Support our independent tech coverage. Chrome Unboxed is written by real people, for real people—not search algorithms. Join Chrome Unboxed Plus for just $2 a month to get an ad-free experience, access to our private Discord, and more. Learn more about membership here.
START FREE TRIAL (MONTHLY)START FREE TRIAL (ANNUAL)
In our earlier report on where to find 4K content for your shiny, new Chromecast Ultra, we listed Google Play Movies as one of the sources of 4K content only to find that they were planning on launching 4K in November.
November Is Here – Along With 4K
Now that November has arrived, it has brought with it 4K content from Google Play Movies.
Now, many users (including myself) are reporting that this content is not yet available. If you’d like to check, simply search for ‘Star Trek: Beyond’ and see if you see a 4K icon under the movie description. As reported originally on Android Police, this is only showing up for select users and select titles.
We would assume Google will be extremely aggressive with getting more titles added to this mix in a very short amount of time.
Considering the fact that there are only a few solid choices right now to get a large variety of 4K content, Google would be wise to get these titles into this new channel pretty quickly.
To be fair, up until now, there’s been little motivation to move on this as the Shield TV from Nvidia has been the only real Android-powered, 4K-ready device available. With only one, slightly-niche avenue for content delivery, the need for 4K content in Google Play Movies has been limited.
Now, with the release of the Chromecast Ultra, this need has gone from nascent to immediate.
While I’m encouraged to see Google getting 4K content rolling, I’m not overly excited until I see them ramp up the volume pretty considerably.
Hopefully that is exactly what we see in the days leading up to Christmas.
