Poorly developed app – Crackle - Movies & TV Review

I’ve used Crackle for years and never had an issue with it. I found out Sony sold it off to another company called Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. I’m guessing this is why the new app functions poorly. First when opening the app you can’t see thumbnails of the movie covers. Instead they have a random thumbnail from a scene in the movie so you have no idea what each selection is until you click on it. Then if you click on it and want more info about the movie the app does not display it. Under the info/description area all the text is layered on top of each other so nothing is legible. There are no trailers or links to anything about the movies or shows either which means I have to google the title of each film to see what it’s about or what the cover picture even is. For me this ruins the app. I have found some good content but having to google everything manually seems counterintuitive and frustrating. The fact that the description text is not legible tells me that not much effort was put into this new app. There are also numerous account issues that plague the app including being sometimes denied access due to “not available in your area”. Then there are commercials/ads. I’m fine with ads on a free service but the ads are the same ads every time. How many times in one movie do I need to see the same Old Navy or diabetes medication commercial? Then sometimes the ads get stuck playing in a loop. I watched a diabetes medication ad play 5 times in a row before I had to force close the app and restart it which fixed the problem… temporarily. I’d say the UI has problems as well. Watching this on an iPad Pro, I’m rarely able to get the 10 second rewind button to work properly. Despite hitting it multiple times it will often disappear again and I have to touch the screen to get the UI to reappear. Hitting it directly doesn’t always work, it’s like the touch area for it is misaligned with the actual icon on the UI. The app seems more like someone’s college project than that of a legit company. Sad to see Sony sold this off and then it’s just degraded even further under current ownership.
Review by HaiGuise on Crackle - Movies & TV.