Getting Started With Citytv Streaming
I spent about three hours last month trying to get the Citytv app working on my Samsung TV, and honestly it was not fun. The interface looks clean on paper, but the app tends to lag when you have a lot of content queued up. The trick is to keep your watch history from getting too cluttered. Once you clear out a few shows you already binged, everything runs smoother. Download the app from your device's app store. It is free, though they do push a premium tier pretty aggressively after the first week. The free version has ads every twenty minutes or so. I have been using it for about eight months now and I have not paid for anything yet, but the ad load does get annoying during long watching sessions. Here is something most guides do not mention. The app uses a different content delivery network depending on your region. If you are in a major metro area, you will get better streaming quality because the nearest server cluster is optimized for high traffic. If you are in a smaller market, the streams tend to buffer more, especially during primetime. I moved from Chicago to a rural town in Ohio and noticed the difference immediately. The fix was lowering the stream quality to 720p instead of letting it auto, which actually reduced buffering because it stopped trying to upsell you to HD and then failing.
Content library is decent but not comprehensive. You can find a lot of older network television, some reality shows, and a rotating selection of movies. They do not have the biggest movie catalog compared to the big players. If you are primarily looking for current theatrical releases, you might want to pair this with another service. I use Citytv mostly for reruns and shows from the last ten years that I missed. The search function is another weak point. It does not handle typos well and the auto-correct suggestions are sometimes weird. I have accidentally searched for things I never meant to because of bad suggestions. Typing your query slowly and checking each letter helps more than you would think. One feature that works well is the download option for offline viewing. The files stay on your device for forty-eight hours after you start watching, which is longer than some competitors. I have used this on flights and it works fine. The file sizes are reasonable too, usually under half a gigabyte per episode at the default quality setting.
Premium subscription costs around eight dollars a month. I tried it for two weeks and cancelled. The ad-free experience is nice, but the content library does not expand much with premium. You get early access to some shows, but most of what is there is available to everyone eventually anyway. If you only watch one or two hours a week, the free tier is probably sufficient. The parental controls are basic but functional. You can set a PIN and restrict content by rating. My kid figured out the PIN within a day, which tells you something about both my PIN choice and my kid's problem-solving skills. Changing it to something more random helped, obviously. Customer support is where this app really shows its weaknesses. I had a billing issue that took me four days to resolve through their chat system. The agents seem to have very limited troubleshooting authority. Most of the time you just get redirected to the FAQ page. If you have a technical problem, try clearing your app cache before contacting anyone. That fixed my initial buffering issue on the TV in about thirty seconds.
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Overall the app works for casual viewing. Do not expect it to replace your other streaming services, but it is useful as a secondary option. The free tier gives you enough content to keep you occupied without spending money. Just be aware of the regional quality differences and the mediocre search function. Those two things will annoy you more than anything else about it.
