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Google Play Movies might soon upgrade your movies to 4K for free
June 16, 2025
When Apple introduced its 4K Apple TV, the company announced that if customers had purchased movies that were available in 4K, it wouldupgrade the films for free. Thanks to a recent Play Movies app teardown fromAndroid Police, it looks like Google might soon make a similar move.
As someone who has purchased digital movies from Play Movies for years now, my biggest complaint with the service is that there’s no easy way to upgrade the playback quality. In fact, the only way to do it is by contacting support and hoping they refund your original purchase so that you can rebuy the higher-quality film.
But in the teardown of version 4.8 of the Play Movies app,APfound several lines of code that specifically talk about the ability to upgrade movies that you already own. But it doesn’t end there. Between the dialog that’s found in the code snippets and the lack of any information about the cost to upgrade, it looks like Google might make your qualifying HD movies 4K for free.
Unfortunately, SD purchases weren’t mentioned in the app’s code at all. While there’s still a chance that Google could offer upgrade options for the lower-resolution films, it’s more likely that the search giant will focus on moving people’s HD movie collection over to 4K.
What do you think about this move? Are you more likely to purchase digital movies directly from Google if 4K films don’t cost more than HD versions? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!
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