CBS All Access subscribers can now keep watching after their plane takes off: The broadcaster’s video subscription service added support for offline viewing this week (hat tip to Techcrunch). The new feature, dubbed “Download & Play,” allows eligible subscribers to download up to 25 movies or TV show episodes, and play them on the go without internet access.
However, the feature comes with a caveat: Download & Play is only available to subscribers paying for CBS All Access’ ad-free tier, which costs $9.99 per month. Anyone subscribing to the service’s $5.99 per month “limited commercials” plan will still have to keep watching their shows streaming over the internet.
Download & Play is limited to a subset of the CBS All Access catalog, including originals like “Star Trek: Discovery” and “The Good Fight” as well as CBS reality shows like “Big Brother” and “Survivor.”
Also included are some of the broadcaster’s biggest scripted shows, including “Blue Bloods,” “Bull,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “MacGyver” and “NCIS: New Orleans.” Finally, CBS is also making classic shows like “Cheers,” “The Brady Bunch” and classic “Star Trek” series available for download.
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Subscribers will be able to download episodes to their iOS and Android devices, provided they have version 6.0 of the CBS All Access app installed. Videos expire 30 days after being downloaded, or 48 hours after a subscriber starts to watch them. And finally, subscribers can download videos to up to 5 devices at a time.
CBS All Access isn’t the first video subscription service to introduce offline viewing. Netflix launched a similar feature for its subscribers about two years ago, and Amazon and YouTube are providing the functionality to their paying users as well.
