3 Disadvantages Of Watching VOD Content On YouTube TV

Along with unskippable ads that can quickly become a nuisance, licensing issues between television networks and the streaming platform can also ruin an audience's experience. Certain media may not always be available when you want to watch it, and select television shows may be missing a swath of episodes from their complete series. Not all hope is lost, however, as restricting content can have its perks for parents, and physical media can always be a great backup for saving the day.

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There is something of a workaround to this. You are able to fast-forward through ads in recorded programs, so any DVR recordings you have will be fine. However, this does require a bit of foresight, as you'll need to record the shows you want to in advance (and live TV may not have the same content as VOD). Essentially, a lot of this has to do with network agreements, as the owners of the content typically want to make sure they're still getting paid for their media.

To be fair to YouTube TV, unskippable ads in VOD content aren't unique to the platform. DirecTV follows some similar rules concerning its VOD content, and platforms like Fubo and Philo have similar ad structures (for what it's worth, Philo does state that you can skip ad breaks on a second viewing of VOD content). Living with ads is one thing, but unskippable ads may be one reason users may want to consider Blu-rays over another streaming service.

Depending on your experience with streaming services in general (or even physical media), you may already have some familiarity with region-locked content. One of the most obvious restrictions for YouTube TV in general is that it's only available in the United States. If you live in the U.S., this likely isn't going to be a big deal — but if you're the type who frequently travels within the States, this may also have an impact on what VOD content you can view.

To make things more complicated, Google is also rather vague when it comes to what this means for users. Nationally available VOD content will likely be accessible for U.S. travelers, but the availability of local content and sports may vary by region (watching certain content on mobile devices in general may also have restriction issues). Again, this can be an issue for a lot of streaming services, with many turning to a virtual private network (VPN) as a solution. However, a VPN may not be as safe as you think.

On the bright side, content restrictions can have an advantage for parents, as they can limit what content is shown to younger audiences. Parents or adults can filter YouTube TV content by its age rating (and unrated programs will not be available), meaning little ones aren't seeing things they shouldn't. Getting started is just a matter of selecting your profile photo on YouTube TV, navigating to Settings, and choosing Filter. Restricted content may have its hiccups, but parents can still use it to their advantage.

Reading this section's title, it may sound like another rant about geo-locations is coming, but another problem with YouTube is that not all content is available all the time. Thanks to licensing restrictions between Google and content providers, you may find that a movie is available one day and gone the next. This can certainly be irritating, but where it really becomes irksome is with specific episodes of television shows.

If a television series is available on YouTube TV VOD, there is no guarantee that the entire series will be available. You may find that the platform only has a certain number of episodes from a specific season. If you're trying to devour an entire season of a television series, you may find yourself getting stuck just before a major revelation. A potential solution to this can be searching for information regarding a specific show and its availability, then using the DVR function to fill in any gaps — but again, this requires planning ahead, as the DVR function can only record shows and movies as they air.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that any VOD service is likely to run into due to said licensing issues. To make things slightly more annoying, it's likely not going to be a noticeable problem until you're attempting to access a show with missing episodes. If anything, this issue can certainly bolster the argument that users should keep their DVDs and Blu-rays, as a VPN won't necessarily get you access to content that isn't available, either.

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