5 Things To Know About YouTube TV, From its Reimagined Customer Service to the NFL

While YouTube TV’s price is in line with competitors like AT&T’s DirecTV Now and Dish Network’s Sling TV, the streaming service’s channel selection isn’t as robust, missing networks from big cable providers like Time Warner and Viacom, for example.

While Netflix is available in more than 190 countries and YouTube itself has a global user base, YouTube TV is a U.S.-only product for now with no plans to roll it out internationally, YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said during the Q&A. That’s due to rights issues involving its content, but it means that while an American Netflix user can easily catch up on “The Crown” while on a business trip to France, that same person has to wait to come home to watch “Top Chef” on YouTube TV.

Combined with YouTube TV’s inclusion of several ESPN and regional sports networks, it’s an easy way for fans of a specific team to catch all the games, whether they’re at home or using a mobile device (as long as they’re within the coverage area of the regional networks the games are often aired on).

[...] YouTube TV’s lack of Time Warner channels means the service doesn’t have TNT, home to many marquee NBA regular season and playoff games, as well as the NCAA basketball tournament.

[...] because of the NFL’s mobile deal with Verizon, YouTube TV subscribers can watch pro football on their desktop computers, but can’t transition to their phones and tablets, which is available for most other programs.

YouTube TV takes advantage of parent Google’s Chromecast technology, giving users the ability to start watching a show on a phone, cast it to a Chromecast-enabled smart TV mid-program, and finish it on a tablet.