What you need to know
- Apple TV app users can no longer buy or rent content on Android TV and Google TV devices.
- Apple now tells people to rent and buy content via an iPhone, iPad, or other streaming device.
Users of Android TV and Google TV devices can no longer buy or rent content from iTunes, although they can still watch content they already own.
The move, which first started to pop up when people took to Reddit, was first reported by German site 4KFilme and it appears that users of Android TV and Google TV devices can no longer buy or rent content from iTunes when using the Apple TV app. However, any content that has been bought can continue to be watched. If content isn't already owned, the previous button that would initiate a purchase or rental now simply takes people to a page that says "You can buy, rent or subscribe in the Apple TV app on iPhone, iPad, and other streaming devices."
This switch doesn't seem to be happening on all third-party platforms, however. Reports note that smart TV devices with the Apple TV app continue to work as before, although that could be a simple case of their apps having not yet been updated.
We also tested the behavior on an LG OLED E9 from 2019. There, buying and borrowing is still possible. So it seems that only Android TV / Google TV is explicitly affected.
It's been suggested that the removal of the option to buy or rent content using Android TV and Google TV could be down to a dispute over payments — with Google likely to want some sort of cut of all payments made via the Apple TV app. That's speculation at this point, but it does seem like an Apple move to remove the feature altogether and force people to make payments via another method instead.
