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13 best Google Play Store alternatives for apps and games
Sick of Google's Monopoly, perhaps it's time to seek out competing digital media marketplaces
Google has always monopolized the markets when it comes to Android apps and games. And it's not beneath the company to succumb to using dirty tricks like showering alternative app stores with money to choke out its competition. Google has made it abundantly clear that it wants the Play Store to be the only app store in town, but it doesn't mean it deserves its crown.
A Chromecast is an excellent way to make your TV smarter, but you can achieve ultimate comfort by controlling it using your voice. The best option to do so is to use Google Assistant, ideally through a smart speaker like the Home Mini. When bought separately, these devices cost about $75, but thanks to a Black Friday deal on Google's Smart TV Kit, you can snatch both devices for just $35 and get $10 of Vudu credit for free.
Last month, a problem with 4K playback surfaced on Nvidia's Shield TV. The issue affected VUDU and a few other unnamed services, and only occurred when using their native apps but not when casting to the Shield. Nvidia is now rolling out an update that's supposed to fix those problems.
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- The issue is now fixed with Shield Experience Upgrade 8.0.1 and an update to the Vudu app.
If you have a Shield TV, you may have noticed that some apps have stopped playing content in 4K. That's annoying, but Nvidia has acknowledged the issue and said it's working on a solution.
If your wallet is already suffering from the major influx of pre-Black Friday deals, here's a welcome relief: YouTube now offers a bunch of free, ad-supported movies (at least in the US). Forget about your holiday spending woes and binge watch old school classics like Hackers, The Terminator, and a marathon's worth of Rocky films.
Vudu might not be the most popular video streaming service, but it's more useful on the SHIELD starting today. The app now has support for Google Assistant commands, and the SHIELD can output HDR video from Vudu. Of course, you'll need to own some HDR content on Vudu first.
Disney's Movies Anywhere has just launched a new service that allows you to store and access all your movies in one place. It has support from 5 major Hollywood studios, but more importantly also from 4 digital retailers where users already have movie libraries. Content from Amazon Video, Google Play, iTunes, and Vudu can be brought into the Movies Anywhere app, which is great for anyone with a fragmented collection spanning more than one of those services. Now, you'll only ever need to use one app again.
Movie and TV streaming app Vudu has become a popular option on Android in recent years. Its last big update added a nifty service that allows you to digitize your old discs for a small fee, and implementing parental controls was another important recent improvement. The latest update, to version 5.3.165.52141, brings more useful features that you might expect from a streaming app of its kind.
These days, you can't buy much for a dime. Back in the 19th century, you could get half a pie in New York City restaurants or two tall glasses of beer in Boston saloons with 10 cents, but times have changed - or have they? For a limited time, VUDU is offering up 30 movies in Digital HDX for just 10 cents per rental.
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Vudu has offered a Disc-to-Digital service for a while for those who wanted to convert their physical DVD and Blu-Ray movie collection to digital. However, the service either required you to pop into a Walmart with all of your discs in hand or download the app on your computer and insert discs one by one to verify that you own them. Now, the option is available on mobile.
Attention movie lovers: You are eligible for a free $5 credit on VUDU. The offer is good for new, or existing subscribers and can be applied toward any movie rental or purchase in VUDU's substantial library, including UHD titles. Yes, it is free movie money, no strings attached.
The Walmart-owned Vudu is one of several services that allow you to rent and buy movies online. Much like Google Play Movies, you can rent or buy content in either standard or high definition (albeit at around the price of a physical copy) and watch on any supported device. The company has had an Android application for some time now, but the 5.0 update brings a few much-needed improvements.
Vudu, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the company, is a digital movie provider owned by Walmart. It's been around for quite some time serving up movie rentals, purchases, and digital redemptions. T-Mobile customers should all be quite familiar with the service by now as a free digital rental has been included almost every other week as part of the T-Mobile Tuesday promotion.
NVIDIA announced the 3.2 update for its SHIELD set-top box earlier this month, cramming in so many features and new capabilities that it's practically its own little Android version bump. Today's the day: if you have a SHIELD TV, you should be able to manually update it now if it isn't already showing the notification. Even if you don't intend to use the headline Plex server feature, there are plenty of other goodies inside that should make media consumption richer and easier.
NVIDIA is taking advantage of the excitement around Google I/O to announce some improvements to its own Android hardware. The SHIELD TV is getting some interesting new capabilities with its next update, version 3.2. Specifically, it will be the first Android TV hardware to support High Dynamic Range (HDR) video - that's something that's coming to Android N later, but NVIDIA wants to get a jump on the competition.
VUDU might be one of the lesser popular video streaming services, but it's still used and loved by many loyal customers. Its Android app, however, wasn't that good. It was functional, we'll give it that, but it was slow, not quite responsive, and stuck in the Holo era of Android app design. That was version 1.5. Today, the app jumped to 4.1. Whoaaaaaaaaa.
Even with a major infusion of horsepower with devices like the NVIDIA SHIELD and Razer Forge TV, the biggest thing holding back the Android TV platform is a scarcity of apps compared to more mature alternatives like Roku. It looks like Google is quickly trying to close the gap: in addition to the announcement of HBO Now (currently exclusive to Apple hardware) at Google I/O, a handful of high-profile and formerly unavailable apps are also making their way to Android TV in the near future.
Netflix. Google Play Movies. Hulu Plus. What do these services have in common? They're all better than VUDU, a long-standing streaming service for movies and television whose Android app leaves something to be desired. But it's a little more desirable starting today, as a reader tipped us: VUDU now allows users to stream rented or owned movies and TV to a handy Chromecast.
Chances are, even if you haven't heard of Vudu (though that's a little hard at this point), you might just own some piece of content that can be used with the service. Vudu is a digital movie locker that allows users to rent or buy movies online and have them streamed to their computers, or a number of set top boxes and Blu-Ray players with internet connectivity. This is all pretty standard fare. The standout feature, though, is Ultraviolet support, which happens to be one of the preferred methods of offering 'digital copies' for Blu-Ray multipacks.