HIDIVE

Absolute garbage, I don’t like it at all. 😭 make it free to watch bruh.

Not that user friendly and it doesn’t show that u have watch like the individual episode and if u didn’t finish a episode it also doesn’t show and u have to remember witch one or try guessing which one and hope it is the right one

The app works for its intended use: watch anime. However it fails big time on user experience (UX). You have to learn how to work around its dumb interface. * It is a dumb interface because if you are binging a series there’s no “next episode”, you have to quit the full screen and scroll to the next episode, which means you have to remember what was the last episode you where on. * There is a “History” menu but it’s basically useless because there’s no direct link from you last watched episode to the show you where watching. You would expect that if the show is called “Dragon Ball Z” you could tap on the name to go directly into its episodes list but no. *Your typical use behavior will be to go into the history menu, check what episode you where watching of what show, then quit the menu and manually search for the show, then go into the show and scroll down to the episode you where watching, which btw they do not keep track of what episode you where last watching ln the episodes list. But wait there’s more. * There’s no “skip intro”. “Ok fine but I can scroll with the slider right?” Well, yes but, the preview image of the scrolling is never aligned correctly to the time. Meaning, you could scroll into the last frame of the intro image and in reality you are 10 to 15 seconds past the intro. Leading you into a tug of war with the damned scroll slider. And this is for binge watching a single show. Imagine the nightmare that this becomes when you are watching multiple simulcast shows and your History menu looks like a disordered restaurant menu. You are better off creating an Excel sheet to keep track of your shows, which defeats the whole point of paying for a sub. Im paying for convenience and yet UX is worse than “navigating lonely seas”.

The app is great, functions well overall. However there is one MAJOR issue that seems to be missing in most, if not all the other reviews I’ve seen and that is the paywall. I made an account today thinking there’d be free anime to watch. I thought wrong. You need a subscription to watch any and all anime on this app and yet there is another orange and black app that allows you to watch select anime for free. If you remove the paywall, at least for certain anime you own, it would be a much better app.

I had to rewrite all of this because I accidentally clicked out when I had like an essays worth of test :) This app reminds me of when you copy and paste from an article, but forget to fix the format. Problems I came across within 1 day of using the app: 1. When you go back to continue watching an episode in the “Continue Watching” section, it doesn’t tell you what anime it is, and it doesn’t play the next episode. This is very irritating because most of the time I forget what the anime is even called and have to look up the episode name to find it. It also just made me waste 5 whopping seconds of my time!!! 2. The slider that controls the timestamp you’re on doesn’t even work. I mean, yeah, it shows you how far you are. But when you use it to fast forward or go back, it just… doesn’t do anything? I understand if this isn’t even supposed to be an actual feature but why give the option if you can’t even use it properly? 3. This one isn’t anything too bad. For some reason some episodes have “coming soon” or “releasing in 2 days” when they are already out and watchable? It’s either outdated or it means something else. But whatever it is, it’d be enjoyable if they actually told you. But honestly, the actual watching experience is decent. Sometimes the subtitles overlap and I have no idea who is speaking, but I’m not sure if that’s even their fault.

After the update a few days ago, it always says “Sorry, something went wrong” and can’t see or watch anything or even logout to try and refresh it.

Your Amazon Firestick version of this app (where I do most of my watching) is teeerible. No options for continuous viewing (gotta do that in the mobile app) and lack of options in general. Then some anime is missing dialogue and edited (no option for mature subject matter). Sure, theres exclusive good titles not found on competitors, but the interface is lacking so much, I almost would rather not watch at all. If sub was $6 or more I would definitely hard pass 😤 (which is saying a lot, for an anime fan since the 80’s).

If you have ever used any other streaming app of any kind anywhere ever, this one will look terrible. It’s bad on every single platform. Mobile iOS, Apple TV, everywhere. It actually makes watching anime difficult.

This app is not worth it at all, limited shows to watch and for payment it is really difficult to cancel your subscription I got charged once because I just could not cancel it and wasted my money on a subscription I do not want.

HIDIVE needs to keep up with watch history. What they have for watch history is an abomination. The settings needs a major over haul. For example: removing subtitles. I still can’t figure out where or how to remove them because this app has not been made well to interact with humans. My experience is with a ROKU TV which is much better than Samsung since you are not allowed to download the HIDIVE app on a Samsung tv. The English dubs are good and well edited. The major concern for HIDIVE is... it will never be able to increase its market share if these problems are not addressed. And done so soon!