If you’ve been a long-standing customer of cable TV, you know the hitches surrounding traditional TV viewing. Many companies including Netflix and Hulu tapped on the opportunity at the right time and have enabled entertainment seekers to stream movies and TV shows, anytime, anywhere. Having said that, these paid services often feature big budget films and reruns of popular shows for a price, albeit nominal. What about those who wish to watch the other not-so-famous shows, independent movies, or documentaries?
Meet TubiTV –
While there is a legion of free streaming services in the market who offer different type of content, not all of them are good. TubiTV is one of the very few services which boasts of an incredibly colossal library of both, movies and shows with an impressive interface. Although you don’t pay a single penny for any of the content you watch on the platform, you do pay in the form advertisement interruptions. Owned by Adrise, TubiTV was introduced to users as recently as three years ago. Today, it is considered as the czar of the AVOD realm. Visit Site
What’s on TubiTV?
TubiTV has struck deals with numerous content partners like MGM Studios, Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate, Starz, and the like. As of today, the service flaunts a massive library, embellished with over 50,000 titles (a huge leap from the initial count of 20,000 titles) including indie flicks, cult movies, cartoons, documentaries, stand-up comedy, classics, and foreign films. You might be surprised to know that this figure is extremely close to Netflix’s wealth of content. These titles are carefully organized under sub-genres such as “Featured”, “Most Popular”, “New Arrivals”, “Leaving Soon”, “Kids Shows”, “Black Cinema”, “TV Dramas”, “Foreign Favorites”, “Cult Favorites”, and “Award Winners”. These sub-genres make it extremely convenient for users to filter through the content. Two genres in particular drew our attention, namely: “Highly Rated on Rotten Tomatoes”, and “Not on Netflix”; now that’s a clever move! Some of the most viewed movie titles on Tubi TV are “Igor”, “The Final”, “Barefoot”, “Ghost Town”, “The Kite Runner”, “True Grit”, and “Gladiator”. The movies range across a bunch of genres such as drama, comedy, romance, sci-fi, and horror, catering to a vast audience. Aside from this, you’ll also find interesting docuseries like “The World Before Her”, “Best Worst Movie”, “Woody Allen: A Documentary”, and “Hungry for Change”; these are a must-watch! Personally, we didn’t know 80% of the titles that we stumbled upon while using the app. We’re pretty sure that the majority of users, especially the younger lot would also be unfamiliar with the content on the platform. Having said that, those who have been using the service for a while claim that some of the fillers as well as indie movies are worth a watch despite not belonging to a big banner. Another point that we’d like to mention is that Tubi TV does not produce original TV series, unlike a few other paid services.
Is Tubi TV Available in Your Country?
Tubi TV is particularly optimized for those living in the United States. However, you can still get access to the service if you live in the following countries: Canada, Italy, UK, Australia, and Germany. But there’s a snag! You will only get a limited access to the library so some of the shows and movies available in the U.S. may not show up. That said, there is one way to unblock the app outside the U.S and that is by subscribing to a VPN service. We’d suggest that you go for a paid one as they work better and are far more reliable.
List of Supported Devices:
Despite being a free service, the Tubi TV app/web can be accessed using a broad range of devices and platforms – For devices other than iOS and Android, one can simply go to the respective app store from the home screens of their device and install the app by following the instructions on the page.
How is the User Interface & Video Quality?
Two words: Lag-free and tidy. To elaborate, the titles are neatly arranged under sub-categories (mentioned under content), to facilitate hassle-free browsing. To the top left corner, there’s a hamburger icon that pulls down important sections such as “Sign In /Register”, “Contact Us”, “Help Center”, and “About” upon being clicked. Right next to is the “Browse” tab that displays all the genres and sub-genres if you move your mouse over it. As you scroll down, you’ll see ideal-sized thumbnails classified as per genre/topic/popularity. If you click on a title, it’ll display information such as the plot brief, release date, duration, genre, and star cast. Tubi TV also has an “add to queue” feature in case you’d like to watch a movie or TV show later and don’t wish to go through the tedious process of choosing what to watch. To boot, the quality of streaming exceeded our expectations to a great extent. The buffering speeds are pretty decent, unless you’re connected to a very slow internet. Not all the titles are available in HD, and if your internet is not very fast, the video quality will automatically adjust to a lower resolution. However, every single title is watchable. Our experience was uniform across a slew of devices so it is safe to say that the interface is solid overall.
The Downside:
Since this is a candid review, we think that it’s important to mention the issues we faced while using the app, even though there were hardly any.
Frequent Ads: Commercials pop up about every 30 minutes of streaming. Sometimes, they’re not even in English. That said, don’t forget that Tubi TV is a free service and ads are their only source of revenue. As per statistics, 75% of the people don’t care about the ad interruptions as long as they don’t have to pay for the service! App Runs Even When Not in Use: In case you leave the app while the content is still buffering, it could continue to play in the background even though you’re not using it. Ultimately, you’ll have to force-quit the app. Tons of Fillers: This point is not really a drawback because you cannot get everything for free; but we’d like to give you a heads-up anyway. Tubi TV’s content cannot be compared with the library of paid services such as Netflix for the simple reason that their business model is way different and their budget, limited. You may come across a lot of filler movies/shows, names that you’ve never heard before.
Final Word:
In our opinion, Tubi TV is great for those who love a little dose of something unique. By unique, we mean content such as Korean drama, age-old movies, B-grade films, and indie films. The company adds new content to the platform everyday so we hope that they start adding highly rated titles soon. Tubi TV shines in areas such as the interface and the range of content. The fact that it’s completely free only adds to the experience.
