Skip to main content

Apple TV app comes to Chromecast with Google TV

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.

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

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

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…
What is WhatsApp? How to use the app, tips, tricks, and more
WhatsApp logo on a phone.

There’s been no shortage of instant messaging apps over the past decade, as the rise of advanced smartphone platforms has created the need for more sophisticated ways to communicate than traditional SMS text messages allowed for.

In fact, the Apple App Store and Google Play Store are both littered with apps that promised to be the next big thing in mobile communications. Yet, many of those fell by the wayside as they failed to achieve the critical mass of users needed to make them useful. After all, apps designed for communicating with others don’t do you much good unless enough folks are using them.

Read more
Google TV slims down and speeds up with recent software updates
The Google TV remote in front of Apple TV Fitness.

If you've been tooling around on your favorite Google TV device and have noticed that it just ... seems faster — that's because it is. Google in a post today in its support community noted some recent updates to its streaming platform that address onboard storage, as well as overall performance.

And you already should have the update.

Read more
Amazon Fire TV Channels brings even more free TV to the platform
Amazon Fire TV Channels.

Amazon today announced Fire TV Channels, which brings even more free ad-supported TV — otherwise known as FAST — to the Amazon Fire TV operating system.

The gist is simple: You'll see even more free video promoted to you on the Amazon Fire TV home screen from the various sources within the FAST universe. That means in addition to all the content currently available on Amazon Freevee (formerly known as IMDB TV), there will be video from the NHL, Xbox, and TMZ. There will be a new travel category, too, and Conde Nast and the PGA are teed up next.

Read more