When it comes to hardware, unless you’ve got one of Nvidia’s Shield TV devices streaming your content it’s likely that your Chromecast with Google TV is a underpowered and a bit stingy when it comes to storage capacity. Indeed, many Chromecast with Google TV owners find that they need to carefully pick and choose which apps to download and install on their devices or face running out of storage. In an announcement earlier Google has revealed the latest Google TV update will bring improvements not only to storage use but also speedier app and content loading to its devices.
Faster App And Content Loading
By optimizing how the device memory is used, Google has changed how the home screen loads recommendations with system apps now using less memory. This means that more memory is available to help make navigation of the home screen a slicker experience with apps and content opening faster and beginning to play more quickly.
On top of that, movie and TV show recommendations will preload before scrolling, tab loading has been sped up, and search results will load faster. All of these improvements should result in your Google TV user experience being much more enjoyable.
Storage Tweaks
It’s impossible to physically increase the built-in storage on the devices so Google has resorted to what it tends to do with hardware issues – fix them with software enhancements. By reducing the size of pre-installed apps, there is now more available storage for user-installed apps. Make no mistake, it’s not a fix by any means but it is an improvement and hopefully will result in the ability to install a couple more of your favorite apps. Hopefully Google will learn this lesson and put a decent amount of storage into its next Chromecast with Google TV devices.
Updated Live TV Experience
With more than 800 free TV channels available in the US, navigating them to find your favorite entertainment was a little clunky. To make this an easier task Google has added new tabs called “Recents” and “Local News” which should make it easier to go back to the channel you were watching Frasier re-runs on and also make catching your region’s news channels less complicated. The “For You” tab gains a new row called “Free Live News & Opinion” for easier access.
More Free Channels
Worried there isn’t enough content available for the holidays? Google has announced the addition of 14 free channels to Google TV’s Live Tab, bringing content providers such as the Xumo Holiday Movie Channel, DraftKings, and Speedvision. This means you’ve now got access to over 115 free TV channels to keep yourself and any guests occupied.
And Finally
As part of the Christmas fanfare, Google TV is also gaining a “Holidays” category on the Live Tab which has a collection of free holiday-themed movie and music channels. The new Interactive Advent Calendar reveals a daily surprise in the run-up to December 25 and there’s even a “Best of 2023” wrap-up to catch up on the shows and movies that were aired this year.
Google TV is ending the year on a high thanks to this update which brings much-needed memory and storage improvements. It’s been a couple of years since the Chromecast with Google TV 4K came out, could we see a replacement announced during 2024? We sure hope so.
