Remember, Android TV preceded the modern Apple TV - meaning one that you could install apps instead of the previous version where all the apps that it would support came preinstalled - by several years. It isn't that Apple TV is a better known platform. Okay, let's just say there's room for improvement all around. And CBS would be alright if it didn't go to pieces the second the Wi-Fi hiccups. Funimation and Crunchyroll's apps may be a pain to navigate, but VRV does things right at least - well, apart from how you go between seasons or between subbed/dubbed. The Disney+ app offers a great experience, as mentioned before, and the YouTube and Hulu apps are great as well - though it took literally YEARS for Hulu's Android TV app to catch up to the rest of its apps in getting the new UI. Now, this all isn't to say that a good app experience is impossible to come by on Android TV. Funimation does get points for its auto-play not being as overbearing and insistent as Prime Video's. You also better be sure to watch an episode all the way to the end, because like Prime Video, it'll skip the episode and play the credits instead, and the Continue Watching carousel is absolutely filled with episodes that you actually finished and just exited out of the credits on. The sidebar doesn't always load properly, and there will be weeks at a time where the SimulDub tab just refuses to load. The layout is clunky, especially when trying to navigate between sections or navigate between seasons in a show. Source: Ara Wagoner / Android Central (Image credit: Source: Ara Wagoner / Android Central) Still, you'll have to do your seeking blind because there are no previews here ever, as opposed to Amazon, where the seeking previews will load maybe 55% of the time.Īnd of course, navigating the rest of the app makes you want to scream your favorite Japanese curse words at the screen. I'll start off by saying that Funimation's playback interface isn't nearly as bad as Amazon's. Another egregiously bad Android TV app is Funimation's (opens in new tab). That is an even more damning criticism once you look at other Android TV apps. It's slow to load, the settings are limited and revert to defaults too often, and repeated time and time again: "this is the worst video player on Android TV." Swapping seasons is better than it used to be, but it's still clunky as all get-out.Īnd I'm not the only one to notice the horrible, no-good, very bad interface on Prime Video's Android TV app its Google Play listing (opens in new tab) is chock full of user reviews with the exact same qualms I have with the app. Then when you get to a show's page, browsing between seasons is time-consuming and annoying for anything longer than a miniseries. This app is the worst, and that's saying something on Android TV.īrowsing for a show to watch is a sea of tiny icons with even more miniature labels for "Prime Included" or 4K. I've spent the better part of ten minutes trying to get to the rewind controls quick enough to prevent autoplay from skipping episodes before I can get it back to the beginning because the "Play from beginning" will trigger for the following episode, not the one you just selected. So when you go to re-watch your favorite episodes, instead, it plays three seconds of the end-credits (that it skipped last time) and then auto-plays straight to the next episode. Prime Video's spring update finally fixed the fast-forward and rewinding so that you're not continually overshooting your target, but there's still no way to turn off auto-play.
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