[App Fridays] Tuning into your favorite TV shows is hassle free with TV Guide India

What is it about? 

TV Guide India aims to make television watching experience for Indians hassle free and convenient by providing users with a lot of intuitive features directly in an app . Schedules of over 300 TV channels that are available in India, in languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali and more are available on the app. The app includes all the features of the previous versions of the app, with tons of added benefits like more channels, reminders, explorer, caching and more.

I downloaded the app from the Google play store to test it out.The app requires 4.7MB of storage space to function and is very easy and intuitive to use and requires no prerequisite knowledge.  

Features:

• Over 300 channels, across 22 categories and 8 languages.

• New Sidebar-based design to quickly access all features.

• Channel Catalog that is organised into various categories

• Add channels to favorites for instant access.

• Set reminders and make sure you don't miss your favorite show.

• Control the reminders, set the ringtone, vibration, LED light and more.

• Show details include cover photo, story, cast, crew, IMDb rating and more.

• TV Explorer gives you a real-time view of what's happening across all 300 channels.

• Schedule loads offline for your favorite channels.

• Listings for over 7 days in advance.

The App had the following tabs : Channel Catalog, TV explorer, My reminders, My favorites, Settings, Help and About Section.

The Channel Catalog lists almost all TV channels under various categories like News and Business, Sports, Comedy, Kids etc. You can add or remove TV channels to 'My favorite' section with a simple tap.TV explorer lets you pick a sub topic like movies, TV shows, Documentaries, Lifestyle etc and displays a list of movies or TV shows across all major channels with their air times. You can also customize the search based on your various languages.

You can set up reminders for your TV shows and get alerts ten minutes, five minutes or just when the show is about to start. You can also do a lot of customization under the setting tab based on your requirements.

You can also keep an eye on "What's On' currently and a 'Timeline' of your favorite TV shows on your home screen.

Pros and Cons

The app has a slick smooth User interface and works well over Wifi and 3G. It also includes additional details about movies and TV shows like the cast and crew, release date, imdb movie rating, trivia. In short almost everything that you need to know about a movie or TV series, to decide if it is worth watching within a matter of seconds.

The app is currently available only on Android and requires version 4.0 or higher to run, which is not really an issue for many. I noticed that there were minor discrepancies in the TV schedules of a few channels.For example, a new TV show had replaced an older ones time slot, and that update was not yet visible on the app.

The Team Behind It: 

Naveen Naushad(middle), Tony Antony(L) and Srijit Sreekumar(R) co-founded App Tuners. Based out of Trivandrum, Kerala the CoFounders have been friends for over 15 years right from their school days.

During the final year of their B.Tech course, they started doing freelance coding over the internet through sites such as freelancer.com (known as getafreelancer then ) and rentacoder.com (which later got acquired by freelancer.com). While Naveen focused mostly on Windows application development using Visual Studio, Tony Antony chose HTML, CSS and graphic designs mostly for WordPress. Srijit Sreekumar worked on Joomla based projects most of the time and handled their server related requirements.

In 2007 they were introduced to the wonderful world of smartphones, when the three of them purchased iPhones. Apple launched the App Store a year later which introduced them to app development. But as Mac hardware was not very affordable they decided not to go into app development immediately. Then in 2010, they bought Nexus Ones and decided to enter Android App Development.In March 2011, Naveen released their first Android App- TV Guide India. Today as the lead Android developer, he has released over 10 apps.

Other apps from App Tuners that are doing well:

Phone Genie : It provides a quick and convenient way to look up phone specifications and compare two devices side by side. It has close to 500,000 downloads now. There are even video reviews of the app posted by users on YouTube.

Reddit Illustrated  was the first Reddit.com client that used the Card UI made popular by Google. It was featured as Hot and Popular app on Samsung S Suggest app catalog and at Amazon Appstore as well. It has close to 50,000 downloads with many users opting to remove ads using the in app purchase.

Today's Cinema is their latest app. It provides move showtimes from over 500 theatres in Kerala. Besides showtimes, it also includes IMDb ratings, trailers and other details of each movie. It is the official app of the website todayscinema.com. Currently the app has listings for only theaters in Kerala, but we are in talks with theatre owners in Chennai and Bangalore as well.

Here is the complete list of all the apps on Google Play.

They are also in the process of releasing an app called Live2Eat that will enable users to order food from their favorite restaurants in theie city.They are partnering with an established PVT LTD company in Trivandrum, for this purpose. Initially the app will be available only in Trivandrum, but and are hoping to reach the rest of the country in the coming years.They are also planning to work on developing iOS apps by early 2015.

Our Take on TV Guide India:

With about 700,000 downloads, an average rating of 3.9/5 and 1211 users rating it 5 stars, this a definite must have app for movie and TV buffs and absent minded folk who cannot afford to miss out an important Business shows or news updates.    

Do give TV Guide India a go and let us know what you think.

Another related app TV Show buffs could try out is the iCouch app. It lets you chat with other fans of the show, while watching it on TV

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