Skip to main content

‘Nook Video’ app joins Android and iPad, takes on Netflix and Amazon Video

Nook Video
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Barnes & Noble is expanding what it offers Android and iOS users. The book retailer has updated its iOS and Android ebook reader apps with the ability to read Nook Comics titles, and spruced up the magazine reading experience, as well. In fact, it brought those apps up to par with how magazines look and act on the Nook HD and HD+. Before that, the best Nook experience had been reserved for B&N’s tablets, though it was possible to read full color/layout zines via the apps. Comics hadn’t been available outside of the Nook ecosystem at all. Now that the bookseller is getting out of the tablet business, there’s no need to hold stuff back. More proof of this came this week with the release of Nook Video apps for Android and iOS.

Nook Video launched with the Nook HD and HD+ in a bid to match the multiverse of offerings Amazon bundled with the Kindle Fire tablets. Like Amazon Video on Demand, iTunes, and Google Play Video, Nook users could rent or buy movies and watch individual episodes of popular TV shows. The selection wasn’t as vast as Amazon’s, but wasn’t skimpy, either. Plus, a huge benefit of Nook Video is the ability to access and watch content from the Ultraviolet service.

With the Nook tablets going away, owners might have gotten a little nervous about the Nook Video content they purchased. No need. If your Nook HD or HD+ breaks or you switch to an iPad or Android tablet, you’ll still have access to the movies and TV shows you bought. Ultraviolet videos will be accessible through the app, too.

The Nook Video apps will sync your existing content across all devices, including smartphones, and allow you to pick up watching video in the middle on any device connected to your account. You can download video for offline viewing or stream over Wi-Fi and mobile data (3G/4G).

Looks like the only exclusive feature left on the Nook HD and HD+ is the interface (and it’s not a bad interface). We may see this crop up on tablets in the future since Barnes & Noble said it plans to partner up with tablet manufacturers instead of developing everything in-house. No word on when that will come to fruition, unfortunately. At least customers who invested in Nook content will be able to access it on other devices.

Editors' Recommendations

K. T. Bradford
Former Digital Trends Contributor
K. T Bradford is a lover of gadgets and all things geek. Prior to writing for Digital Trends she cut her teeth on tech…
The most popular iPad on Amazon (and one of our favorites) is $80 off
The iPad 10.2 on a table.

Apple tablets are some of the most popular and hold the market share in the U.S., and for very good reason. Probably one of the most popular, if not the most popular, tablets is the iPad 9th-generation, and that's very obvious given how many units it's sold on Amazon alone, which is over 10,000 in the last month alone. Not only that, but it's had an incredible 57,000+ reviews with an average rating of 4.8, which is actually very impressive, given how critical reviews tend to skew. If you want to grab one, you're in luck because Amazon has a great deal that brings them down to $249 from $329. That's a very respectable $80 discount, especially on a product that's essentially flying off the shelves.

Why you should buy the Apple iPad
There are a lot of great things to say about the 9th-generation Apple iPad, and beyond just the excellent price it's going for, it has a large 10.2-inch screen running the Retina display we all know and love, with vivid color reproduction and image fidelity. Under the hood, you'll find Apple's A13 Biochip, which is a couple of generations old at this point, but still more than powerful enough for most tasks that you'd throw at it on an average day. As for storage, it is admittedly on the lower side at 64GBs, but the 256GB model also has a deal on it, bringing it , and that's also worth considering.

Read more
I used AR glasses with Android tablets and iPads. Only one was good
Two pairs of AR glasses on top of an iPad and an Android tablet.

When Apple announced its overtly expensive Vision Pro AR headset, arguably its biggest promise had little to do with hardware. The company says “hundreds and thousands of iPhone and iPad apps" run well on Vision OS, and they will be ready to boot on the Vision Pro on launch day.

Apple made an ever bigger promise to developers. “By default, your iPad and/or iPhone apps will be published automatically on the App Store on Apple Vision Pro,” the company said. That’s akin to solving the biggest problem for an experimental class of hardware.

Read more
Apple may have already killed Android’s newest iMessage app, Beeper Mini
Splash screen of Beeper Mini app.

The inevitable has happened, it seems. Beeper Mini, the reverse-engineered app that brought iMessage to Android with a blue bubble hack, has apparently run into an official Apple roadblock. Within the past couple of hours, multiple users have posted online that Beeper Mini texts are not passing through.

Well, it appears that Apple is somehow blocking server access. When asked whether Apple was responsible for the outage, founder Eric Migicovsky said it was likely the case. “Yes, all data indicates that,” Migicovsky told TechCrunch.

Read more