BritBox by BBC & ITV

Just a couple of hours in on my annual gift subscription and I’m am not at all impressed. It takes forever to load a page. I’m trying to go through the A-Z list, which is a painful process because it sits and spins and spins just to load the next few listings. Then it dumps you out and puts you way back at the beginning. I am not able to access my account online on my laptop. Just get continued error messages. Completely annoyed and regret that I asked for this gift subscription.

I was enjoying the iPad version of BritBox App when it recently gave an error message that “something went wrong”. Now I am unable to watch anything at all. I should give zero stars for zero performance, but I did enjoy it very much previous to this. I am hoping that the update was the problem and is being seen to. I would certainly not renew a $69.99 subscription just to see an error screen!

Signed up for a free trial and looked through the shows, the next time I went to the app to actually watch something, got a page showing that something has gone wrong. When I try to refresh the page, nothing happens. I have seen this message every time I’ve opened the app since.

So I have a 42 in Vizio TV that supports airplay, won’t connect with my tv for visual playback but I can hear the audio on my tv but it plays the visuals on my iPad Pro. I don’t understand why it’s not working. I was watching a movie on the app via airplay last night.

Please, puleeze, please make the largest font choice larger! I watch BritBox and AcornTV 97% of my television watching. I need the closed caption! The three choices are not large enough. When I watch through Safari, the font is white, and you can’t see it at all. When I watch through Chrome, the white font is on a black background which allows it to be more visible. But the largest font size is too small for aging eyes! Can’t have cataract surgery during covid. Please enlarge font!!!

I tried BritBox when it first launched and found the content so-so and the app functionality needing some work. After a stint in the UK, I’m back and looking to watch my favorites. The lineup has definitely improved and I would hope it extends even further in the months ahead. What still annoys me now that annoyed me back in the beginning is that there is not a setting to allow for auto play of the next episode in a series. Fix this and I’ll enjoy using BritBox much more. UPDATE: the lineup is still lacking and, despite what the developer claims, there is no way to enable auto-play for the next episode in a series. I’m really questioning if I will even continue my subscription. FURTHER UPDATE: Content only declines, functionality and layout of app has no improvements, and STILL NO WAY OF ENABLING AUTOPLAY. I seriously don’t think the developers have any clue what they are talking about when they tell someone how to enable it. YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Finally we see a new layout to the app, great, though, it still has issues. Still are unable to autoplay but the biggest issue that just occurred as we went into Christmas Eve was the casting icon missing, this, removing the ability to cast to your television. With the recent additions to their lineup, I was excited to sit back and enjoy some television watching with some old favorites but that is now impossible. How? How? How can a developer try so hard and screw up so majorly all the time? I see no point in continuing my subscription if I can’t cast.

They have a good selection of shows (but why no Graham Norton or Anne Robinson “The Weakest Link”). The AppleTV app works fine but the iPad app has some issues with switching orientation.

Won’t let me log in and I called BritBox and they said they can’t show my account existing!

I love the shows but this app needs a lot of improvement! Keeps kicking us out while watching! Close captioning is a joke! It gets so frustrating that even though we love the shows we might have to cancel it, not worth the stress!

The update once allowed you to minimize the app to a smaller screen and you can multitask in the background but it’s not allowing me to do that anymore. I watch a lot of British shows but I don’t often use this app, though I subscribe, because it’s just not functional. Mostly every other app allows you to make a smaller screen that still plays while you work in another app and it’s frustrating that the update didn’t do much but usher the app into an aesthetic comparable to our current tech era.