Roger Fingas
In the U.S. at least, Apple has greatly expanded its universal search feature for the fourth-generation Apple TV, most notably adding support for its own Apple Music.
Owners can now open movies and shows hosted on the service if they appear in search results. The option is of relatively limited use at the moment, as many videos hosted on Apple Music — such as the full-length documentary 808 — are already exclusives.
Apple has also added support for major networks TBS and TNT however, along with the popular anime service Crunchyroll. Other additions include Animal Planet GO, CuriosityStream, Investigation Discovery GO, Science Channel GO, TLC GO, and Tribeca Shortlist.
The one addition outside the U.S. is in Germany, where people can now get results for Galileo.
Similar to Roku, the Apple TV's universal search feature displays multiple options for watching any particular video, so long as a person already has the appropriate apps installed and regional coverage is available. The latter is still a weak point, since Apple's U.S. coverage is several times bigger than for any other country.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Oliver Haslam
3 Comments
Why can't Siri search your own iTunes library for music or movies is a big failure in my opinion.
This is nice but they still have a long way to go.
The networks need to also make an effort for this to work.
For example Apple Supports HBO Now but not HBO Go although they are the same thing except that HBO Now is stand alone and HBO Go is purchased in addition to a bundle like DirecTV Now.
For example: I searched for the movie "Wall Street" and SIRI says that it is available on HBO Now but since I am now using DirecTV Now I have switched to HBO Go which is the same as HBO Now but costs only $5 instead of $16. So I decided launch HBO Go and search for "Wall Street" and sure enough I found it with the correct description and correct preview, except that when I chose to play it played a completely different movie having to do with Surfing.
Apple will need to integrate and test everything in order to provide a good and predictable user experience.