Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Apple TV app comes to Chromecast with Google TV

Simon Cohen
By

Chromecast with Google TV users can add the Apple TV app to their devices from the Google Play Store starting today. This gives Apple yet another device that can run its curated entertainment experience, as well as its subscription streaming service, Apple TV+. The Apple TV app is already available on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and several smart TV platforms from brands like LG and Samsung.

What’s unusual about the Chromecast with Google TV announcement is that it appears to create a Russian Matryoshka doll effect in terms of the user experience. Both Google TV and the Apple TV app are designed to be holistic streaming experiences that can bring all of your content into one place, with suggestions curated by an algorithm. By adding the Apple TV app to Google TV, users will effectively be putting a curated experience inside a curated experience.

Recommended Videos

Despite this weird meta-curation situation, Google says that:

Related

With Google TV in the U.S., you can browse Apple Originals in your personalized recommendations and search results. And with Google Assistant, you can also use your voice to ask Google to open the Apple TV app or play an Apple Original title. If you aren’t ready to watch right away, you can add Apple Originals to your Watchlist for later.

Making the Apple TV app available on Google-controlled devices (Google says that other Android TV-based products will be getting the app in the future) is yet another reason why Apple’s own streaming media player (awkwardly also called Apple TV) might not be around for much longer.

At just $50, the Chromecast with Google TV is an amazing device, with a slick and responsive interface, as well as support for 4K resolution at 60Hz, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos. When you compare that to the Apple TV 4K, which costs $180 for the 32GB version, it’s hard to justify Apple’s steep price premium.

Granted, there are still a few features that are exclusive to the Apple TV streamer, like Apple Fitness+ and Apple Arcade, but it’s getting harder to see these as strong reasons to stick with Apple’s box, especially when the company has licensed its AirPlay and HomeKit technologies to an increasing number of third parties.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like spatial…
Apple (and Messi) offering a monthlong trial of MLS Season Pass
A Lionel Messi promo for MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.

If you're a soccer fan who hasn't yet taken advantage of MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, now's the time. Apple — and Lionel Messi — are offering a free one-month trial to the service that gets you every MLS game this season and then some. There are no blackouts, no out-of-market messes, just every minute of every game.

The deal takes you to (and through) Messi's Instagram account, where you'll do the ol' link in bio trick. Which, conveniently, takes you to this link.

Read more
Former Apple exec joins upcoming sports streaming service as CEO
Pete Distad, CEO of the new sports streaming service from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Former Hulu and Apple executive Pete Distad will serve as CEO of the new sports streaming service from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Handout photo

It doesn't have a name. It doesn't have a launch date. (And if you already subscribe to a streaming service like YouTube TV, this really isn't for you anyway.) But the upcoming super sports streaming service that combines the sports you'd find from Disney (think ESPN and ABC), Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery now has someone in charge.

Read more
Apple’s MLS Season Pass is streaming all games free this weekend
MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.

If you're a fan of Major League Soccer and haven't yet experienced MLS Season Pass on Apple TV (the app, not the hardware), this is a good weekend to do so. All 14 matches on this weekend's schedule are available to stream — even if you're not a subscriber.

MLS Season Pass has the exclusive rights to MLS matches in the U.S. In its second season, it's quickly proven to be a strong service. Games are streamed in 1080p at 60 frames per second (which should be the standard for all sports), and with a good bitrate, too, so the picture quality is excellent.

Read more