causes outage

YouTube TV — the most popular livestreaming service in the U.S. — is having some major hiccups early Tuesday evening.

The service, which sports more than 5 million subscribers, was coming up empty for many as of 6 p.m. ET. The channel guide was live. But choose a show and you’d get nothing but a blank screen. The culprit appeared to be some sort of licensing error across multiple devices, and we started to see channels return around 7:25 p.m. ET.

YouTube TV acknowledged the outage on Twitter.

Recommended Videos

if you’re having trouble watching @YouTubeTV rn, we’re currently having some ~technical issues~ BUT we’re working on a fix!! stay tuned 📺

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) September 6, 2022

The Team YouTube Twitter account noted that it’s “working on a fix,” which could mean that service will be restored sooner rather than later. But no ETA was given. DownDetector, which tracks user reports of website outages, showed a large spike of YouTube outages early Tuesday evening.

A post on on the status page of competing service Philo (as spotted on Reddit), which also appears to be affected, points toward an outage in Google’s Widevine DRM service that started about 6 p.m. ET. According to its website, Widevine “provides the capability to license, securely distribute. and protect playback of content on any consumer device.” In other words, exactly the sort of thing a streaming service would need — and also the sort of thing that could single-handedly take down an entirely streaming service.

It also appeared that not every channel on YouTube TV was affected. We were able to view some channels — including local broadcast affiliates. Others went blank before a playback error appeared on screen.

YouTube TV playback error.
A playback error seen on YouTube TV about 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday, September 6, 2022. Phil Nickinson/Digital Trends

The outage comes the same day YouTube TV announced that it now supports 5.1 surround sound on Apple TV, though there’s no indication of any correlation.

There’s no streaming service (or web service of any kind, really) that’s never seen an outage, and YouTube TV has been party to some fairly major outages in the past. But now that it’s the biggest streaming service in the country — with about a million more sub scribers than Hulu With Live TV — any outage is going to be that much og a bigger deal.

YouTube TV itself costs $65 a month for about 100 channels. It’s available on every major streaming platform, including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast with Google TV, various smart TVs, gaming consoles, and in a web browser.

Phil Nickinson
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
Hulu + Live TV vs. YouTube TV: how to pick the best live-streaming service
The Hulu home screen on a TV.

If you’re having trouble choosing the best live TV streaming service for your needs, we don’t blame you — viewers today have more choices than ever. Whether you're looking for a big on-demand content library or a reliable live TV streaming platform, there's no shortage of solid options to explore.

Two of the most popular choices — YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV — stand out for their reasonable pricing, similar features, and strong channel lineups. But when it comes down to it, which one should you pick?

Read more
Philo is now available on LG smart TVs
A promo image of Philo on an LG TV.

Philo is one of the least expensive live-streaming services out there. LG makes some of the most popular smart TVs. And now you get the former directly on the latter, without any additional hardware. In other words, there's now a Philo app available on LG smart TVs.

Philo sports 75 linear channels — and this year added AMC+ — for just $28 a month. So while you get around half as many channels as its competitors, you're also paying a fraction of the monthly fee. Old-timers will recognize that it's definitely more expensive than it used to be, having started at $16 a month, but it's also far less than what you'll pay for the likes of YouTube TV or Hulu With Live TV, and it's even less expensive than the most basic Sling package.

Read more
YouTube updates will help you sleep and speed things up
The new YouTube Shorts interface.

There are a million ways Google could improve the YouTube experience across all of its platforms. And today it announced a handful that aim to make how you watch on your mobile device, computer, and TV just a little bit better. The updates focus on playlists, interaction, playback speed — and maybe most importantly an option that'll keep you from waking up at 4 a.m. with Mr. Beast still doing whatever it is he does on your screen.

There are more than two dozen improvements on the way, Google says. Here's a quick look at the biggest of what's coming in the near future:
Sleep timer available to all
Sleep timer is graduating from YouTube Premium and rolling out to everyone on mobile devices. It's exactly what it sounds like — a method by which you can tell YouTube to stop playing at some point. You have a bunch of options for the sleep timer (maybe too many) and and choose whether to have videos stop after 10, 15, 20, 30, 45 minutes, or 1 hour — or when it hits the end of the current video.

Read more