There are many ways to watch your favorite TV shows and movies, but one of the easiest is using the Google Play Store’s “Movies & TV” tab to buy or rent them. However, that’s about to change.
Starting this week, Google will begin to kill off the ‘Movies & TV’ tab in its Play Store app for Android devices as a part of a plan to eventually shut down its Google Play Movies & TV service and consolidate it with the new Google TV app.
Google TV App (Source: Google)
In a statement on its support page, Google says that it’s getting rid of the Movies & TV tab because it’s “a better place to manage your movies and shows.” In other words, you won’t have to go looking for them—they’ll be right there in your Google TV app.
To be clear, this is only happening on Android devices and Chromebooks currently, but if you’ve been watching movies or shows through movies.google.com or the Movies & TV section of play.google.com, you’ll soon be redirected to tv.google.com instead when you try to use those services.
If you’re an Android user and still have the Google Play Store installed on your device, you’ll see a notice about this change when you open up the Play Store app starting today. If you tap on that notice, it will redirect you to download the Google TV app from the Play Store instead.
Google noted that if users don’t want to switch over to Google TV just yet (or at all), they can still use their purchased content through movies.google.com or the Movies & TV section of play.google.com until further notice—possibly until this service is completely shut down in a future update. The company also announced that it will be discontinuing support for some older devices, including Chromebooks and Chromecasts, which will no longer receive updates after December 15th.
Ready to get started with the new Google TV app? Your purchases and TV shows will transfer over automatically. Simply download the Google TV app from your preferred app store and start watching! The transition is set to be complete by May this year.
