YouTube's TV App Isn't Coming to Apple TV and Roku Until Early 2018

As Apple waits for its billion-dollar push into original programming to bear fruit, the company has been bulking up its overall offering with the recent addition of the Amazon Prime Video app on the Apple TV . But one app we thought would land on both Apple's and Roku's streaming boxes this year is now coming "in the next few months."

The YouTube TV app will land on the Apple TV, Roku devices, and older Linux-based smart TVs from Samsung and Sony sometime in the first quarter of 2018, a Google spokesperson told Gizmodo today.  

Apple TV owners, however, may have expected to get their hands on the app sooner. In October YouTube wrote on its blog , "In the coming weeks we'll be launching the new app on Smart TVs, such as LG, Samsung, Sony, along with Apple TV." Seven weeks later, the Apple TV app still isn't available, and when we reached out to Google about this, the spokesperson said of its launch, perplexingly, that "there's no change here." And when asked specifically about the change in language from "in the coming weeks" to "in the next few months," the spokesperson said, "there's no delay."

YouTube TV is Google's most recent venture into the world of over-the-top streaming video, where it competes against services such as Playstation Vue , Sling TV , and Hulu.

Google's service starts at $35 a month and is now available in more than 80 cities around the US, enabling subscribers to watch more than 35 traditional cable channels in a web browser or on other devices, including Android phones and tablets, Xbox One, and a number of late-model Samsung and LG smart TVs.

While owners of Roku or Apple TV boxes may be disappointed they'll need to continue waiting for these YouTube TV apps, at least both platforms are slated to get YouTube TV eventually, as opposed to the PlayStation and Fire TV devices, which Google currently does not have any plans to support.

[ CNET ]