Google TV’s latest app update could very well one-up Roku. The new feature called “Highlights” gives Google TV mobile app users a personalized daily feed of news, reviews, and a behind-the-scenes look of the entertainment that they love.
Highlights is available on the Google TV companion app on Android devices exclusively in the United States. While the feature hasn’t rolled out to iOS or other territories just yet, that is a possibility in the future.
Basically a Google News feed for your favorite shows and movies, Highlights provides news stories about streaming services and more. As you scroll through the feature on your app, stories that appear in the feed open up in a Chrome Custom Tab that features a share button in the top-right corner. After reading, you can go to the TV series or movie and save it to your Watchlist, which will then show up on your TV at home.
This is basically Google Discover, but for streaming media. Stories that appear in the feed feature large cover art and smaller carousels of “Related highlights.”
This feature is basically a twist on Roku’s “My Feed,” which was launched over five years ago. My Feed keeps track of when shows and movies hit your favorite streaming services. This allows Roku users to keep tabs on content and essentially be connected to the platform at all times.
While Google TV’s Highlights lets you keep tabs on your content as well, it is a little more advanced since it uses Google News to show what’s trending around that content. So yeah, Roku may have thought of it first, however, Google TV seems to have elevated it just a tiny bit.
Other app changes include switching the “Home” to be called “For you” with the “Top picks for you” and “Continue watching” carousels. In the Shop feature, “Library” and “Watchlist” have now been incorporated into the new “Your Stuff” tab.