Streaming platforms have made it easy to binge watch your favourite shows, but sometimes, tracking down the content can be a bit of a pain. It is very likely that several seasons of the same show are scattered across several platforms. The problem is further complicated by the fact that content moves around from platform to platform thanks to complex licensing deals. Keeping track of what’s where can be a nightmare, if you follow multiple series. Thankfully, as of today, things get a lot easier, thanks to Google.
When you look for a TV show or movie in Google Play Movies TV, the service will now also search through providers like Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Go, and the streaming options provided by the network providers. If the content is available on Google, you’ll be presented the option to stream/buy it, but you can tap a drop-down menu to check out all your other options, too. If Google has only a part of the content, you’ll be able to see the platforms that do. You can click on past seasons and see what’s available where.
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In addition to seeing this info in the Play Movies TV app, Google’s also bringing it to the Play Store, but it’ll be some time before we see it in action. Also, some content doesn’t come up in searches despite being available on supported services such as Amazon Prime. It was to be expected, considering that the feature is a relatively new one and will take some time to work as intended.
For reasons best known to Google, Netflix doesn’t feature in the list of available platforms at all. Google does indicate that it plans to “add more partners over time”, but there’s no telling when or if Netflix might be among them.
Google is also updating Play Movies TV with improved discovery tools, helping to narrow down your search by genre, a new watchlist tab for tracking what you want to check out later, and a recommendation system which will fine tune recommendations based on your thumbs ups and downs. There’s even a Watch Later option that lets you save content for later viewing.
Source: Google
