by Jason Snell
Apple’s quad box arrives in new tvOS beta
Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac took Apple TV’s new multi-view feature for a spin:
With tvOS 16.5 beta, Apple is testing a new feature for the Apple TV app on the Apple TV 4K set-top box: the ability to watch more than one game at a time.
Multiview allows users to watch up to four simultaneous streams at once. The feature is available for live sports streamed through the TV app, like MLB Friday Night Baseball and MLS Season Pass …
The “quad box” is the killer feature on Fubo, my TV provider of choice, and it’s coming to YouTube TV just in time for its integration of the NFL Sunday Ticket package. Given Apple’s investment in MLS, it makes sense there. Sports is the perfect application for watching more than one live channel at a time.
In the long run, though, this needs to be a tvOS-wide feature. Right now if there’s a game on Fubo and another on ESPN+ and a third on MLB and a fourth on the TV app… I can watch one at a time or, if I am very lucky and it’s the right combination of apps, two at a time—one in a tiny picture-in-picture view. The OS should put it all together. Maybe this is a step in that direction… or maybe it’s just something Apple had to build for MLS. I hope it’s the first one.