Almost a year after launching support for Ultra High Definition (UHD) movies in the US, it appears that Google is now selling some UHD content on Google Play Movies & TV in Australia.
Google announced the availability of 4K movies in Google Play in December last year after announcing the Chromecast Ultra, which is capable of streaming content in 4K, at their first Made by Google event in October 2016. Since launching, 4K movies have so far only been available through Google Play in the U.S. and Canada, but there’s a few now available to purchase in Australia.
So far there appears to be only four movies available to purchase: Spiderman: Homecoming, Rough Night, Life and Smurfs: The Lost Village, with prices ranging from $24.99 for Spiderman and Rough Night, down to $22.99 for Life, and $19.99 for Smurfs: The Lost Village.
Update: You can now grab The Emoji Movie and The Dark Tower.
At their September iPhone event, Apple announced a 4K capable AppleTV set top box and as a bonus, announced they would be updating their iTunes customers HD purchases in iTunes to UHD quality. Google has yet to match this update, but pricing comparisons for purchasing movies seems to be similar with Spiderman: Homecoming also priced at $24.99 on the Australian iTunes store.
In their support documentation for 4K movies on Google Play Movies, which still lists UHD movies as only being available in the U.S and Canada, Google says you can search for UHD movies on the web simply by searching ‘UHD’, but it appears that’s not quite working here yet.
If you’re in the market for UHD movies – and your internet connection can handle it – you can grab at least four (that we’ve found) from Google Play now, so head over and grab them.
Anyone know of an easy way to search for UHD movies in Google Play?
The only way is to search for “UHD” which is what they recommend on their support site. It does work in the US, but unfortunately doesn’t work here. The only ones I’ve found are the ones listed in here.
The common thread for all these movies is that they are produced by Sony Pictures, and it’s related to a promotion where 2017 Sony Bravia TVs are getting a free UHD movie. So, as new Soy movies come out, they may be available in UHD quality.
I went to rent T2: Trainspotting for $0.99 last night.
Bad news it was no longer $0.99
Good news. Was available in UHD for rental or purchase
I just noticed that Life is also available in UHD.
Interestingly the $0.99 rental is only HD. It’s $8.99 for UHD rental … ouch
Rough night also in UHD. Looks like Sony are adding several.
Well thats not going to convince me to buy movies on Google Play rather than iTunes. As it was Google seemed a poor second class citizen with many films sold with only stereo audio whilst it was 5.1 on iTunes.
Very much so, iTunes purchases also get all those great extra features that Google doesn’t include. That’d be nice too.
This is good to see but a little disappointing they are still offering HD option. In the US they are matching Apple price for UHD and not selling HD option which may pave the way for free upgrade from HD to UHD like Apple have done with the launch of the Apple TV with 4K.
US customers on Google Play still offer HD options as well as SD options. It would be nice to see the UHD match for HD movies in customers libraries but we’ll have to wait and see.