Loading ...>> The very first iPhone app review on this site! <<
has changed its name to
When I first downloaded this app’s v1.0 release a couple weeks ago it wasn’t great, but it did what it was supposed to: it displayed movie showtimes and theater listings. It wasn’t spectacular in any way, but at a cost of zero dollars it was adequate.
With the recent v1.2 update BoxOffice is still free (Paypal donations accepted) but the major difference is that now it’s awesome. In fact, it probably rivals similar movie apps that cost money… I can’t say that for sure because I’ve never tried any of those pay apps, and as long as BoxOffice is free I don’t see why I ever would.
Version 1.2 makes BoxOffice far more complete and allows you to find moves by title, by ranking (provided by Rotten Tomatoes), and by release date which is really nice – find out what just opened this week or look for older releases that are still showing on the big screen. The theater view puts your favorite movie theaters at the top and lists the rest by name or by distance. Once you’ve found a movie you get a thumbnail-sized movie poster and plot summary, plus you can watch the trailer via YouTube and read a ton of short reviews that link to full reviews in the iPhone’s web browser. You can even buy tickets or look for showtimes on future dates if you want.
Of all the things I would ever want BoxOffice to do for my moviegoing experience, probably the only thing missing at this point would be links to IMDb (Internet Movie Database) which is a trivial but nice-to-have kind of thing. Other than that I think this app does a great job of delivering on everything it promises plus a little bit more.
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- Browse movies by title, score (rating), or release date.
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- Browse movies by release date - I love this feature
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- Movie listings at a local theater. The yellow star in the top right corner means that this theater appears in my "favorites" so I don't have to go hunting for it!
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- Movie details include plot summary, more theaters, and in most cases you can also see the movie trailer and reviews
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on Aug 4th, 2008 at 4:31 am
[...] been seeing all kinds of hits on this site from people who are trying to find out why BoxOffice is no longer in the App Store. Well, this isn’t really much of an update but I got this email [...]
on Aug 6th, 2008 at 5:47 am
[...] crap, so go ahead and try to get some easy money any way you can. Meanwhile, the immensely useful BoxOffice remains in App Store Purgatory. What’s wrong with this [...]
on Aug 14th, 2008 at 12:08 am
[...] app was the very first one that I reviewed on this site and you can find the full review here. It’s just about everything you could want from a movie app, so if you haven’t [...]
on Aug 15th, 2008 at 12:05 am
[...] you’re looking for a review of Now Playing, you can find it here. Share [...]
on Aug 28th, 2008 at 1:51 am
[...] been a fan of Now Playing (formerly called BoxOffice) since it came out, mysteriously went away, and then came out again. [...]
on Oct 9th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
[...] package and the quality of info is on par with the more popular movie-finding apps like Movies and Now Playing. i.TV doesn’t provide quite as many sorting options, but it does the job well enough that [...]
on Nov 5th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
[...] Movie Trailers is the very definition of a hybrid app. It looks and acts like Now Playing in the way it displays movie info and plays trailers, but it doesn’t display movie [...]
on Dec 13th, 2008 at 12:17 am
when can we watch tv shows on our ipods with i.TV
Reply
Michael (Admin) reply on December 13th, 2008 12:31 am:
I haven’t looked at i.TV lately but you can watch some TV with Joost
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on Jun 21st, 2009 at 7:59 am
I deleted Now Playing from my apps yesterday when it required me to sign up for Netflix in order to use it. They said it was a free trial, but I had to provide all my info, including a credit card, I believe if I’d continued, in order to use this FREE app I’d been using for months. I switched to the app called Hot Popcorn.
Reply
on Jul 30th, 2009 at 12:53 am
[...] ago today that I kicked off iPhone App Reviews.net with a short review of Cyrus Najmabadi’s Now Playing, a free app that started out as a simple movie theater guide and has since added DVD release info [...]