Google Play Movies and TV swapped its branding over to Google TV not long ago, and with it, a whole host of improvements have been made to the service. With your living room becoming the company’s top priority, Google’s TV push has been renewed. Features like a built-in remote in the app, and even in the Home app, multiple user profiles (soon), kid’s profiles, and so much more, new audiences are adopting it each day in troves due to its popularity.
My favorite feature though has got to be the Watchlist. This “bookmarking” system for movies and tv shows allows you to save content for later consideration, and it’s even baked directly into Google Collections! Many of us undoubtedly have loads of items on our Watchlist, and luckily, a new feature first spotted by 9to5Google shows the app is set to notify you when any of it goes free to watch.
As you can see from the images below, both the Google TV app settings and the system settings on Android display “Available to watch free”. Basically, any time a piece of content you’ve saved has its price tag slashed to $0.00, you’ll be notified right on your device so you can click in and watch it at a moment’s notice. Of course, any items marked free may only be temporarily so, and in that case, you’ll want to act quickly.
The new setting appears in version 4.29 of the Google TV Android app, and it’s enabled by default, so you won’t have to do anything to benefit from it. Just sit back, wait a few days for streaming services to update their listings, and tap the notification when it appears at the top of your phone or on your Chromebook.
As someone who really likes free things just as much as the next guy, I welcome this update with open arms. My guess is that the content that ends up being free won’t be very enticing and that the most anticipated releases end up remaining paid for quite some time. Streaming partners usually set a movie or show to free in order to onboard new users, so you never know, but I’m personally already subscribed to several of these services, so I’ll likely end up enjoying it for what it is, but there’s no shame in that, right?
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