The CW 12+

Overall I like the app. I get that contracts limit to the last 5 episodes, though in the modern age of episodic TV having fall finales I wish they would release the early season episodes to streaming services in smaller chunks to let us get caught up and finish the show on the app.

However my first complaint / reason for a drop of a star is that unlike other streaming apps, this one maintains the main iOS screen saver settings. When I use my phone normally I want it to lock automatically after a short period of me not touching it ... but if I’m watching an hour long show casted to my TV I don’t want to touch my phone for an hour, and definitely not every 2 minutes.
Also, either the setting to go from one episode to the next doesn’t exist or it isn’t obvious / intuitive. Other streaming apps auto-forward too quickly (I sometimes like the music and some movies have post-credit scenes), but to not have the option to skip to next or automatically advance at the end also seems outdated.
Other streaming video apps have these issues figured out, more or less, and they seem tome to be things that need to be priorities.

This app is incomprehensibly bad, at least as far as how it displays when holding the iPad in different orientations. For starters, when you open the app, it only supports portrait orientation, with the home button at the bottom. Now let’s be clear about something. We are watching a video, the only way to watch it is in landscape orientation. And that is exactly how the videos will play, but before you can watch them, you have to browse the selection screen with iPad held upright in portrait orientation. That is incomprehensibly ridiculous. Why wouldn’t you want to browse the listings in the same orientation as you are going to watch them in? As it is, the iPad is often easier to hold in landscape orientation. And it’s not like there isn’t an existing CW app that is used exclusively in landscape orientation. Hello Apple TV!

But this gets better. Sometimes I have to have my iPad in landscape orientation with the home button on the left side, so I can have it plugged in while I’m watching something. And while the actual videos “can” play oriented correctly regardless of which side is up, when you pause a video, it will resume upside down if your iPad is held (or on a stand in my case) with the home button is on the left. And of course, when you exit a video, the home screen for the app is sideways.

You would think the developers of The CW app have not actually used it themselves. It’s just that incomprehensibly absurd in the way it works.

I downloaded this on my FireTV to watch Dark Matter. Great show, terrible app. Watched several episodes the first time. I went back in and it had me starting episode 3, I was pretty sure I’d watched it already but I’ve seen the whole series already so I wasn’t sure. Watched through episode 5 this time. Tonight I come back ready to start episode 6 and it’s got me on episode 3. Don’t get me wrong, I love the show and am currently rewatching it but seriously they can’t accurately track what I’ve watched? You literally have one job, to stream entertainment correctly. No biggie, I’ll just exit and go to the proper episode. Guess what? You can’t do that from the show, you have to exit out and track down the series manually. The developers who created this app seem like they were bribed by rival streaming services to make a functional but annoying and stupid app designed to drive customers away. I would like to be watching Dark Matter again instead of writing this review but unfortunately after one episode tonight as the next was starting I got an “Ooops, try again message”. Spoiler alert: trying again did not work. I gave the app 2 stars but this are both for content, the actual app deserves zero stars. Garbage!