Google is latest major streaming video provider to adopt 4K Ultra HD resolution, adding more than 125 4K movies to its Google Play online library.
US and Canadian customers can now buy 4K movies and stream them on Chromecast Ultra, a Sony Bravia Android TV, or a Xiaomi Mi Box 3. LG and Samsung smart TVs are excluded, although Google also announced today that certain 2016 Samsung models now support the non-4K Google Play library.
Pricing and a full list of 4K titles weren't immediately available, and it appears that the 4K library is limited to purchases, not rentals.
Google notes that the 4K titles share a video coding format with YouTube, the royalty-free VP9 format, which should mean high-quality streams with few encoding artifacts. Last week, YouTube announced support for 4K live streaming for standard and 360-degree videos.
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New owners of the Chromecast Ultra, the first Google streaming device to support 4K, will get to select a free 4K movie from a subset of the full 125-movie collection. Options include Ghostbusters and Captain Phillips.
In addition to the new 4K movies, Google is also bringing the entire Google Play library to its Daydream virtual reality platform. Owners of a Daydream headset, like the Daydream View, and compatible phone can now download and watch all the movies and TV shows in their Google Play libraries in a virtual cinema offline.
Netflix and Amazon Video have already added 4K titles to their libraries; Amazon Prime members can stream them at no additional charge. Hulu added a limited selection of 4K content just this week. Apple, meanwhile, has been slow to adopt the higher-resolution format. The refreshed Apple TV doesn't support 4K, and neither does the iTunes library.