Channel 4 17+

Ads are more than a pain

I’ve personally not experienced any of the problems other customers have such as buffering or sound and no picture etc. However, the ads are beyond frustrating as they are 4 minutes long at a time and it feels like you watch more ads than the program itself. I understand the app runs through making money from ad exposure but 4 minutes is just way too long and you can’t skip them. I mainly watch things on platforms such as Netflix in order to get away from ads so this is quite annoying. I feel like if the ad time was less, and the ads themselves were short and snappy, the customer would have a better experience. Personally I end up playing on my phone when the ads come on.

Ads and bugs

I only use it on Apple TV. They did not mess with the video player UI, which if you used Now TV you know the pain, on downside the pause button on the remote doesn’t work but clicking the middle of the remote trackpad does so.. But they do not joke around, it’s ads after ads, so many ads, specially American programs which have so many ad breaks, if you just want to scrub through to the end of a show, you need to see the ads. And it has so many bugs, it’s impossible to scrub through a video, the video Ui just fades away, tapping the edges of the remote for quick 10s skip doesn’t work either. You start seeing a show say s01e01, it then sets the next one to a newer season like s03e02 On that note often doesn’t mark an episode as watched, you have to use the Apple TV app to do that instead, thank god for that integration as browsing a tv show in Apple TV app is more efficient Sometimes just image just goes black, you then have to go back in and you know see ads again Often at the end of a show the image gets smaller to show the next episode way before the show actually reached the end, you then have to maximise it again AND hit play But you know it’s free so..

One more thing: the ad breaks are constantly changing, sometimes they are 3 minutes, sometimes just 30s or even 15, so by time you get up to go the toilet it’s already over, I prefer consistency to be able to enjoy my breaks.

Crash, advert, crash, advert, repeat….

Really frustrating! I’ve used All 4 in the past and linked with chromecast but lately and with the new update I can be casting a one hour episode and find that it crashes within ten minutes and then sends me straight back to the start of the programme after an advert or two. By the time I’ve found where the programme crashed, I have to watch another two adverts and then can continue watching. Within another two minutes it crashes again and says there’s an error and then I’m back to the start of the programme again with another advert before it starts again. I’ve given up now. This doesn’t appear to be able to ‘project to the big screen’ like it states unless you have a spare four hours to watch a one hour episode of a programme. Frustrating. Maybe it’s my wifi, maybe it’s chromecast or maybe it’s the channel 4 app. They are all like enemies working against each other. There’s no telling what or who is at fault. Just a statement on the screen saying I need to recast and then no record of how much of the episode I have watched. Another two reviews to write as I frustratingly turn off my tv and feel I’ve wasted an evening of my life watching the first part of a programme several times. It isn’t just tonight this has happened. I did exactly the same last night and the night before. Should be called All 4 (hours wasted) but I’ve wasted more than that on this app.

Developer Response ,

Hi, we are sorry to read of the issues you are experiencing. Please contact our C4 Streaming team directly to look into this -> https://www.channel4.com/4viewers/contact-us