Citytv releases a video app for Canadians

If you’re stuck in the great white north like I am, then you know full well how terrible getting “primetime” media online is these days. It pretty much doesn’t exist. Sure, you can stream from Citytv’s website, and now Netflix, but the latter is a relatively new release, and the previous is a terrible experience.

Is Citytv’s application any different? Not really.

Hey, we will take the primetime content. We’ve been starved of it for years, but if the Scotiabank advertisement pops up one more time while I’m trying to navigate their application, I’m going to toss my iPad across the room. On top of the poor advertisement interaction, users are met with terrible in-app load times, and even worse video compression. The CityV app is underwhelming at best. It has me wondering if some executive paid his geeky kid to create it for them instead of paying some professionals.

The best part of the first launch experience is seeing all the Citytv thumbnails all over the screen while the actual graphics loaded. Sadly, I wasn’t quick enough to grab a screenshot of it before it fully loaded. We’re not opposed to in video advertisements, like traditional commercials, but now on top of getting your traditional ad breaks, you also get them on every page you navigate, and trust us, they won’t stop nagging you.

How do we know that Citytv has absolutely no clue about what they’re doing? Every chance they get they’re throwing an advertisement in our faces: at a loading screen, as we scroll around the app, everywhere. It kind of makes me ashamed to be a Canadian.

The first thing it does after bombarding you with a Scotiabank advertisement is ask you to pick your region, as if it mattered for some reason—there is no difference between any of the options. Oh wait, I lied. It’s so you get accurate listings for their TV Schedule. It’s almost like they forgot what this whole exercise was about, and expect people to put down their iPad and video on demand, and turn on the television.

We’re going to end this one here, before this post turns into its own Scotiabank advertisement. Mentioning the company three times in a post is more than enough for me.

The Citytv app provides an excellent alternative to viewing TV shows on your television set, but don’t be surprised if your video is pixellated and has latency issues, because it did for us during our test run, and it got pretty annoying, pretty quickly.

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.