CrackleReviews 412

I would be more forgiving of the awful service Crackle provides if this was a start up company, new to entertainment or streaming video, but this is Sony Entertainment. They have both the ability and financial chops to hire a team which knows how to write Android apps. Many, including myself, have contacted Crackle on more than one occasion about the defects in their app. The best they can tell me is "we can't offer a solution at this time" or "you'll have to wait for the update". The app, after several "commercial breaks", almost always goes to the beginning of the movie or show and starts over again. Trying to navigate with the slide bar doesn't work. Sometimes, the video and audio get completely out of synch. Definitely don't try watching "Groundhog Day" with this app, as you could end up in a loop where you never finish the movie. In one case, a 120 minute movie I tried to watch repeated so many segments, after about 3 hours, I gave up and never did see how it ended.

And let's speak about the ads. More often than not, the same 15-30 second ad will run 3-4 times in a row during the same break, and then it will be repeated for each ad break, meaning you will see the same ad 40-60 times during a full length movie. It's either torture or brainwashing, or both, and I can guarantee the sponsor I will NEVER buy their product or go to their movie after that.

It's a darn good thing Crackle is a free service (not that I consider the time waster it is "free"), because as it currently stands (and its been like this for months) it is certainly pretty much worthless.

With a user interface designed to be as repellent and frustrating as humanly possible, Crackle is probably single handedly responsible for the sale of more tranquilizers than any other Internet video channel. And if you do manage to unlock the mystery of navigating the service, be prepared to be blown out of your seat by unpredictable and dramatic increases in audio volume as you tune from one menu selection to the next. Crackle designers and engineers have zero regard for your intelligence, your comfort or your desire to visit them again.

Crackle was a channel I'd go to occasionally on roku. When I started streaming Netflix on my smartphone I thought 'y not add crackle to change things up from time to time?' - think again. I start watching movies fine then after the second or third commercial it jumps back to a previous point in the movie. Commercials I'm fine with as that's the deal but y don't they just fix this issue they're clearly aware of as others have complained about it online. Do the advertisers know it's happening? I hope not.

Why does Roku even offer this substandard channel? I've been trying to watch Comedians in Cars and it constantly pauses to buffer, or just completely dumps me out of the channel back to the Roku menu. No such problems with Netflix or Amazon. And I hate the way it immediately launches into some stupid show 2 seconds after you click on the channel so you have to quickly find what you're trying to watch. The overall interface on this channel is ridiculous. Jerry Seinfeld, please switch to Netflix!

Aside from numerous, repetitive, and loud commercials, the programming is sub-par, but the real fail and sin is the Roku channel. Some geniuses at Roku decided that rather than providing you content from which to choose, the first thing you should encounter is video, chosen for you, which begins playing immediately. Worse than that is that it plays in the background while you're browsing and can't easily be stopped. Easily the worst interface created for a content channel. Thanks for choosing for me, Crackle. I really don't like to choose for myself.