HIDIVE +17

The new update is so annoying HIDIVE originally had profiles but now their basically completely gone. Reduced to having to go and manually click on your list where it’s just two watchlist not profiles, and watch history is combined now so it really is like you’re sharing one profile. Not to mention the biggest problem is the fact that when you’re watching a show it doesn’t keep track of where you left off. If you click on a show there’s no inkling of an indication that you were on an episode. Also if you hit start watching it automatically takes you to the first episode every time. Also a little nitpick here but I hate the fact that the subtitles aren’t embedded into the show, it’s so ugly and distracting. Another thing shows will just refused to show up in my continue watching, the only way they’ll show up there is if I didn’t finish the episode. Also it should be a crime that you can’t go back 10 seconds being forced to go back 30 seconds. Another problem is that on my phone I will search anime and go to add them to my list and they will just not appear. The only way I can find them is if I go on the TV, it’s like my list is full or some thing. I like the fact that Hidive has a lot of anime you can’t find on Crunchyroll and that they even have a dedicated LGBT+ genre but all of these very critical problems is really the sullying viewing experience, They really need to get their act together.

Time to update my rating (from 3 to 4 stars) and review here, since things have improved a fair bit since my prior review. The addition of the watchlists button to the bottom nav bar fixes one of my big issues with the app, and various bugs have gotten fixed, like the formerly missing series text titles and descriptions in the watchlist view. There is still one critical problem for me: the watched status for each episode is missing and not being updated even after episodes are watched, making it very hard to tell where I am in the various series. Lesser issues: 1) The home screen still only has thumbnails for the series, with no text labels, so it’s sometimes hard to figure out what series the thumbnail is for; 2) while new episodes are flagged in the watchlist and episode lists, it’s only done by date, for a week, and doesn’t track whether the episode is new/unwatched by the current user, and the separate history feature isn’t a real replacement for this important feature; 3) the multi-user profile support is welcome, but still minimal, I would rather not see everyone’s watchlists, just my own, and if episode “watched” tracking is ever added back in, it needs to be by profile, not account; 4) the skip forward and reverse buttons 30s skip size is mildly annoying since it’s too large, the iOS standard video skip is 10s, which is much more convenient for quickly going back to catch subtitles, which I do constantly.

Let’s face it, most of us subscribe for one or two shows that HIDIVE locked in as exclusives. We know it. They know it. It’s a hostage situation. Despite the pedigree of the company founders, HIDIVE somehow continues to provide the worst streaming experience ever, and continually make it worse (while raising prices!)

I recently went on an international trip and wanted to download some episodes for binging on the long-haul flights. But the app refused to load any content. Just a basic: No content available error message. I was probably flagged for being in an unsupported region (Japan!) on initial connection because I forgot to turn my VPN on. I’m a U.S.A.-based subscriber, and the app was useless to me for my entire trip.

Only rating this two-stars because the updated player finally supports skipping forward and backward a few seconds. Unless there are steady improvements over the next year, this is my final year as a subscriber. The few exclusives they have are amazing, but there’s no shortage of anime to watch elsewhere. Honestly, I’ll buy the shows on disc if I need to watch them. The experience of using HIDIVE has never been good, and only feels worse over time. As a software engineer myself I’d love to spend a day with their tech team and learn why the experience is so poor. Is it the tech team, product managers, executives? Who deserves the blame. I wonder…