Roku Vudu App Interface Rebuild

[klownboy]

I noticed the other day that the Roku app does now indicate when you have previously watched a movie with "watch again" as it did in the previous version of the app and as it always has on the PC. One step in the right direction.

[nextdo]

I just want to add a +1 to the discussion.


I'd prefer more items per screen, faster paging when trying to find items in my own list, a UX that makes it more clear what I'm sorting on and how to change that, and less navigation to get to my items.

I don't mind refresh, but I wish it had retained what was good about the old UX.

[klownboy]

The real deal breaker for me is the fact that when you click on a movie it no longer states "Watch again" if you've watched it before. I have well over 4100 movies on Vudu. Do you think I can actually remember everyone that I've watched or not watched? That "Watch again" is on the computer, but now it's missing on the new Roku Vudu app. Yes, it was there before. Please get that fixed and please get back to the old interface.

[Golgotha100]

I would add to the majority. Don't fix it if it ain't broke. The new app is garbage. I've spent thousands in the Vudu app, and I'm not inclined to spend more after this disaster. I signed up to the forum just to make this post.

[johnmuoio@hotmail.com]

This was the most stable UHD app on my Roku and is now actually worse than Netflix, which always jacked my router somehow. I don't know what Vudu has done to cause this problem, so I can't fix it. AppleTV doesn't seem to be a problem either. Netflix and now Vudu seem to consume some resource on my Netgear R7000 and when it runs out, it stops playing the title. Last night it happened 4 times trying to watch Star Trek around midnight to 2 am and a router reboot seems to fix it. Again, there's no info from Vudu, so I have no idea what has changed hence I can't fix it.

Why did Vudu have to do this? WTH?!?!?!?! It functioned perfectly fine with a reasonable interface and now it's gone to hell and have to relearn how to use it. It's clunky.

Another issue, why does the number of items in "Continue watching" constantly change?

Another issue, It's cumbersome now to get to my "continue watching as well as my list of movies and TV". Was the 5000+ we spent on movies in the last 2 years no enough and you think that redesigning the app will make me buy more?

Don't try and go down the road of "it's your router". Duh! I already know that the router isn't quite handling what you're doing, but if a Netgear R7000 isn't handling it, then maybe you're expecting too much out of the home routher? We're not going to buy some Cisco Stack costing more than $500 to be able to run your and Netflix's apps. At least Netflix only blows it up when you jump around a lot, but this new crappy Vudu app fails after a router and roku reboot, selecting and playing a movie with no navigation after starting the movie.

What have you changed? Why did you change it? What am I supposed to do with my router to accommodate your, now crappy, app?

Your app used to be the most stable one I had with the only complaint being the changing list of "continue watching'. Now, it's nigh unusuable.

[Snugbug]

I am definitely not a fan. This new format is clunky and slow. If they would have added the ability to reset watched episodes on tv shows I might like it a tiny bit but they did not. This has started me building my own movie server with a nas. Not sure who's brilliant idea this was but it is a huge fail in my humble opinion. My love for Vudu has left the building and is replaced with frustration. I sure hope the powers that be take notice and listen to the concerns we have voiced and make things better.

[Alan Smithee]

Sad since originally Vudu was geared to the enthusiasts. Ultraviolet and Movies Anywhere were good safeguards though for times when one service becomes unusable, you have a chance to watch elsewhere instead.

[Emissary35]

Movie trailers are still only in standard def also, not that it matters much since the first few seconds are covered up by the interface. When I first had access to Vudu I watched a lot of trailers, but they’re in HD on other services now. If I were a designer I would’ve done something about that before changing the interface.

That's the problem here in a nutshell. The programmers or app designers, whatever you want to call them, seem to lack basic common sense. They don't seem to have an understanding of what customers expect and can't anticipate these problems they create when coming up with new designs. It doesn't even look like they sit down and test the viewing experience among themselves (let alone beta test it with customers) before they force out an update. Had they done that they would have quickly realized that TV show trailers are now hidden because you can no longer access the episodes details page, which is not an improvement. And they also would have realized that now beginning and resuming playback on all videos results in the video being dimmed and covered by the player control overlay and information for 5 seconds before they time out, with no ability to dismiss! Not only is this not an improvement it's utter nonsense!

This speaks of the people in charge having no common sense and being completely disconnected from reality when it comes what they think basic function for the user should be. Vudu has still yet to address these issues, they haven't fixed the app, let us know they are looking into fixing the app, or offered a way to rollback to the previous version until this is fixed. They are also ignoring my support tickets on these matters, which never happened in the past. I always got a response from Vudu support in 2 days or less whenever I had a question or complaint. Well it's now been a full week since the first support ticket I created to send in with my initial complaints over this new app. It's been at least 3 days for my second complaint ticket and neither have gotten a response.

It's obvious now that when Fandango took over the company they quickly decided to do away with prompt customer support and have instead embraced the policy of pretending they don't hear us. This way they don't have to answer for their mistakes, like why this horrible app was forced on us with all of it's issues. This is a complete disaster, I wish Vudu had never been sold to Fandango, none of these issues would be happening right if that hadn't occurred. Just roll the app back to what it was before, and respond to the complaints!

[lujan]

Movie trailers are still only in standard def also, not that it matters much since the first few seconds are covered up by the interface. When I first had access to Vudu I watched a lot of trailers, but they’re in HD on other services now. If I were a designer I would’ve done something about that before changing the interface.

I've even noticed that many of the UHD movies on iTunes also have the trailers in UHD.

715 UHD
813 HDX
5 SD

[Alan Smithee]

Movie trailers are still only in standard def also, not that it matters much since the first few seconds are covered up by the interface. When I first had access to Vudu I watched a lot of trailers, but they’re in HD on other services now. If I were a designer I would’ve done something about that before changing the interface.

[Emissary35]

Clearly not designed for folks with large collections, and already dedicated to Vudu. This is for new users, or potential users who are already using Netflix. The only way to get corporate attention is to vote with your wallets. iTunes currently has a lot of the Star Trek Series (Next Generation, Original, Enterprise, Voyager) cheaper than I've seen them on Vudu. Maybe its time to start my transition. 60% of collection is MA at least. I hear 4K looks better on the Apple app on Roku anyway.

Yes I agree completely. About Star Trek though, it's not easy to get the original copies of the episodes anymore because of HD remasters taking over and supplanting them. Most places that stream "Star Trek: The Original Series" & "Star Trek: The Next Generation" choose to offer the remastered versions only, with new updated effects. While there is nothing wrong with that I think the originals should never be removed. There have been a couple services like Vudu and Amazon that do offer fans the original TOS episodes, but none seem to offer the original TNG episodes anymore, I think that's a travesty.

I think streaming services that have Star Trek should always give customers who subscribe monthly or who actually purchase the shows access to both versions of TOS and TNG so that fans can always watch the originals as they were produced by the people who actually made the show. Instead of discarding their work in favor of only a remastered team's version which is just a re-edit decades later. Fans should always be able to watch both original and remastered Star Trek.

There should also be an option to view TOS in the original production order, the way the episodes were released on DVD as double episode volumes before the season sets came out and they switched to air dates. The air date versions create a lot of continuity errors. So a way to toggle between production/air date on all services for TOS would be great so you can choose which way to watch.

Not even Paramount Plus that absorbed CBS All Access which owns Star Trek offers the original episodes of TOS or TNG and that is absolutely shameful, when they have the original copies just sitting in their vaults collecting dust!

Customers deserve to have more viewing options of how we can watch our favorite shows, not less because of narrow minded studios and apps only giving us what they decide we should have.

[jkuhnen]

Clearly not designed for folks with large collections, and already dedicated to Vudu. This is for new users, or potential users who are already using Netflix. The only way to get corporate attention is to vote with your wallets. iTunes currently has a lot of the Star Trek Series (Next Generation, Original, Enterprise, Voyager) cheaper than I've seen them on Vudu. Maybe its time to start my transition. 60% of collection is MA at least. I hear 4K looks better on the Apple app on Roku anyway.

[Emissary35]

I just noticed yet another terrible thing in this 'New & Improved' updated Vudu app. Apparently now we can no longer find the trailers for TV show episodes when we go to them in the season lists! In the previous app when you went to a show you selected the season you wanted and then clicked on the episode you chose, which then brought you to a details page for that episode. On that details page there was a button to play the trailer as well as a button to play the episode. Well that no longer exists! Because on the new app there is no longer any sub menu for the episode itself! As a consequence to this there is now no longer a way to play the trailers anymore!

Now all we see is the entire season list of episodes with each one having a single button to start the episode! I did notice that any episode in the "Continue Watching" section does in fact have an option to bring you to a details page for the episode when you select it, and that details page does have the trailer button, but that is the only way you can access it.

So before on the previous Vudu app we could easily go up and down a season list and access the trailers if we wanted to, but now if we want to play any trailers for episodes we must first start playing the episode and let it run for a few seconds, just to get it to show up in the "Continue Watching" section! Then we must navigate out of the season list and go all the way back to the "Continue Watching" section, then click on the episode there and select the 'details' button and then we finally have the option to play the trailer there!

I'm sorry but this is absolutely ridiculous! Basically the trailers are now hidden/buried unless we jump through all of these unnecessary hoops in order to get episodes to appear in "Continue Watching" first! This completely defeats the entire purpose of watching trailers in the first place! The point of a trailer is to play it before you watch the actual episode, but now we have to first start the episodes before we can have access to the trailers! Tell me Fandango/Vudu, how is this an update or improvement at all! Also the details page has a way to read the full episode description, but now the episodes are limited to a descending season column, so if the text in the episode description is too much it gets cut off! Before we could easily access the full info for longer descriptions, now we can't because the column of episodes cuts it off! This is not an improvement at all, it's worse!

These changes are completely dumb! It's showing a regression in the usefulness of the app, not a progression into something better. The people at Fandango should be embarrassed and totally ashamed of their terrible new app update! The people making and implementing these changes are entirely clueless! This app update is terrible, it was not properly tested for feedback before being released and so far after all of these complaints, Fandango/Vudu seems to be doing nothing at all to roll the app back to the previous version.

It's crystal clear that they didn't know what they were doing when they designed this app and cut a lot of corners, no common sense was used at all and that is very telling of the mindset of the people in charge making these decisions!

Also support has not responded to my complaints ticket that I made four days ago, before the Vudu support staff always responded and usually between 24 and 48 hours of submitting a ticket. But with Fandango people in charge now they don't seem to respond at all. Not to mention that but my account page that previously listed all of my other complaints tickets from the past is completely gone! You could always go back and check them whether they were resolved or not, but now there is nothing! Another negative change!

It looks like the new management is ruining the service completely, I have little hope now of any of this getting resolved. Vudu had a great run but the new people in charge are undoing everything good about Vudu. So congratulations to the people at Fandango, you purchased Vudu and are well on your way to destroying what a great experience it was before you acquired it!

How about just rolling back to the previous version of the app and completely ditching this one! I've had enough! There was nothing wrong with the old app, it worked fine! If it's not broken don't fix it!

[Emissary35]

I'm sorry to say, but that means absolutely nothing if it lacks basic functionality and efficiency.

Exactly, I'd rather have an app more primitive in design if the functionality is what we want and there are no annoyances built in. The look is irrelevant as long as it's easy to scroll and find your content and playback without interruption. Unfortunately all these app designers care more about fancy bloated designs rather than providing a fast, easy uninterrupted user experience.

[trd365]

count me in the minority, but i kind of love it. looks very modern and sleeker. that other UI hadn't changed since like 2010 at least.

I'm sorry to say, but that means absolutely nothing if it lacks basic functionality and efficiency.