The app falls well below what one would expect from a national broadcaster. There is so much wrong with it! Videos can’t be played in landscape when you tilt the phone, embedded videos are hypersensitive to touch and very annoyingly play when not wanted, news items aren’t sufficiently frequently updated and out of date stuff stays on site. When an update happens or something like say an election is happening, the app takes it upon itself to change my viewing tab options without asking me, which I hate! If I leave the app and briefly use another app and then return to the RTE app, the place where I left off isn’t held for me and I’ve to start all over again! Very disappointing!

The RTÉ Player is alright, it’s not perfect and it definitely need more investment and development. In my opinion the UX is not great. The RTÉ Player has a bad reputation. It is also a very ugly app and looks amateurish and comparing it to other public service broadcaster’s online players makes RTÉ look like a joke. The TV app is however horrendous, it is hard to use clunky, and outdated. It is also really ugly, which looks terrible compared to the competition. However the Virgin Media Player is even worse. There is only catch up or very limited box sets, and the TV app is useless, which is why I write this review. They have just announced their new Virgin Media Play app and the pictures for it look amazing. Especially the TV app which looks much nicer and looks way easier to use. If it works as well as it looks, it will blow the RTÉ Player out of the water, and leave it running for its money. It also offers way more features, such as downloading content, favourite shows and watch history, which the RTÉ Player desperately needs. I hope the new Virgin Media Play app gives RTÉ the push to once and for all, FIX THE PLAYER…. PLEASE!!!

Possibly the worst media player available, RTÉ moved from a sometimes glitchy player to a branded skin over the previous (hugely complained about) TV3/Virgin player. However the performance is significantly worse than that virgin iteration of the app. Huge battery drain, ads audio plays in background while show is streaming, app has no effective tracking of how much of an episode you have watched or where you might be in a series, it frequently clears the list of programmes you have marked as favourite, often crashes, has poor rewind/fast forward capabilities. All core functionality, I cannot understand how the developer’s services are retained after consistent failure to deliver a viable product to meet what should have been basic contract provisions. It’s a shame, I don’t agree with general RTÉ bashing about content, there is quite a lot of good and important programming, I just wish I could watch it

I cannot understand why the Player is not included or advertised in any way as another reason why people should pay their TV License. To be honest in my opinion the service itself is more than enough of a service to account for the cost of the licence when you think about what people will pay for other streaming services on a monthly basis. So maybe the next time you are reviewing how to let/make the public see what they are receiving for their contribution to the State backed media service’S include the player as part of the overall package Just a thought