iPhone App: i.TV

December 17th, 2008

= 4 stars

i.TV is an iPhone App that might be described as an entertainment information hub. It includes television listings, movie theater listings, “my media,” and search ability.

The Good

• Television: The best part of the program, basically all the TV listings once you identify where you are and how you get your TV. Combined with the search feature, it’s basically TV Guide in your pocket.
• Theaters: See a listing of theaters near you based on your location, and movies and show times at said location. When you drill down to a movie title, you can see a preview, a star rating, and sometimes an image gallery and Wikipedia link. Clicking on the “thumbs up” button adds it to the “my media” section.
• Search function: This is where iTV gets interesting. You can type the name of an actor, say Cate Blanchett, and give her a “thumbs up.” Said actor / actress turns up in the “my media” section, and there’s an area listing media associated with that person. The search returns results from all sections (TV, movies, Netflix).
• My Media: Lists your favorite movies, TV shows, and people. Also includes a Netflix queue management section, where you can view the queue, rearrange their order, and delete and add titles.

The Bad

• There are several sections to this program, and while it’s cool to have what’s essentially a few apps in one, the end result is something a bit unweildy and easy to get lost in. The relationship between sections is rather muddy — it took me a while to figure out how to get items into the “my media” section.
• Upcoming movies — I’d love to have a list of favorite actors and directors and have advance notice when that movie was about to hit the theater. It would also be nice to have movie trailers of upcoming features.

Conclusion

i.TV is a very cool program, like a Swiss army knife of entertainment options. That said, it may actually be trying to do too much. What might be in order for the makers is a step back to consider the implications of having all this information available in one app, how users might want to manage it and cross reference said info, and how to provide an easy to use interface that allows all this to happen simply and intuitively. I sort of wonder if this app would be better if it stuck with the “TV Guide on iPhone” metaphor and eschewed the movie theater and NetFlix stuff.

Therefore, although iTV provides decent Netflix queue management, I continue to use iPhlix for that job because it does that one thing well and in a much clearer, elegant manner, plus it supports that Instant Queue.

That said, this is a free program so my complaints are minor quibbles. i.TV suffers from too much functionality which is the opposite of most free iPhone apps out there. Definitely download and add it to your iPhone.

iTunes App Store Link: