Comment: Google TV was an awful place to buy TV shows anyway

Google announced this week that, effective immediately, Google TV will no longer allow users to buy new TV shows through the platform or the app on mobile, instead shifting that over to YouTube going forward. It’s a bizarre move but, in my eyes, Google has always been an awful place to buy TV shows anyway, so it’s probably not the worst idea to do away with it altogether.

Google TV has supported buying TV shows and movies since it was still called “Google Play Movies & TV,” but it’s never felt particularly well-suited for that job. At least, that’s the case on the Google TV platform itself.

I’ve personally always felt like this is a mess.

The switch from a dedicated Play Movies & TV app to the Google TV launcher is messy enough for movies, where everything is thrown into an alphabetical, horizontally scrolling nightmare that should have been changed years ago (and that Android TV is better at!)

For TV shows, the same picker is active, but going through episodes and season is not great. Seasons are listed vertically, with each season’s episodes listed horizontally. It works for shorter seasons or shows where you don’t own the whole thing, but it can quickly get out of hand.

For example, I purchased Season 4 of Sherlock through Google TV (at the time still Play Movies & TV) and it worked great back at the time. But, under the Google TV UI, the additional content that came alongside the three episodes just clogs up the UI. The episodes are just interspersed through nearly two dozen other pieces of content that, frankly, I’d have no intention of watching in a re-watch.

Google TV’s UI for options while watching the show itself is also sparse, but in a way, that’s actually nice.

The mobile app, by comparison, is perfectly adequate. It lists the episodes of Sherlock cleanly, pushing all of the additional content into a secondary menu (still with the episodes themselves mixed in).

Of course, every show is a little different in this regard, but I’ve run into this problem on more than one occasion. The UI and UX shortcomings of Google TV just continue to be a problem even under the most ideal content.

Another big issue I’ve always taken with this is pricing. Google TV has always sold TV episodes for $1.99 per episodes, with seasons often coming at a slight discount. That’s the industry standard for the most part, but I’ve always been partial to services that offer bigger discounts on seasons or full TV shows. For instance, I purchase most of my TV shows through Vudu (the better name for what is now “Fandango at Home). There, it’s not hard to find massive discounts when buying an entire show, or a season for a cost that’s often less than a dollar per episode. Google TV’s problem, for me at least, was simply that these sales never seemed to happen. Movies are frequently on sale, but TV shows just weren’t.

The problem here, though, is that Google’s solution is to just push users to YouTube, which isn’t any better. Organization is still often a mess, especially on TVs, but it’s not quite as bad as Google TV’s version.

For me, Google’s choice here just cements that, unless I see a crazy sale (which, as mentioned, almost never happens) or have some credit to burn, I’ll probably never buy TV shows through Google again.

But what do you think?

Did you purchase a lot of TV shows through Google TV? Are you happy with the experience? What do you think about the switch to YouTube?

More on Google TV:

• This ‘Google TV Streamer’ set-top box is what comes after Chromecast [Gallery]
• Google TV now has over 130 of its own free channels
• Review: Walmart’s Onn Pro isn’t just a great deal, it’s the best Google TV box

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