Comedy Central Reviews

by Johnny Storm

The new Comedy Central app feels like a step backwards. My primary use case for using ComedyCentral is on an iPad in landscape view, so having a portrait only experience, while cheaper for mobile development, provides a poor customer experience. The videos auto play, so if all you want to do is browse older episodes, you first have to stop the video that is currently playing. You still can’t do picture in picture, a feature most video apps have, and there is still the commercials playing louder than the show issue that the developers have claimed to be aware of, but haven’t fixed, for several years.

In the end though, this is my only method of watching the Daily Show, so it’s not like I am going to stop using it.

PS: The content is great, if the other issues don’t bother you.

by Nickname For The Review

This is a great app if you enjoy spending tons of time searching for what you’re wanting to watch. Oh, by searching I mean scrolling. Apparently the developers of ComedyCentral thought not having a search or favorite function made sense. It seems to be almost a default function for any other similar app that the lack of having a search bar was so surprising I even double checked while writing this to make sure I didn’t miss it. I came to check the reviews purposefully to be sure I wasn’t the only one confused about this or missing it. So anyway, if you enjoy mindlessly scrolling and using apps that are entirely not user friendly, this should be your jam. Again, this is not a technical problem. Everything functions fine, hence the one and only star, but ComedyCentral doesn’t even group things into category by host/comedian or anything like that. Again, surprising and disappointing coming from such a popular channel. This seems like it could be an easy fix so hopefully that will be taken into consideration... Update: just want to be clear this is not a “troubleshooting” issue... the design of ComedyCentral is just terrible at baseline

by Awinnie

I downloaded ComedyCentral to watch Reno 911 because it’s not available anywhere else. To their credit, it’s on ComedyCentral. But in trying to watch it, I’m dealing with the most ridiculous problems: (1) the episodes are out of order. No joke. They just display in a seemingly random order. I have to make a note in my phone of the last one i watched so i know which one to hunt down next, (2) there are several episodes missing. Although, due to issue 1, you never know which. You have to search through the whole season to see if the next one is even available, and if not, you search through it again to see if the one after that is available. (3) the ads are long, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that it doesn’t log whether you’ve seen ads. So if you come out of a commercial break, but miss the first part after coming back, and you rewind it too far (back into the ad) it will restart that whole ad break again and you have to sit through it all over.

These are just not acceptable issues to have at this point. In any app.

by Krispyflops

ComedyCentral is terrible. I love CC but it seems like when it comes to ComedyCentral they just said F-it and cobbled some barley working interface with some shiny new graphic design to make it look pretty. The show selection screen has no quick search or even an alphabetical side bar. Also if my iPad is in portrait mode and I even tap a show it automatically begins the show, there is an option to turn off auto play however when you tap the name of a show it automatically starts the episode paused. which would not be so bad if the maximize/minimize window wasn’t all the way in the top right corner out of sight. What’s even worse is that sometimes the button is missing forcing me to close ComedyCentral completely and reopen, just to tap the show I want and have it automatically start, rotate, and waits for you to press play. I can tell others have had similar interactions due to the comments so please as a loyal watcher and fan of everything this company produces please take these complaints into consideration, Thank you

-Loyal Fan

by A. Nonauh Muss

Casting from ComedyCentral is ridiculous! It took me almost 3 hours to get through a 1 hour special. Every time it was time for a commercial break, the shows freeze and I have to stop casting, find the place in the show I was at (because for some reason CC doesn’t understand “resume watching”) and then start all over again for the next commercial break. If I caught it right before the commercials, it would instantly freeze again, so I had to go through the process more times than there are commercial breaks. And the commercial breaks? What a pain! Two commercials in the first half-so restarting the show wasn’t too terrible-followed by 6-8 in the second half. That meant I didn’t finish the show because I was tired of restarting it literally every 3-5 minutes. Regardless of the restarting, the number and space between the commercial breaks are frustrating. I get that it’s revenue and necessary, but at least space them out more appropriately so people don’t lose the desire to finish the show.

by Ttrestle

I never write reviews because I never have problems with apps. I’m that guy that sees negative reviews about ComedyCentral crashing and always wonder what they are talking about. But ComedyCentral is the worst TV/movie app I’ve ever used and I have probably two dozen on my phone that I use regularly. My specific issue is with the attempt to watch South Park through ComedyCentral on my iPhone. Every time I press play, it either is stuck on continuous load or will play until the first commercial break and then get stuck on load. It usually does not work for weeks until one day it will work and play the rest of the episode. This has happened on every single episode of this season that I have attempted to watch. This did not used to happen. If I was Comedy Central I would fire the developer of ComedyCentral. Again, I never write reviews because I am genuinely happy with the vast majority of apps that I use. This is one of the worst apps I have and I feel cheated out of a program/channel that I pay for.

by Bluestegosaurus

Why is the iPad app vertical?? It’s been bothering me for months!

UPDATE: the vertical interface has now been bothering me for years! I’ve been a comedy central viewer since the 90s, sneaking Kids in the Hall and old Gilda Radner and Robin Williams (and maybe a little Pryor when the parents weren’t around) stand up sets as a kid, and we even got my very nice very polite mom hooked on South Park! I’ve been watching the daily show since Craig Kilborn and can remember being apprehensive about that new Jon guy taking over.

I just tried to watch Michelle Obama’s Daily Show ep and it just kept starting in the middle of the Eric Andre interview. This has been happening for a week. I deleted ComedyCentral and reinstalled, and both this and the Nomzamo Mbatha episode straight up won’t play. Michelle Obama I get the spinny wheel, and Nomzamo Mbatha I just get a black screen saying it isn’t available. I’ve probably missed 10 episodes of the daily show in six years overall and to have it melt down while trying to watch Michelle Obama is just too much. I had to come back to write my review.

Please. ComedyCentral is terrible. Other folks have outlined how terrible it is in technical terms. I’m giving you the emotional plea. I’ve quit watching all sorts of wonderful CC content because of its dysfunction but usually I can get the daily show to work.

I know you can do it. I know you can make it better. Please.

by Lunova

I can’t watch it on my laptop. The website says Comedy Central is not part of my package - even tho it is.
I can’t watch it on my PS4 because there is no CC app. So I have to use my phone.
But every time I minimize it and open it up - no matter how much time goes by - it starts at the home page and I have to scroll and scroll and scroll to find the show again and find the episode I was on BECAUSE THERE IS SO SEARCH OPTION. Not only that it now keeps saying I have connection problems on the homepage when I am not connected to WiFi. But it was doing just fine before without WiFi. Like the time it takes to find the show, plus the ads, the load time, it’s not even worth it unless I’ve set aside X amount of time to watch so I don’t have to scroll and find it again or whatever.

by Wyoming Goldprospector

Downloaded ComedyCentral to watch South Park and ComedyCentral has no complete seasons, just one or two episodes for each season and that’s not even complete either. 1 episode season 5, 2 episodes of season 7, 1 episode season 13, and so on. Then the ads are so messed up that it causes the screen to go black were I am forced to force quit ComedyCentral . If the ads do get screwed up and the program continues, it plays with no sound to the point that you have to force quit ComedyCentral . Rewinding back 15 secs doesn’t solve the problem nor does closing out the episode and go back to the main menu help either. Just like some of the other on demand apps, this doesn’t allow you to use multitasking. I like to listen or watch an episode while working on other projects on my iPad. Travel channel does it along with some others, why can’t you? ComedyCentral has been deleted and I will just download pirated South Park episodes instead.

by Gheniphre

I used to love ComedyCentral and listen to it daily. It had so many problems, including always logging me out, that I finally just stopped using it. It has been well over a year. I just tried again and it won't even let me log in! I also agree with other about the volume issue between the show and commercials. I am hard of hearing, since birth, and the commercial volume is set quite loud. The show itself is set too low, please set it up if you do nothing else with the commercials, at least almost as high as they are so we can hear what they are saying. I believe I've posted before and I'm not the only one that said this, we would pay the fee for the no commercials. And perhaps work on ComedyCentral about logging in issues? A year seems to be plenty of time to work these kind of kinks out, no?

by Betsy GT

ComedyCentral has potential but it has too many annoying issues. The ads are ridiculously louder than the shows, they're also buggy and 1-1/2 minutes of ads turn into 2 or 3 due to freeze pauses, and you can't do anything about it but stare at your screen while you wait.
In addition, in the middle of a show the content often stops abruptly, with a message suddenly telling you it's "no longer available"; and, just like that, you can't finish watching the show you're halfway through.
And it gets worse, often the content stops instead with the picture of a "key" (as in, you're suddenly locked out) and again, in the middle of watching a show, you can't continue. And it won't allow you to sign back in.
A very frustrating app.

by Knapptime9

I have the Comedy Central app on my Apple TV, and when it’s work it’s worked great. The caveat, it’s only worked for about two weeks in the last three months. A long while back, it went from working fine to loading to a stalled white screen. Reset/app reinstall etc did not solve the problem.(I’m assuming after a random update) it began working out of nowhere for about two weeks. Now for the last month and has been stuck loading to the same white screen again. Have tried researching the problem online to no avail, and I am experienced in troubleshooting and trying to reproduce what causes software bugs, and this one is lost on me. Anyone else having this problem on an Apple TV or been able to repro this bug to distill what’s causing it?

by Stillchroni

The Comedy Central app, although “functional” seems to have huge technological oversights and issues that seem like just lapses in the creators intelligence. Why is it that every time I want to go watch a show that is not on the front page of ComedyCentral , I have to scroll through the entire catalogue just to find my one show? Why am I not able to pin a show, or have a section that says continue watching? It seems like a complete de-emphasis of the rest of the available content available on ComedyCentral and is a chore that plagues even getting to an episode. My second major complaint lies within the placement of the ads on the video. I understand that to make money on their app they need to run ads, but why on earth is it the same cycle of terrible ads and at such terrible points in the video. A normal video that was 4 ad breaks would space them out so that you watch roughly 25% of the video, then there’s an ad break, but with ComedyCentral, there are no ads for the first half of the video, and then in the second half. Even if the defense is that they want to align the ads with the commercial breaks, the absolute slog it is to stick through an entire video makes you think if anyone who developed ComedyCentral even watched a single episode using ComedyCentral . In conclusion, ComedyCentral works, it does the bare minimum, but there’s so much that is done wrong that could be so easily corrected it’s frustrating to see such oversights.

by JennaMIOC

I want to love ComedyCentral. I really do. I love that it has Reno 911, Chappelle’s Show, etc. When I first started using ComedyCentral it worked great, but in the last 8-10 months or so, it’s been all downhill. Most of the time I can’t even get into ComedyCentral at all. When I do get into ComedyCentral , the content takes forever to load - if it loads at all. Shows stop streaming in the middle of an episode. Halfway through an episode of Reno 911 I got a message stating that it couldn’t continue due to licensing issues ... huh? I don’t know what the developers did to kill ComedyCentral, but it’s been progressively worse since I installed it. Sometimes I don’t even have sound. And yes, I’ve tried uninstalling/reinstalling. I thought maybe it had something to do with the Fire Stick but it sounds like people are having these issues across platforms. FIX THIS!

by Sumnan

The update on ComedyCentral was unnecessary. I’m totally OK with watching commercials for the program I tune in to. But to make it so that Viewers have to sit through the commercials for other programs as well is just uncalled for. Now, unlike before when you tap on a video it takes you to whichever video ComedyCentral wants to take you to before giving you the option to filter, now you have to watch the commercials for that program before you can close it to then make the selection of the program you are actually interested in, then watch the. Commercials for that one as well before the video starts. For example, if you were interested in watching the daily show from three days ago, when you tap on the daily show program it automatically takes you to the most current episode, you then have to watch all the commercials for that episode before you are able to close the episode to then choose the video you really wanted from three days prior, you then have to watch the commercials for that one as well and then you get the video. I don’t know if this is a scam or a glitch but I will not stand for it, not even for Trevor Noah! There are entirely too many options out there to put up with this type of stuff anymore.

by SteveK1

My biggest problem with ComedyCentral is it’s auto play function. I personally like to choose whether I want to play another episode or not rather than have it forced on me, but what’s even worse with the way autoplay is implemented in ComedyCentral, is hat instead of playing the next episode, it plays the previous episode, so when you try to binge on the show to catch up, it keeps going back to the episode that you already watched, rather than the next one, unless you intervene to stop the episode and choose the next one instead.

by Nonpareilpearl

The content was great until it was stuck in "ad mode". Basically, as of a couple of days ago, when I select an option from the main menu for a show, ComedyCentral will automatically start playing ads when I click on the show. I no longer have the option to select a specific episode of a show, just goes right to ads. I decided to leave it running for a bit to see if maybe CC just upped how many ads play when you navigate around, and it looped around in ad after ad for 5 minutes before I decided this was legit in what I'm dubbing "ad mode". Uninstall / reinstall did not fix the issue, unfortunately. Since it's been a few days I'm going to just let it sit on ice until an app update appears. I still gave ComedyCentral 3 stars because prior to this I really enjoyed it. But just to vent a little:

- Ad shenanigans like this is why people install ad blockers in web browsers, which doesn't directly apply here but I know some content creators bemoan the existence of them.
- Ad shenanigans like this is also why people are willing to pay for an ad free experience.

Please CC please 1) fix the glitch and 2) offer an ad free tier.

by Jamdaddy25

Look if you are here, you want CC's content if you are here and it's available and available immediately. It's wonderful, use it. You can steam on device and to ur casting devices.

When you do... If you never need to do more than play, u r still good.

However If you want to rewind or fast forward this is where the frustration lies. Why two stars off for that? Well because there are many UI enhancements that could be used here. To me simply not having the time in video the marker is when you slide is an awfully huge oversight in the user's experience. Even simply a "back 15 seconds" arrow. Imagine the frustration of having to blindly bounce into a video and watch 2 minutes of ads multiple times just to find where you left off. Makes me feel that the main use case has a sev 1/2 bug and shouldn't last more than one release.

by Seanstewart

The most frustrating part of ComedyCentral —and the reason why I'm choosing to give it three—is the fact that the developers gate the TV provider login view based on the device's locale settings.

I was unable to login to ComedyCentral until I did some very naughty things to determine it's reading and caching device region settings. Changing my region to en_US (it was set to en_BE) allowed me to log in to my provider; switching the region back after logging in didn't affect ComedyCentral .

Tapping on "TV Provider Login" does absolutely nothing otherwise. At the very least, display a dialog that there are no available TV providers associated with the current locale of the device, if you continue to use region to gate features.

However, the most positive thing about ComedyCentral has got to be Viacom's choice of backend infrastructure for delivering streaming media. None of their brands' apps suffer from connectivity or downgraded quality issues while streaming, especially when compared to competitors.

Everything works now, but I always die a little on the inside when I see features being gated by locale and region pairs instead of physical geolocation (OR IP-based controls).

by Roland Xavier

Everything I could expect from ComedyCentral is here. I enjoy the ability to catch up on my favorite shows at my leisure. What keeps this from being a 5-star rating is volume. Besides being an obvious sellout to advertisers by nearly doubling the volume of commercials, where I have to frantically turn down because it's sheer obnoxiousness, the volume of the CONTENT is slow low I practically have my iPad less than two feet away. Ads pay for the service, but when it is at the expense of the content, lower viewership leads to fewer people being reached by said ads. Please correct the volume of content to be equal to that of commercials.