A&E: TV Shows That Matter Reviews

by Pow!Powers

The sound is out of sync every other episode. Have to exit and play the show about 5 times per episode to remedy the sound problem. I honestly haven’t watched one episode without having to restart the episode or AE . I genuinely wouldn’t use if I could watch elsewhere. Clearly based on other reviews, A&E knows the issues, but has not resolved them. You also have to creat a profile to track your progress across devices, shouldn’t that just be a given by now? I shouldn’t have to do extra work that every other streaming app does, especially when I have to watch 7 ads every 10 minutes. Just ugh.

Update: A&E responded with their “copy and paste” response to every negative review. Clearly, they are working on resolving the issues with the utmost haste and care.

by Chckrdstarfire7145825

Our family travels a great deal so we must utilize apps from our favorite networks to access the content from our subscription cable provider. This works great for most networks as they provide live feeds of their current content. Unfortunately A&E foolishly decided to omit this feature and post content weeks after the original air date. This is absolutely absurd since A&Es staple series is Live PD (the original reason for which we downloaded AE ). No one wants to wait days to watch a show that’s entirely structured around the premise and novelty of being aired live. I’m not sure if this poor implementation is just an innocent oversight or a product of incompetent management, but it would be wise ( and extremely easy) for the network to implement live viewing of their flagship programs for their patrons to enjoy.

by Chippy1985

There are a lot of tv & movie apps out there. All of them seemed to be able to figure out how to minimize the screen so you can watch the shows & do other things on your device without closing AE . In all my time using AE , A & E has not figured this out. If I want to watch & do other things on my iPad like set a timer or look up something on the internet, I will use A & E’s website because it will minimize...most of the time. Because the website is actually much more glitchy than AE . The website will usually get stuck on an ad or be really tough to resume play at the point you left off, & sometimes the subtitles disappear. But the biggest issue - the ads. Ugh. Everyone is complaining about how many of them there are & how repetitive. True, but we’re marketed to every waking hour in the modern world & you learn to ignore ads or to mute them. My biggest complaint is HOW LOUD they are. I have to quickly throw the volume down on my iPad because I might lose even more hearing than I’ve already lost (I’m hearing impaired). Some ads are merely loud, most are deafening. If hearing impaired people are complaining about how loud your ads are, they’re too loud. I’m absolutely never going to buy whatever you’re selling because the sight of the product now fills me with rage as I remember who loud & annoying the ad was.

by Fiona Carey

I recently started using AE on Apple TV for the first time in over a year and at LEAST three times per episode I have to exit and resume playing because the audio glitches and becomes ridiculously far off from the video. Sometimes after a commercial break, I realize it skipped a whole chunk of the show and started after the next commercial break. Lastly, it won’t auto play the next episode. It will either just go to a black screen and act like it’s going to load, or it takes me all the way back to the Apple TV Home Screen.

I should note I have used AE at 3 different households on different Apple TV devices and the result is the same. It is not an issue of internet speed, especially since the many other apps I use don’t work this way, except for the Lifetime app which has the same parent company as A&E with the same app structure.

by Wyoming Goldprospector

Obviously AE hasn’t been fixed since the last time I used AE in early 2020. It’s now mid 2021 and AE still freezes when ads are playing. I’ve deleted AE, restored my iphone to factory settings and still only AE does it freezes when trying to watch a program. I’ve used my wifi, my cellular data and even several other places with better bandwidth and still ads always freezes. This last time I had one ad freeze for almost 15 minutes and still had to wait for the next 2 ads to play all while the ads are frozen. By the time I finished watching a 22 minute tv program on AE it took over an hour and a half. Not a happy camper and no it’s not my internet. I will not recommend AE to my friends and family and just tell them that their better off watching their favorite programs on cable.

by @sayprettyplease

It doesn’t matter when I use AE to watch shows, it ALWAYS freeze up and the glitches are overwhelmingly obvious. This is double jeopardy! Not only does each show have long and repetitious commercial breaks, but there’s also the advertisements that viewers are FORCED to interact with in order to get back to our already interrupted shows. There’s so many distractions when watching just about anything on A&E that when the show finally does come back on, I have already forgotten what had happened in the show previously. I constantly get stuck with a ‘stuck’ screen. Where did u go wrong A&E ? If the engineers would just take time to actually read our reviews, listen to the viewers and fix these issues (which btw are far beyond your average ’bug’) I believe that u guys can make AE pleasurable, but more tolerable at the very least. U hear our voices through these reviews A&E... LISTEN !

by Amybtru

The limited choices of free episodes of anything are destroyed by poor quality annoying repetitive commercials! Some of them are so loud you can’t hear other people in the same room with you!!! So my phone is up on the entertainment center with adapter to watch it on the tv and the screen comes up saying you need to hit continue to not get the full 3:00 straight minutes of commercials while below that it has a countdown timer ticking down the seconds til you get reamed cuz you didn’t hit continue!!! Are you kidding me!?? This happens 4-6 times per 40 minute episode!! Do you realize I’m trying to relax and watch a show I’m on the couch my phone is not in my hand to play your stupid games and jump up every time to hit continue so you can make more money off of me. You’re disgusting. Disgraceful! What’s wrong with this country! You don’t give a flying F about the humans comfort or happiness to enjoy a show. You care about money! Don’t waste ur time on this joke of a money making machine!

by Jdhdgwnaksj

AE will definitely make you throw your remote at your tv. It’s soooo glitchy. Takes forever for anything to load. Nothing works correctly. The “choose your ad experience” is a joke. If you choose 3 minutes of ads, it’s literally the same ad over and over again for 3 minutes. And this will happen several times during a 30 minute show. I swear to God, Geico must be the only company paying for ad space on AE. Also during the 3 minutes of the same ad over and over, AE will freeze and buffer several times so your 3 minutes turns into 10. But the show itself has no problem playing without freezing. If you choose the 30 second interactive ad experience, it literally just closes you out of AE and you have to start over with waiting for AE to load, waiting for the glitches to catch up so you can search for your show again… It is so infuriating that I end up just giving up and going over to Discovery Go. None of my other apps do these things. It’s literally just this extremely poorly functioning app.

by Rogerrrrrrrrrrr

I pretty much only watch this channel for Horders, but there were a few other shows I might check out. AE crashes when you select "Watchlist" in the side menu. Also, while watching a show, an ad showed, after the ad there was a scene I wanted to show my wife, so I went back 10 seconds, which was around the time the show paused to show me the ad, and the ad played again after I just watched it seconds ago.

Update: AE still is pretty bad. It's annoying how often it makes me re-login to my provider to unlock the shows. I use it on Chromecast, and sometimes when I press the rewind 30 seconds button, it starts the show from the beginning. Also, while watching Live PD: Police Patrol, there was a Coventyx ad that I timed and it was almost 6 minutes long...on top of the 3 or 4 other ads it plays during a commercial period. During one 20 minute episode, it played that ad twice. When trying to get back to an episode I watched earlier, it'll start about 10-20 minutes before the part I left off.

Update 2: They managed to make AE worse. It won’t cast on chromecast anymore.

by MaudEssen

I just tried AE on a single video and it literally cannot be watched. The video stopped at a certain point and threw me out to the ads and then got stuck playing ads, one after the other. I lost count, but it went on so long as I tried to restart the video that I was seeing the same ads multiple times. The video would not resume, no matter if I let the ads run in full or closed them using the big X in the upper left corner. The X just started the next ad. Letting an ad run until it ended also start d the next ad. I could force AE to the splash page, but on Play the video just kicked me back out to the ads again. Logging on and off did not help. It feels like they hard-coded a Kick-out frame where they throw you out to the ads, but failed to implement a counter to limit the number of ads they forced you to watch, and then also failed to advance the video beyond the Kick-out frame so it could resume. When the video tries to resume, it starts on the Kick-out frame and kicks you back out on an infinite loop. But what do I know other than to advise users not to bother with AE. The same video won’t play in a browser on my phone or tablet, but with different symptoms altogether.

by Rooattack

I’ve never felt like a company cared so little about actually creating a good used experience and more about destroying every possible reason the world went digital to begin with — so we didn’t have to waste half of our friggin time watching ads!! Just watched walking dead and literally every 5 mins there was 5 mins of 5 ads back to back. Probably the worst app I’ve ever used in my life and displays a desperate attempt to milk advertisers for money. If I wanted to watch ads I would have kept my direct TV!!!! God, you guys are a bunch of dou**ags. So sick of this crap from products. You’re single handidly ruining everyone’s faith in digital experience all over again when we were just starting trusting the new era of digital. Anyway do not use AE or download it. Just buy the dang shows. It’s not worth ruining the entire experience over. Hope you guys (AMC) eventually learn not to be so dumb about your business plans and less obvious about how desperate you are. Really pathetic.

by MrsCanady

I typically don’t review apps and they have the content I want so I put up with it. However it keeps asking me to sign in when I am already, after one or two episodes it goes black and stops responding I have to shut off the device and turn it back on to get AE to respond. Also it lists the shows in a season from the last episode of that season so you have to scroll to get to the first episode, it won’t play certain episodes for some reason, it doesn’t keep you at the episode your at so you have to search for your spot again. Oh and it gets pixelated on almost every show so you have to pause and replay so it has a chance to catch up. Who ever designed it did not do it with easy viewing access. And the only reason I put up with it is because their on demand does not have the shows I want to watch so I can’t just do it from my cable box.

by JerseyGuy609

At times the show I watch, when I start a new episode, it begins sometimes halfway during the episode and I have to rewind and it goes thru the ads instead of back to the episode.

And the ads, my goodness, if you watched the show in its normal setting on A&E, it would be shorter watching on A&E because of the ads. 30 mins on A&E but on AE, it feels like 40 plus minutes just to finish one episode of a half hour. Too many ads. I missed the period where it gave you the option of watching a 3 minute ad or 30 second. Of course I would choose 30 seconds and get back to the episode. Plus if you have to force ads, how about mixing the ads up and showing different ads and not taking so much time.

Or just no ads. You have ppl downloading AE , don't force ads on them when they are trying to watch their shows. Whether it is at work on lunch break or catching up on an episode they missed, or binge watching. You plug in you cable provider (which you pay for) to watch old episodes, why force ads on something you technically pay for with your cable subscription.

by NegansWife6661

Also been having issues even watching a episode; it keeps shutting off and going back to the start of it where I have to keep clicking play.
Also whenever the show is actually on or whenever any of the live pd/ America’s top dog show or whatever related to them it won’t play or even load AE .
Also with the below comment that even logging on with your provider you still don’t get it and also the episodes that are new or live: or wait a week til the ones from last week are on, I been writing about this problem on multiple occasions over the last few months and I haven’t seen much of a change!!!!
Please fix these issues!!! I’d love to keep AE cause it’s been easier to use, but can’t with all the problems makes it not worth watching!!!

by Unhappydubscriber

I do not have an issue with commercials or the amount of commercials because I understand that is part of television viewing but my problem arises from commercial breaks. On AE (and the lifetime one, wonder if it’s the same developers) the last minute before the commercial played the shows video but the audio for the commercial and then after the commercial it buffers and sometimes does not resume the video. I still use AE bc I like the shows but it is not the most pleasant viewing experience. This happens when I stream to my chromecast. I don’t know if it happens only on my phone because I do not watch shows on my iPhone. I’ve used AE on and off for probably a year and it always happens.

by Opieandozzie

I have AE to watch past shows that arent available on my cable provider on demand (strange I know). AE itself will freeze and the sound and video will go out of whack. The commercials? Ouch. Worse than watching live tv. I use this on a few devices and watching it on my appletv is horrendous. The “interactive” commercial gives you a 30 second commercial and has you swipe then hit play. The caveat is if you hit the wrong button you have to watch the boring commercial again. Im sure you are trying to be innovative but its an epic failure. Also it seems for every 2 minutes of the show you are shoving another 30 seconds of the same commercial. switch it up or im gonna dump AE.

by Harley'sDestiny

This is a decent app but definitely not the best. We travel a lot so we mostly watch our tv shows and movies on apps through our phones and iPad but A&E is the only one we run into the problem of having to wait an entire week or until the next episode airs, to be able to watch our show. We LOVE Live PD but here it is May 4th and we were just now able to watch the episode from April 26th. Most apps you can watch after midnight or even as its airing especially when you can log in with your service provider which we have but on this A&E app even with a logging in with a service provider you still can’t watch for an entire week. We love to discuss our shows with friends and family so it would be nice to be able to do it with our A&E shows too. By a weeks time, everyone is done discussing the previous weeks episode especially with Live PD since it is aired every single Friday and Saturday. Especially with social media these days, we would love to not have to stay off of ours just to avoid spoilers. Come on A&E please get it together and provide your viewers with at least the same experiences that all other networks have.

by Zero1010

AE works very well for me on both my iPhone & iPad. It is quite easy to navigate.
I really love that all of my favorite shows & A&E Specials are available. The only improvement that I would like to see would be for more episodes to be unlocked. Especially for satellite & cable subscribers. Often it is easier for me to view my shows while traveling, soaking in tub or late at night. So if more were available that would be lovely. Only Bc I rarely have the time to sit in front of the television & 90% or more of my favorites are A&E shows.
Tbh, this is actually more like a 4.5 star App & could very easily be 5 stars. Thanks A&E - you rock!

by HimMe+3

I live in a rural area of Central Coast of California. My Wi-Fi is a Business Package from a small local company. I do have a big DISH Channel Package. I have all apple devices, from iPhone-Apple TV. I have a Netgear Router. I only mention this because like other Reviewers, I’ve experienced the same issues with other Apps but not with A&E app. The ads don’t bother me because it keeps me from sitting for too long. I can get up and get a few little things done. I try to keep up on new electronic devices, how to keep them working properly and how to avoid being hacked and Malware. I disable background apps, use low battery mode, cleared old / unused apps, deleted useless screenshots and photos. Only necessary apps use cellular data when Wi-Fi is week due to weather, fires or emergency incidents. I keep everything updated (Router, devices, security apps. I NEVER USE PUBLIC Wi-Fi, I scan my devices weekly and I NEVER click on ads or videos. I do not allow apps to connect to my facebook. Nothing in life is perfect and life is to short to complain about the little things. Happy to say, my A&E app works as it should.

by Budspin8613

I am a college educated woman with over 40 years of direct contact with vulnerable adults and children. I have witnessed first hand the challenges of protecting the vulnerable. I have seen the results of our “social programs” fail again and again. As a country we are talking out of both sides of our mouths. I have seen the deaths of these vulnerable United States Citizens directly. A & E is promoting programming that I feel will help our concerned citizens to wake up. If you think it’s not happening on your street you’re kidding yourself. I thank A & E for helping forward these issues.

Keep up the excellent work!

A & E wathcher for life.

by Rgray65

Very good app! Well worth the download. I'm able to catch up on A&E programs that I miss. No excess of ads like other apps. One, maybe, two ads at most before it returns you to your program. But one drawback is, if you don't have a cable or satellite provider, you won't be able to watch the programs on AE because you have to put in your provider's name and your account info (your name/screen name/id and your password from your provider account). But otherwise, great app!

EDIT: A&E no longer puts the Live PD episodes or other Live PD associated programs on their website. I’m not able to watch some of that programming live and like to catch up later in AE , but no such luck anymore. It used to be a 5 star rating but I have now downgraded it to 1 star. I am very disappointed now. I used to love AE but not anymore.

by Boss13795

Live pd could be a great show. One of my favorites but Dan makes it really annoying with his uneducated opinions. I really wish he would stop talking, or get replaced by someone who actually knows criminal law a little bit. Or at least shut up and let us watch. Also his jokes making fun of people that may or may not have committed a crime are not funny. We only see what they want us to see and some of that is brutal by police and its normal to them. They know they are being filmed but still use very excessive force because they are so used to being that way they think it’s normal and ok. Heart breaking!!!!! I see a lot of racism as well. If your black walking,driving, riding a bike, whatever your getting roughed up and searched no matter what. They only show the 5% that actually do ave marijuana or something on them.

by Jessilee.co

I understand there must be advertisements; however, I wish they were consistent. On one commercial break I counted six, whereas some only have one or two.
Also, along the lines of consistency, commercial breaks can be four minutes apart OR close to twenty minutes apart. What is the reason for this?? It’s maddening.
The timing of ads can be really awful. At least when watching these shows on my tv the commercial breaks are well placed, so storylines aren’t being interrupted. On AE ads are placed so randomly throughout the episodes you can’t get into watching the content without worrying about an ad break.
I’m not really complaining about there being commercial breaks, but why do they need to be all over the place?

by Leenie_co

I get having to watch ads, just like you’d have to watch commercials if you were watching live television. The problem is: you’ll get to the pinnacle of a show, someone’s in the middle of a sentence and BAM, 5 ads for you to watch. The timing is random and bizarre. At least place the ads where commercial breaks would’ve been so you’re not ruining the flow of the show.

I’ve upped the star rating as the developer immediately contacted me to adjust the episodes that this glitch was happening on to fix the problem.