Users of Warner Bros. Discovery’s lifestyle streaming service discovery+ got a boost in functionality today. The company announced that it was adding the ability for customers with an ad-free subscription to download shows and movies on the service to watch them without the need for an internet connection.
Good news! Now you can download the episodes from your favorite shows on #discoveryplus and watch wherever you want! Learn more: https://t.co/qwpYYlbjkZ
— discovery+ (@discoveryplus) December 5, 2022
Any title that users are able to download and watch offline will display an arrow icon. Once viewers tap on the “Download” icon, the device will start downloading the show or video. Their downloads will be saved into a downloads folder in the app. Not all shows or videos are available for download, but the service has made over 58,000 episodes across its service downloadable at the launch of the new feature.
Downloaded content will be available to watch offline for 30 days, or for 48 hours after a user first presses play on the episode. Expired content can be renewed when users go online again. Only ad-free discovery+ users can utilize the download function currently; an ad-free subscription to discovery+ runs $6.99 per month, while an ad-lite subscription is $4.99 per month.
discovery+ is a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service that offers more than 70,000 episodes of 2,500+ current and classic shows from several popular TV brands including Discovery, Investigation Discovery, HGTV, TLC, Food Network, A&E, Lifetime, and History. The service primarily focuses on non-fiction programming or “reality” TV shows.
Outside the United States, discovery+ also offers an impressive array of live sports. The list of sports and events the service is home to includes the European streaming rights to the Olympics, soccer, tennis, cycling, and most recently PGA content that used to live on the GolfTV streaming service before WBD shut that service down.
WBD still plans to merge discovery+ with its premium streaming service HBO Max in spring of 2023, and the company has reportedly settled on “Max” as the name of the new platform. The move to add downloads on discovery+ now brings the two services closer in line with each other. HBO Max also currently offers the ability to download content on its ad-free tier, suggesting when the services do merge that subscribers to the ad-supported tier of that platform won’t have access to offline shows.
WBD has been making other changes to bring the services closer together ahead of their impending combination. The company has shifted seasons and episodes from several reality series with holiday themes to HBO Max from discovery+ in the last month, a move which it hopes will bring awareness to the merger and give users a better holiday viewing experience at the same time.
discovery+
discovery+ is a video streaming service that offers more than 70,000 episodes of 2,500+ current and classic shows from several popular TV brands including Discovery, Investigation Discovery, HGTV, TLC, Food Network, A&E, Lifetime, and History.