Image Source: Mashable
Soon, a player made just for HDTVs will make it possible to watch YouTube Shorts on the most giant screen in the house.
When YouTube Shorts came out for the first time in the fall of 2020, they were made and set up to work best on mobile devices for both creators and viewers. Users can watch Shorts in the normal video player in the YouTube TV app. But that doesn’t work with the format, so that videos can be up to 60 seconds.
Now, YouTube’s most popular format, “Shorts,” is coming to TVs with a new way to watch them (its fastest-growing screen).
From November 7, everyone can watch YouTube Shorts on TV. Users will need a smart TV made in 2019 or later, a game console, or a streaming device.
They’ll see a new “shelf” for Shorts on the home page of the YouTube app on their TVs, or they can go straight to a creator’s channel to watch Shorts videos.
People from the YouTube Shorts team and the YouTube connected-TV team are on the team. And they had to figure out how to keep YouTube Shorts’ main idea, even more so when you shoot the videos vertically and watch them on a wide-screen TV.
During testing, they found that people liked a simple design with the video in the middle of the screen and a few other things happening. However, people also didn’t like that Shorts played in a loop. And you had to press the up button on your remote to watch the next video.
The person in charge of product management, Kurt Williams, said people want to watch Shorts on the couch with their friends. He also said that if you get tired of using your cell phone, watching something on another screen can help.
Creators of YouTube Shorts will get a cut of the profits
YouTube has started selling ads in mobile Shorts, and in 2023, it will start a program that lets creators share in the profits.
When it starts, there won’t be any ads for Shorts on TV. Wilms said that next year would be different. Also, users won’t be able to “cast” Shorts from their phones to a connected TV immediately. But, just like on mobile and the web, viewers can like or dislike a video and subscribe to the channel of the person who made it.
Two years ago, YouTube started making short videos like TikTok. After that, though, YouTube fell behind TikTok in connected TV. Because of this, the TikTok app has been available on Samsung, LG, and Google smart TVs for a while. And Amazon’s Fire TV got it for the first time in August 2020.
As the senior director of product management, Sarah Ali is in charge of the Shorts, Creation, and Community teams. She said plans have been in the works to bring Shorts to TV since the show was just an idea. “It wasn’t a matter of if but when,” she said.
Ali thinks that most people will still watch Shorts on their phones. But, with the launch of the TV experience, people will watch for longer. “Putting content on TV always brings in new viewers,” she also said.
YouTube, which Google owns, says that more than 1.5 billion users who are signed in watch Shorts every month.
Also, 135 million Americans watched YouTube on TV every month as of December 2021. Also, users have streamed more than 700 million hours of YouTube content.
