Meta Quest: Hands-on with YouTube co-watching
Two years after it was first announced, YouTube co-watching is finally available for Meta Quest. Was it worth the wait?
A beta version of Youtube co-watching is rolling out now to Quest headsets, and MIXED has tested it with Quest 3.
I invited Christian to my Horizon home and tested the new feature with him. Read about its strengths and weaknesses in the following article, which also includes a video (in German, so make sure you have auto-translation turned on).
Watching YouTube videos together is easy
For YouTube co-watching, all users must have the official YouTube app installed and a current generation avatar. Christian has Horizon OS update v69 installed on his Quest, while I am already on v71 (PTC). This was not a problem, though.
I sent Christian an invitation to my Horizon Home, and shortly after his avatar appeared in my virtual environment. I then opened the YouTube app and switched to 2D mode (the immersive mode does not support co-watching). Finally, I tapped the co-watching option and invited Christian to join me in a YouTube session.
A large virtual Youtube screen appeared in my Horizon Home. To our surprise, everyone can control playback and launch videos from their personal feed - which hopefully won't lead to arguments about what to watch next. The personal feed itself is invisible to others.
We have not found a way to change the size or position of the screen. Only the resolution of the videos can be adjusted. In our test, we were able to increase this up to 2160P, depending on the quality of the selected video. The YouTube videos look impressive in 4K resolution and large format.
YouTube co-watching is still in development
The biggest problem with the current version is that there is currently no way to control the video volume independently of the voice volume, which makes it difficult to communicate in loud scenes. However, keep in mind that the feature is still in beta and will surely be improved.
We have not yet tested if passthrough is supported, the maximum number of people who can participate, or if you can watch purchased content together. If you know more, please post in the comments.
Overall, we liked the YouTube co-watching experience. It is easy to get together in VR and watch YouTube in excellent quality. YouTube co-watching is another valuable Quest feature, and we look forward to seeing how it improves.
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