HIDIVE’s New Refresh

A fresh coat of paint on the other streaming service.

Otaku Voice Staff

In a post on their news blog today, HIDIVE revealed a brand new site and app refresh. Gone is the tiled monkey face and the fixed width layout of old. The site and apps now feature a more modern streaming centric interface common across most video focused apps. More Netflix than the previous Web 2.0 style design they have supported for a while now. Of course this fresh coat of paint isn’t the only thing getting an upgrade today.

The biggest thing announced today is offline viewing for their mobile apps. This is a great thing for those of us commuting or traveling regularly where Wi-Fi or an internet connection is intermittent at best. On the other hand, it is pretty sad that we didn’t have this feature until the year 2024. As far as I can tell, you have to go individually by episode to download it, and not a full season at a time.

Watch Time & Watch Lists

The other features in this brand refresh are around watchlists and watch history. This is great if you have more than one person on an account and want to differentiate your watchlists. Also, you can build out multiple watchlists and share them with friends or strangers if you want to show off how great your taste in anime is. The sharing feature does feel bugged at the moment since it sends out to a different top level domain when you share a list. Something to keep an eye out for or for HIDIVE to add a warning.

Watch history now will show you every episode you watched and when. This appears to also be bugged seeing as my watch history doesn’t show all 110 episode of Legends of the Galactic Heroes I watched recently on HIDIVE. It does show some random episodes of some other titles, so that data is still somewhere.

The 10 Foot Experience

Something I haven’t tried in a while with HIDIVE is their CTV app. Part of today’s news is that the site refresh is obviously not just for their web presence, but also for their various apps. Updates to them are rolling out to their respective platforms in short order.

One thing to note about this update is a second hidden post accessible via their support page. Fifteen minutes after the initial announcement, they had this to say –

We’re rolling out additional improvements over the next few months, so look forward to even more features like enhanced search function, revamped subtitle preferences, customized profiles & avatars, and expanded compatibility with additional TV platforms.

HIDIVE Support

The enhanced search function, revamped subtitle preferences, and customized profiles & avatars all sound like great features to have, but the one thing that stands out to me is the last one, expanded compatibility with additional TV platforms. For the record, HIDIVE currently has a native app on the following platforms –

• iPhone, iPad
• Android Mobile
• Android TV
• Roku 
• Xbox
• Apple TV
• Fire TV & Tablet
• Chromecast

In my eyes the most glaring omissions from that list are PlayStation, LG, & Samsung. If they are rolling out support for new platforms based on the refresh, then its likely one or all of those three are on the list of expansion.

[Sources & Further Reading]
[Image & Information via HIDIVE Blog Post]
[HIDIVE Support Article – Second Announcement]
[HIDIVE Support Article – Device List]