Foxtel Go

Watching stuff back is painful, especially stuff you fast forward through certain sections of. The lack of a “double tap” feature on either side of the screen to fast forward or rewind or even a fixed button in the time bar at the bottom makes it nigh on impossible to do seamlessly or even at all as half the time it doesn’t pick up your finger moving & even then, when you manage to, it’s a guessing game as there isn’t any frame images like there are when streaming on the physical Foxtel box itself. It turns what could be a half hour viewing experience for an hour show into longer than the show itself. Why is it that Foxtel Go is the only streaming service in Australia without this feature or any other ones like feed quality selection & others the reviews have left that keep being ignored? And now you want us to pay more for content we had but now with ads too? And as usual, no offers extend to existing customers, ones that stop you going out of business in the first place. Stop making it such a chore to view content we pay for.

With the amount Foxtel charges, you’d expect something decent. Instead we have an app that doesn’t work, has ridiculously stupid functions, is jam packed full of ads, amongst a million other terrible things. With so many competitors, with MUCH lower fees, it makes me wonder why they make it so appalling. For example, you can pay around $10 per month for Netflix, which has a huge library of shows/movies/documentaries etc. Their app works great, has a super easy UI, and functionality actually makes sense. Whereas the Foxtel app, has a fraction of the library it could have, and when it actually does work, you are forced to watch a 30 second long unskippable ad when starting and pausing any movie/show. If I wanted to watch ads, I’d get a free streaming service. Even their ads are shorter, and skippable. Also, thanks Foxtel for making your app even worse. Now when I watch something in the app, if I connect it to my tv, I can’t even lock my device. I literally have to leave the app and device open and unlocked just to be able to watch a show on my tv. This is new, and never used to happen, so tell me why you would introduce this ridiculous function? To anyone who hasn’t already wasted their money signing up to Foxtel, I’d suggest you don’t. Even if you literally paid for a subscription for every other streaming service, you’d still pay less than that of Foxtel. But if you love super long ads and spending an exorbitant amount of money, then Foxtel’s for you.

The app is generally ok but is has some extremely annoying things seemingly built into it. It’s constant popping up with “Are you still there? Press play to confirm” when you’re in the middle of a movie or in the last minute of a sporting event is aggravating in the extreme. Even worse is the pop-up which seems to appear randomly telling you you have been kicked off, “login failed” even though you’ve been watching for some time. The only solution is to close the app and re-open it, by which time you’ve missed the conclusion of whatever you were watching. Also, why can I rewind half an hour on live shows when watching through my iPad, but as soon as I cast to the TV that ability disappears? This app could be really good, but these gripes are very annoying and seem completely unnecessary.