Great Idea, Awful Design, Awful, Awful, Awful! – Hallmark TV Review

I was so excited, elated even to find that Hallmark Channel finally got with the 21st century and making their new Christmas movies available to stream. I’ve been hooked on the network’s holiday movies for a solid five years, if not longer, but without a DVR to my name, I would miss inevitably new releases. Finally, I thought, I wouldn’t miss any new 2020 films. How wrong I was. My excitement has turned to aggravation and anger over the sheer amount of problems I’ve encountered with this app. First, if you start watching a movie and say, have to answer a phone call and close out of it, the app does not and will not save your place. You’re forced to sit through what you’ve already watched once before, because fast forwarding and even rewinding is disabled. I’ve realized I need to devote time to watch a movie once and once only, because I refuse to sit through an hour of a movie I’ve already watched...the night before. Every single commercial from the original broadcast is transferred to the app, and each commercial break is five minutes long. Most of the time, watching a show or movie on demand means the ads are cut out, even a few minutes, but no, not Hallmark. In fact, I’m writing this review waiting for the commercials to end. It ruins the overall movie experience, and the reason I even have access to this app is because I already pay for it through my cable subscription. Also, why are the 2020 Christmas movies only available for less than two days? People do have lives, especially in the months leading up to the big holiday. Four new movies are put up available onto the app, two from Saturday, two from Sunday—yay, great—and they’re gone before the end of the week. Lifetime, probably Hallmark’s biggest competition with Christmas movies, has been releasing their new movies on a similar schedule and they’re allowing subscribers to watch them for weeks afterward. I’ll be honest, I’ve been watching more Lifetime because of their app’s ease of use and overall better design interface in comparison to Hallmark. Oh, and instead of sitting through five minute commercial breaks, they’re cut in half. A two hour movie, most of it ads, is reduced to 90 minutes. Step it up, Hallmark. Hallmark can fix their app, if they’re willing to read people’s complaints. My mother also wrote a review for this app weeks ago and it was never published. ?
Review by GypsyLove13 on Hallmark TV.