Tubecast VR brings immersive YouTube videos to Windows Mixed Reality

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
last updated

Now you can dive into immersive 360-degree YouTube videos right from your Windows Mixed Reality headset.

Tubecast was one of the better third-party YouTube apps you could get on Windows, but now you can take that experience to the world of VR. Webrox, the developer behind Tubecast, has launched Tubecast VR, a player built just for watching immersive 360-degree YouTube videos and local media via a Windows Mixed Reality headset.

The app supports multiple 360-degree video format from YouTube at up to 8K resolution, as well as your own local media stored on a hard drive. The interface also looks pretty straightforward, offering quick player controls, video search, and navigation via a video overlay that you manipulate with a pair of Windows Mixed Reality motion controllers.

Here's a quick rundown of Tubecast VR's highlights:

  • Watch 360° videos from YouTube in any format (up to 8K)
  • Watch 360° videos and photos from local and external storages.
  • Multi 360° formats supported : Spherical, Side By Side
  • Search YouTube videos with the internationalized embedded keyboard or with speech
  • Download videos up to 8K
  • "History" playlist
  • "Favorites" playlist
  • "Downloads" playlist
  • Handy navigation like in a web browser
  • Support restricted videos (you have to login to prove your age)
  • 5 languages : English, Spanish, French, German, Italian.

Tubecast VR is available with a free trial that allows watching up to 20 videos without restrictions. After that point ,you can only check out the first thirty seconds of each video unless you buy the app for $4.99.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

5 Comments
  • Just remember, MS already provide an Edge browser extension that allows viewing Youtube VR. Tubecast is alright, but the main app is still a W8 app and they won't be updating it to UWP they say so this new version is a surprise. Especially as Tubecast plus their Video 360 app already does this, it just hadn't been updated to work with WMR. So now a third app needs installing to get it all? And I guess Video 360 is not getting updated? Hmm, not sure about that approach. Worth a try but I think waiting for myTube is still my plan A.
  • Hi Andy, I'm the Tubecast dev. Edge browser viewer is just a gadget and it's very hard to browse videos, if you tried it I'm sure you wouldn't post this comment. We still have a lot of users for Tubecast and you know what ? nobody care about UWP because the app does the job and I'm really happy to not switch to UWP to not give up our users.
    "Update to WMR" : it sounds like abracadra. Your analyze is wrong, WMR apps have to be standalone to have a good experience, and rebuilt from scratch because a lot of technical problems.
    I could talk about it during hours because it's my everyday job but I will just invite you to try our app and have fun, i'm sure you will post an other comment after testing it ;) Cheers.
  • Just bought the premium app. Having an issue logging in. it just keeps trying to load the sign in screen. I'm sure it will be fixed in time, but just figure I'd give you a heads up. Keep up the good work. YCS
  • Hi YCS, I can't reproduce it, I just tried and it's ok. You may need to relaunch Mixed Reality, I suggest to restart your computer sometimes Cliff House brings bugs. Let me know if it works :)
  • The browser extension has a 10% chance of working for me. Sometimes I can use Edge inside of Cliff House to launch, but that kicks it down to about 1% chance of it working. It's insanely stupid that I have to take my headset off to use the browser on the desktop to launch a video(and then, again, only a small chance of it working, I typically get the sphere, then it drops right back). I'm not sure what other peoples success rate is, but with my Odyssey, I'm honestly better off using FireFox and SteamVR, that gives me a 99% success rate of being able to watch. I've only tried it on two dell notebooks and one Asus desktop, but it's the same damned experience. I'm definitely going to try Tubecast VR this weekend.