Trailers by xTeo

Being into movies myself, I’ve been watching this app very closely. After submitting feedback to it’s developers back in late September outlining the use of tacky UI elements and bugs which ultimately made the app crash, they finally released version 1.1.0 on the store. A stable, feature-full offering which is sure to give you all that trailer-goodness you so very much love and have probably been looking for …

Basics
The first thing I’ll say is, don’t plunk down for this until you’ve thoroughly tested their lite version which you can download FREE here [App Store] . Trailers lite only includes information and trailers for 100 movies which differs to that of Trailers Pro (£1.19 – and the version we are reviewing) which updates with over 1300 trailers daily.

Trailers [App Store] now (finally) supports playback over all of the iPhone’s data networks. Wifi, 3G and Edge . This hugely differs from version 1.0.0 which only included support for playback over Wifi.

Trailers features five tabs along the bottom:

• Trailers
  The main screen of Trailers

• Categories
  Sort your movies by category

• Dates
  Sort your movies by date

• Search
  Search a library of over 1300 movies

• Downloads
  Manage your active and completed downloads

So when you first open trailers, and after you’ve dismissed the instructions panel, you’ll be presented with a live-updating list of current movies. This section is split up into screens using a UI element up top. On the top toolbar, you’ll find an option to make the poster thumbnails smaller, ‘Latest’ and ‘Favourites’ options, as well as an ‘Info’ button to bring back up the instructions panel.

The initial layout is, the app displays the movie poster, and along side this shows the 3 main actors or actresses. This is basically just a quick overview before getting into the detailed views.

Icons
Trailers uses a few icons throughout it’s UI, to symbolize new functionality.
The three most featured being:

• Arrow in a circle
  Touching this will initiate a download of the current trailer

• Star in a circle
  Touching this will add the movie to your favorites list

• Letter ‘S’ in a Square
  Touching this will throw you into an synopsis for the current movie

Detailed View
Touching an item in the main list brings you to a further more detailed screen. This is where you are shown the movie’s director, genre, cinema cert, it’s studio, and when it was released. Below this are further options to; visit the same movie trailer on apple.com/trailers, favourite the movie, go to the movie site and finally view the trailers that are currently available for that particular movie.

Full-Sized Posters. Look. Save
While in detailed views, tapping on a poster brings up a full screen view. In this view there are the usual navigation controls (previous, next and pause/play), and two further options. in the bottom left, the camera button will save the full-sized image to your camera roll. The bottom right icon when tapped calls the native Mail.app API and compiles an e-mail including a link to the poster/trailer to be sent at your convenience.

PosterFlow
Now this is nice. Taking it’s basic concept from Apple’s patented ‘CoverFlow’ technology, and possibly the first application to have had implemented it, PosterFlow (as it’s dubbed by it’s developers) is just that – a flow of posters (seen above). Rotate your device landscape, and the accelerometer recognises this. Your then thrown into a different UI. Swipe left or right with your finger to view more posters. Want more info, or want to view a trailer? – Just tap the poster your interested in and trailers brings up a modified version of the original detailed view. Movie’s director, genre, cinema cert, it’s studio, and when it was released. Tapping the ‘Info’ button draws back the curtains to reveal a full synopsis. I also noticed while in the view you can take your finger and swipe to the next movies information. Pretty nice. Tapping anywhere brings you back to PosterFlow, and from there, simply re-rotate your device back to portrait and your back.

Download, Watch Later
Another new addition to Trailers is the ability to download a trailer. Now, I originally thought this would download the trailer and add it to ‘Videos’ within iPod.app, but unfortunately it doesn’t. I think the feature is there so that you can download a trailer, and not have to wait for it to stream over data connection. Downloading a trailer works the same as downloading a track from the WiTMS (Wifi iTunes Music Store), and features pretty much the same UI elements.

Finally, after saying all of this, there are respectable alternatives to Trailers. Notably, KickScreen by K5 Software [App Store] (59). It is worth noting that, in my opinion, Kickscreen offers up an enhanced version of PosterFlow.

Overall, and taking everything into consideration; it’s now great UI, easy of use and low price tag, we think it deserves a 7.8/10. The developers could (in the future) add the ability for downloaded trailers to show in Videos.app, as well as spruce up the detailed view a bit. I found some details were cut off due to no space. They need to set this app to continually scroll cut off information (like a marquee). With these adjustments, I think this app could be a winner, it definitely beats surfing apple.com/trailers from mobile Safari, and as one App Store review is entitled:

“As Apple should have done.”

Grab Trailers: Here
Grab Trailers Lite: Here

Take a look at Kickscreen: Here