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Comment by thih9 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how similar is the TV user experience and the content that gets watched there - to the desktop/mobile user experience and content. Is anyone here using YouTube in both contexts?

Personally I watch on my laptop or iPhone; I usually look at reviews or short tutorials, I often fast forward, stop mid clip, or switch to another window - which is also why I don't watch YouTube on a TV at all.

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I use YouTube in 3 contexts, mobile, laptop and TV. Since the remote slows down my inputs the most I watch longer content (e.g 20 minute or longer videos) on TV. I do notice that YouTube plays longer ads, somewhere around a minute’s worth, on TV. They likely realized that consumers are used to putting up with long commercial breaks in this medium.

> They likely realized that consumers are used to putting up with long commercial breaks in this medium.

And you can't really install ad-blockers to skip / block either.

Yes: I use TV youtube to watch longer stuff like films. You'd be surprised how many free films there are, both pirated and legitimate e.g. https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/warner-bros-free-movie...

I also use it for TV-equivalent live streams. The Eurovision song contest has recently started streaming most of the national-level pre-contests on its youtube channel, which is considerably easier than trying to juggle fifty different national broadcaster sites which are not in English and may be geolocked.

TV experience is vastly inferior to mobile. If you watch YouTube on Apple TV, they definitely make it known you're a second class citizen. The app is clunky, slow and the video player isn't the easiest to scrub (especially if you want to navigate "chapters"). Also it's baffling how you can't use YouTube as a music app with repeat/shuffle controls even though they have a dedicated "Music" section.

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