Category: Google Play Movies & TV

It has taken a while, a lot longer than it should have frankly, but Google Home is now finally able to start up a movie or television show from Google Play Movies & TV.  The feature quietly snuck into Home and Google Assistant this week during Google I/O and didn’t get a lot of fanfare but it closes a loop in Google’s support of their own products.

If you have a Google Home and you have movies or television shows you have rented or purchased in Play Movies & TV, you can now ask Google Assistant to play a movie in your account to a Chromecast device in your home.  It works just like it does with Netflix and other services that are already supported by Home & Assistant.

A new update to the Google Movies & TV app for Android is rolling out that brings some UI changes as well as improved integration with Rotten Tomatoes ratings on movies.  The new build is version 4.2 for those keeping score at home and should be rolling out to everyone over the course of the next few days.

The most noticeable change to the Movies & TV app after this update is the new bottom navigation in the app.  This falls in line with other Google apps and is the overall trend they have going on for Android.  That navigation has also been slimmed down with tabs for Home, Library and Watchlist only.

Google has announced support Movies Anywhere, the service that allows you to synchronize your movies across multiple devices along with movies that you have purchased from other digital stores.  The concept behind Movies Anywhere is to give you one repository for all of the movies you have bought from Apple’s iTunes, Amazon Prime, Vudu and now Google Play.

Today, we’re taking it one step further by adding support for Movies Anywhere, allowing you to bring together your movies from Google Play, Amazon, iTunes and Vudu into a single library that you can access on any of your devices, regardless of where the purchase was originally made.

The addition of Google Play is a real win for consumers as you don’t have to go to multiple places on your devices or try to remember where you purchased movies in the past.  They all show up in one app now.

The Google Play Movies & TV app has a minor update rolling out to the Play Store that is bringing a few user experience changes.  The update, version 3.28 for those keeping score at home, has several cosmetic adjustments but nothing that is overly obvious at first glance.  But there are some detail changes that are important.

First, movie trailers can now be access by the cover art for that movie.  It use to be that there was a dedicated section within the movie’s page for trailers.  Now you will see a small banner in the cover art, “Trailer” that will allow you to watch it.  This is a bit more intuitive instead of having to scroll down to find the trailer.

Having already posted some $700 million in ticket sales world wide, one of the big movie hits of 2016 has been Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  The movie is set between the much maligned prequels and A New Hope, the original Star Wars movie, focusing on a band of Rebels who are trying to steal the plans to the Death Star.  If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and see it.  It’s quite good.

Now you can get ready to own Rogue One when it is hits the Google Movies & TV store in the Play Store.  The movie is now available in the store as an item that you can wishlist.  This is the first step before you can pre-order it.

Right now at the Google Play Store, there is a huge sale going on a wide range of movies.  You can pick up some great titles for as low as $5.99 in HD and as low as $3.99 in SD.  There is a good mix of titles at are on sale from the recently released Zoolander No. 2, to the classic Matrix trilogy, the Taken series and all of the Fast and Furious series.  If you have been wanting to bulk up your movie collection, now is the time.