Your feed, sent to the room’s signed-in TV app
YouTube on the TV: browse your feed on the tablet, send it to the room
Sending YouTube to a television usually means one of two awkward options, either scrolling the feed with a D-pad or casting from a phone in a way that takes the television over and signs it out of everything. MediaPond aims to do neither.*
Your own feed, in the app
MediaPond browses your signed-in YouTube, with the subscriptions and recommendations you would actually put on, rather than a search box bolted onto a remote, and you scroll it on the tablet with your thumb like any other feed.
That is a different experience from steering a television interface at arm’s length, and it tends to be the thing people use MediaPond for first.
Joining the television’s YouTube rather than replacing it
Tap a video and, on supported screens, it plays in the television’s own YouTube app under the account that television is already signed in to, so watch history, subscriptions and recommendations stay where they belong instead of being overwritten by whoever was holding a phone.
The room can come up as part of the same tap, with the screen on, the correct input selected and the video playing.
Controlling it afterwards
Once a video is running, the Now Playing dock keeps transport control, with play, pause, skip and volume, so nobody needs to find the television remote to stop it.
Because YouTube is one of the few things most screens in a house can run, it behaves much the same way from room to room.
It is also the easiest way to hand the room over to somebody else without handing over a remote, since the next person can queue something from the tablet while the current video keeps playing. Where a screen does not accept video this way, MediaPond falls back to opening the YouTube app on it and leaves the choosing to you.
At a glance
What YouTube supports
- Browsing your signed-in YouTube feed inside MediaPond
- Sending a video to a room television, joining the set’s own signed-in YouTube app
- Room power-on and input switching as part of playing a video, on supported devices
- Transport and volume from the Now Playing dock
- Screens and streamers that carry a YouTube app and accept it
YouTube can change its apps and interfaces at any time, which may affect browsing or sending video to a television. Support covers the screens and streamers MediaPond currently works with.
Will this sign my TV out of YouTube?
No. MediaPond joins the YouTube app already running on the television under its own account, so the set’s history and subscriptions are left alone.
Do I browse YouTube on the TV or on the tablet?
On the tablet, using your own feed. The television only receives the video you chose.
Does it work on any television?
It works with the screens and streamers MediaPond currently supports that carry a YouTube app, and the room around them comes up the same way.
Also worth reading
- Android TV & Google TVShield, Chromecast · deep links, now playing, cold starts
- LG TVswebOS · wake, power, input, volume, app launch
- Apple TVtvOS · trackpad remote, now playing, seek
Devices and services MediaPond supports · How a room comes up · Questions and answers
Not every device or streaming app supports direct launching. MediaPond makes a good-faith, best-effort attempt to open content in the right app, and falls back to opening the app itself where a direct link is not available. Availability varies by device, app, region, and your subscriptions.
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