Constellation for XBMC Reviews

by Sonofableep

I have used this app for over a year and in the last few months I have encountered a bug that affects many users and has yet to be addressed. Whenever I play any media using Constellation , I must quit Constellation before my iDevice goes to sleep otherwise I will be forced to reboot the device. I have tested this on an iPhone 4 and an iPad 3, iOS 5-6.1, and the issue happens without fail. This is extraordinarily annoying, leaving me with the choice of never allowing my device to dim it's screen or quitting Constellation and reopening it each time I want to pause, change the volume, or whatever. This is equivalent to having to take the batteries out of your remote after each time you use it. For an app that is primarily a remote, this is an EPIC FAIL.

When working properly Constellation is amazing and would easily deserve 5 stars and your money. With the current lack of development I highly suggest you look elsewhere.

by Non_player

Despite having paid for the full version, and successfully followed the "go pro" instructions to restore, I am still plagued with ads in this program. In fact, they have started lingering at the bottom of the screen, and I can even see them when switching between other unrelated apps. It is very irritating.

Otherwise, it's a decent app, I guess. Works pretty nice with my xbmc setup, and the remote is pretty sweet. It certainly impresses the ladies when I launch movies without using a physical remote, heh.

Wish I could get rid of these darned ads - you know, the ads I paid money to get rid of? If that happened, I'd rate five stars, definitely, otherwise I feel ripped off.

by Geoff Armstrong

I brought this mainly to use with the XBMC add-on for the Qobuz streaming service.

It's great that I can bookmark searches I make in Qobuz; but it doesn't bring up the keyboard automatically to make those searches. Instead I have to navigate to the keyboard on the dashboard. I can't enqueue items from that search into an XBMC playlist. I was hoping the bookmarked saved search could act as a playlist; but that only allows you to play one track at a time.

With proper playlist support for Qobuz this would be perfect for me. I wonder if others have had similar issues with other add-on support?

by Jasmines_xoxo

How do I use Constellation? My library is blank.

by Rashah

Love everything about the remotes functionality. My only beef is the original sync. When using my iPad, I sometimes can't tell if it's trying to sync the library in the background, and on the iPhone, the pull down to refresh option isn't there (I thought I may have seen it once but I might be wrong). My library is very large and it took 5 min to complete sync, but I had no way of knowing if it was syncing or not, and where in the syncing process it was. I'd recommend a larger and more visible bar stating when any sync or image fetching is in process. Additionally, if possible a progress bar would be nice, along with a little message stating what is being fetched (for instance "fetching TV Show: Family Guy Episodes" or something like that).

Other than that, great app. I purchased the ads free and it's worth it once all is synced. Add the above features and it will blow the competition out of the water for sure.

by Bpelectric

Latest version:
Crashes after each launch with Eden. Tried rebooting phone & reinstalling from scratch. Same on my iPad. Was my fave xbmc remote, now I'm back to using xbmc commander. UI is not as nice, but at least it's stable!

Previous version:
iPhone version is great and we use it nightly. My wife & I prefer it to the other XBMC apps on the store (we used XBMC Commander previously). We recently downloaded it for the iPad. Not only does the "pro"(ad-free) in app purchase not cover the iPad version, the iPad version lacks support for gestures - at least we could find no way to get a gesture "area" like is available on iPhone.

by Ceoltakeru

I really used to enjoy the simple interface of Constellation for my iPod before the recent update. Now the interface requires a lot of swiping back and forth, and when I swipe to many areas it's just blank and very hard to tell whether it's still loading (loads slower than I remember before) or there's nothing there. It's crashed on my iPod 4G twice.

Strongly dislike the rotation behavior on the iPod or iPhone form factor - since when do iPhone apps rotate upside down? And there's no way to disable the rotation in Constellation . On the iPad it's a fine app and largely unchanged, but the changes to the iPod version have made a formerly elegant and useful app very irritating.

by Matangal

Browse your collection in the phone with a scrollable list or on the screen with gestures. A dedicated "now playing" control screen can be swiped from the top. Control multiple setups. Very nicely done.
You cannot control a dynamic ip based on hostname. Also playback control stops working occasionally and you must the restart Constellation .
Overall an impressive app and much better than any other remote app I've tried.

by Matsojr22

The drop down menu for controlling current media needs a new activator. As of iOS 5.0 the notification center is activated by the same swipe. Its frustrating to activate notifications when you wanted to pull down the pause menu. Otherwise Constellation is well built. It would be nice to have ability to send keystrokes, but that might be XBMC limitation. Loses one star for being so expensive. Constellation would be the most expensive part of my htpc setup lol! The free version is usable and add supported of course. The paid version occasionally fails to function. Starting videos on jailbroken atv2 is hit and miss. Works well with raspbmc on ras-pi! Has trouble with large libraries -> very slow!

by AlertTulip0

XBMC this app works great. The interface is beautiful, and it's also redundant (you can play/pause from the top, or from the remote). Since there are so many interface elements, the redundancy makes Constellation so much more convenient. The volume on the remote is very nice and responsive. The more I use it, the more I find to like about it.

The only qualm I have is the play/pause button being too close in the remote. I always find myself pressing stop when I want to continue a show. So, for now, it's better to use the top remote to resume playback. I hope they fix this part!

by ClaudeJuarez

This remote app is actually one reason i gave xbmc a closer look. It's just a slick app, and i'm even more impressed with it the more I mess around with xbmc. Setup for Constellation is fairly easy, even for someone with no understanding of wireless network stuff (me). The gesture zone is just ridiculously pleasant to use, and browsing and playing from the library is pretty fast and easy. It also looks like the developer is very active and helpful on the xbmc forum, so i have no worries about support for Constellation fading away. The free version is great, functional, and generally awesome, but the paid version is a really good buy, and I recommend it. Nice job, devs.

by Digasi

Hands down the best interface and user experience ever, when controlling a media center. I love the ability to scroll through all my movies, on or off-line. I love the interface and responsiveness. I ordered my Rasberry PI today, and I can't wait to drive my xbmc from my iPad, and get the big ugly PC... Away from my tv. I heard the AppleTV can run xbmc...with a little help ;)
Controlling that from my iPad, through this app would be the ultimate media experience, on a TV. Until Apple drops all their locks, I'll be switching from Apple to PI...for my media streaming. But either way, I'll be using Constellation on my iPad.

by Versatall

I've been through several apps and this one has a very rich environment with several options. The controls are intuitive and it really pulls my htpc solution together.

One improvement would be the ability to go through and manage video and audio files (such as names and fan art) inside Constellation . Management functions can be done, but require the use of directional keys and cannot be done while a movie is playing.

Given that would be nice, I've never found an xbmc/htpc app that has that capability.

by Kdub607

The iPad is a bit of an over-glorified tablet, but there are some cool apps that *almost* justify the price tag. But the this app remote app may be the coolest of all. While some may say it's just a fancy remote for XBMC, the amount of content it brings down from a media center device, AND the way it displays it has such a high cool factor that is hard to measure. Everyone that's seen Constellation in action is so impressed that they love Constellation more than the media content.

If you want the best free app out there for XBMC Media Center, this is the One.

by Disector88

Still has some kinks to work out but best iPad xbmc by far. I use the ipad app to browse my whole music &movie collection that's on a desktop connected to the tv and speaker system and control it like a remote . Pros: nice visual display of music library, wake on LAN allows true remote control, browse easily on iPad and play on main system, clean interface

Cons: browsing can be hard. Music search not as easy as iTunes or Winamp - should be able to search by any tag type - artist album song or file name. Sometimes unstable and loses connection. Would be nice to use the whole iPad touchscreen to control xbmc. Using the remote section of Constellation isn't easy to use when controlling the screen.

by George McIntyre US

I am just amazed at how good this is. You've got everything you could ever want - media info, previews, trailers, links to imdb, etc, all from within Constellation . You can browse and choose without even looking up. And you're not missing a thing - its all there. This is hands down the best. The remote control takes some getting used to but once you get the hang of it you'll find it has all the regular features and some shortcuts to speed you on your way. The iPhone app had a better remote control but the buttons were so small I kept clicking the wrong ones. In the end though the iPad app is so good I doubt I'll use the iPhone one again.

by Notsmart

Great app, using this now instead of the official remote and xbmc commander. I don't require most of the features of Constellation, but for tv+movies in xbmc it's almost perfect.. Just wish when you click on a recently added show it would play that specific show instead of taking you to the shows details, it's 3 clicks and a scroll to play a recent show (show to show detail to season, scroll to episode, then episode.). Too much! Doesn't crash on iPad 2 running iOS 6.

by Shanghaijohnny

I've been using the pro version since 2011 and it is well worth the price. A very polished GUI and the functionality it pulls from xbmc is awesome. Since the last update however there have been some issues and they are documented by the other users aswell such as thumbnails not displaying. I tried a lot of different things but what worked was to go back to using the Eden rc2 release an everything worked again. Somehow when I updated to the latest version of xbmc I started having problems with thumbnails not displaying. Apart from this issue which I am sure will be fixed this is hands down the best, slickest looking controller for xbmc you're likely to find.

I've introduced a lot of people to the xbmc experience and it blew them away and when I show them how I can use my iPhone and iPad to control it their eyes pop out and love it!!

Great job on developing Constellation. I hope that the niggling issues are resolved for all users as its almost perfect.

by DiamondDrake

This application is the most compelling reason to have an iPad that I can think of. Xbmc is an amazing application for pc mac or Linux that blows most media center apps out of the water. But coupled with this app for the iPad it makes for the most amazing multimedia experience currently available. Brows your movie and tv show collection on the iPad and queue up media to enjoy on the pc ( or like me, my pc is connected to the tv ) it's just amazing. The remote Interface is a breeze to use, laid out perfectly for the iPad.

by Arisistible

Makes using XBMC very easy. One suggestion would to have a way we can Launch XBMC with a push of a button with Constellation, but I understand Constellation will only work after XBMC is turned on. This is the best XBMC app. I made the purchase not cuz I had to, but I was so happy I wanted to support the hard-work, time and effort the developers put into such an amazing app. This is pretty polished in my book. 5 stars all the way!