Apps

The Apple TV+ experience on VIZIO leaves something to be desired

While I highly suspect this is a VIZIO/Smartcast exclusive problem, Apple TV+ has thus far been the only streaming app I’ve ever had this many problem with. We joke about what new and fun error message we’ll get today every time we open it.

TL;DR – the bugs are not you or your account most likely, probably are VIZIO platform specific, and they’ve really been handled by every other streaming app out there on every other Smart-TV platform.

I got Apple TV+ as part of my T-Mobile account and almost immediately got drug into the show Servant. We’ll skip what that’s about and focus on what almost every viewing experience has been on either of my VIZIO systems.

I select to continue watching Servant. An ad for another series starts playing and I’m given the option to skip. If I don’t skip within about ten seconds a screen will pop up telling me the video could not be loaded and drop me back to the main Apple TV+ screen.

Repeat. Every now and then that promo for another show will work, but I don’t even try any more and we hit the recap, which is also skippable. I generally skip this as I’m blowing through the seasons and remember what I just watched. Not impugning Apple TV+ for showing me a recap. I don’t believe the recap ever has shown an error.

Next I get to sit there watching “An Apple TV+ Original” text on the screen for a couple of seconds before the video finally starts playing. About two seconds into the intro starting to play I get the “skip intro” and can skip. I choose this always as, well, I got a show to watch not the staircase.

This was about 15-20 seconds of waiting to skip to start the episode and if this were the extend of the problems, whatever… what I find every day is that it’s now playing the last episode I watched from the beginning. So, skip to next episode, skip.

Fully expect this will be resolved at some point, but man… it’s predictably bad on my two VIZIO / Smartcast units.

I’m going to watch using a SHIELD and the Apple TV+ App on it to verify, but the Android TV devices I have it on have so far not had any of those problems that I remember.

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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