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Apple TV's Universal Search Gains Support for Comedy Central, MTV and VH1

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Apple last week added three new apps to the universal search function on the fourth-generation Apple TV, introducing support for Comedy Central, MTV, and VH1, three popular networks.

For those unfamiliar with universal search, it is a feature that lets users conduct Siri voice searches or text-based searches to find TV and movie content across a wide range of apps. At launch, universal search supported only a few apps, but Apple has been adding new apps on a regular basis.

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With the addition of support for Comedy Central, MTV, and VH1, searching for shows available on those networks will now bring up options to watch content within the respective apps.

Apple maintains a dedicated support document that offers Apple TV owners a full list of content that can be found via Siri through universal search. Apple's universal search feature is largely limited to the United States. In most other countries, universal search only displays iTunes content, while Netflix is also supported in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK.

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Top Rated Comments

blizaine Avatar
blizaine
133 months ago
Yet no universal search support for my own library yet?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
KazKam Avatar
KazKam
133 months ago
Explain how that will work when Siri only searches the web and the device it is on? Siri does not log into devices on your network and search for files.
You keep saying this every time someone asks for Siri on the ATV to search their Home Share, and you're sort of right... but not. As you say, Siri can index and search the "device it's on". The ATV has all the metadata from your Home Shared library cached ON THE ATV, so it CAN search and index your Home Share.

Many of us have hundreds, if not thousands of movies available locally in iTunes. We can't search them with Siri; the interface to browse through them is unwieldy, buggy, and slow; and we don't want results from the iTunes store so that we can buy or stream something we already own. I don't want to try to stream a 5GB movie that's sitting on my HD downstairs, that's asinine.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Gasu E. Avatar
Gasu E.
133 months ago

Whenever this subject comes up it mostly has to do with people wanting Apple to support illegally sourced content they have loaded on their iTunes library. YES ripping movies off DVDs you own is still illegal.
.
I think people would be perfectly fine if Siri took their legally purchased DVDs, loaded them into the DVD player, and pushed "Play." But since Apple has not given Siri a robot arm yet, people who rip their DVDs are trying to help poor Siri out a bit. Are you so unfeeling as to criticize people who want to assist this poor disabled application?

I'm a big fan of Siri on ATV. But your critique is absurd.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Glassed Silver Avatar
Glassed Silver
133 months ago
You want to give Apple access to your local network and all your files?
I want Siri to run offline.
Why the **** does Siri need to connect to the internet just to set a timer for example?

Plenty of times when I sit there waiting for Siri to complete a request that shouldn't take the "power of the cloud" to understand, whatever that **** means, especially after they showed that my local devices are good enough to use AI on photos.
It's also not like Siri has such a VAST set of possibilities that are impossible to store on the 16GB entry models... *cough*

Glassed Silver:mac
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mainstreetmark Avatar
mainstreetmark
133 months ago
Yet no universal search support for my own library yet?
Why do you need it! All you have to do is go to your list of movies. Then, begin swiping down over and over and over. Don't worry, though, because if one of the swipes is slightly left or right, you can just start all over.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Glassed Silver Avatar
Glassed Silver
133 months ago
Explain how that will work when Siri only searches the web and the device it is on? Siri does not log into devices on your network and search for files.
There's the problem. Online-only Siri.

Glassed Silver:mac
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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