The Google TV app will now support live TV streaming apps Philo, FuboTV, and others. The update also brings a bunch of news and entertainment services to the app. The discovery features on the app have been upgraded to offer better recommendations (via The Verge). There’s also the ability to mark a movie or TV series as “watched” when they appear on the recommendations. This is designed to improve the quality of future recommendations. Some of the discovery features appear to have been inspired by the tools on the Chromecast with Google TV. In addition to the features mentioned above, the app will start showing Rotten Tomatoes scores for each title. Meanwhile, posters of the titles are undergoing minor improvements as well.
Live streaming platforms like FuboTV and Philo are now supported
Google TV for Android is seeing the inclusion of new streaming services such as Cartoon Network, PBS Kids, Discovery Plus, Boomerang, and Viki. Users can now search for on-demand content from YouTube TV, while other live TV services like FuboTV and Philo are supported as well. The Manage Services menu in the account settings allows users to control streaming apps. Google TV users were in for some good news in June this year when support for Google Stadia was officially announced. This allowed Stadia subscribers to access their games on a Google TV device. Google has made several changes to the Chromecast since its original release. Perhaps one of the biggest changes came with the fourth-gen version, known as Chromecast with Google TV last year. This device brought along a brand new interface that didn’t exist on the Chromecast. Chromecast with Google TV also came with a dedicated remote for easy navigation. The key focus was to improve navigation while also making it a home for all your streaming content. Although the new platform didn’t support many streaming services at launch last year, it now has almost every major service one can imagine. The platform hasn’t been without its challenges, however. We recently learned that Google TV would start autoplaying ads directly on users’ homescreens.