As an Entertainment Editor, I spend a lot of time watching content (it’s a hard job, but someone’s got to do it). As such, I have little tricks up my sleeve for finding the right streaming service for specific shows and films. After all, many libraries change often throughout the year, making it hard to keep track of where everything is.
If you own a smartphone that uses the Google Play Store (ie, any Android phone), then this new feature drop should change the game… well on paper, at least. In practice, there’s a lot of work to be done to make it useful.
Why Google’s ‘Where to watch’ Play Store feature misses the mark
From now on, when you search for a show or film in the app store on an Android device, the ‘Where to watch’ feature will list the places to find the movie or series, with a link to the app/apps you need to download or open if you want to watch on the go.
But there are some key features missing that rival sites such as JustWatch include as standard.
The list of apps that carry the TV series or movie are mostly all there, from what I can see, along with the ‘free’ option (or, at least, free if you’re a subscriber). What it doesn’t do differentiate between free options and renting/buying VODs. It also doesn’t list how much you’ll pay for a subscription, or the starting price of renting/purchasing the content.
Take Avengers: Infinity War as an example. It’s currently only available to stream at no extra cost if you’re a subscriber to Disney+. But you wouldn’t know that from Google’s page. Instead, using the same ‘Watch’ button, it shows YouTube and Amazon Prime Video as other platforms from which you can stream it, when in reality, they’re only rental/buy links.
But that’s not the only confusing part. When you click on these links, they don’t take you through to the listing pages for each site.
Hannah Cowton-Barnes / Foundry
Amazon Prime Video has a button that says, ‘How do I watch this?’, which then sends an email to your Amazon account, with a link to a web browser – ain’t nobody got time for that!
Meanwhile, YouTube’s link goes to a trailer that can’t be viewed in my region.
I tried a search out on another film, Micky 17, which is currently only available for Sky customers and Now subscribers.
The Now button appeared at the bottom of the list under a collapsable ‘Show more’ button. Google TV came up first, and that link only took me to the app’s homepage, not the buy/rent link for Micky 17. I originally thought this was because the Now app wasn’t installed on my phone, but even after doing that, the order of the apps didn’t change.
While a good idea in theory, Google hasn’t actively checked the links of what it’s promoting. It doesn’t list (or sometimes even prioritise) the app with content available for free to subscribers and it fails to put prices of anything on those links before you click through.
Most people will likely want to use this feature to know if they already have access to stream something, and Google isn’t making that easier to ascertain. Hopefully, ‘What to watch’ will be fine-tuned in the coming months – but for now, I’d stick with other options.