Crackle for Xbox 360 Review March 16, 2012

Crackle has just launched an app for the Xbox 360 for anyone with an Xbox Live Gold account and no additional fee.  I can’t begin to say how long I’ve waited for this to happen, so how did it turn out?

The program’s interface is almost identical to other similar programs I’ve seen currently on the Xbox 360, like EPIX.  When you launch the program it checks your gamertag to authorize you, and then immediately goes into a main menu where you can browse its extensive collection of movies, tv shows, and original content.

I was overjoyed when I saw that some of the very obscure tv shows I loved were made available through the service.  There’s also an enormously wide selection of anime which eclipses some of the american show back catalog.  I’m sure most people would be happy to find they offered shows like Seinfeld or Bewitched, but I was most excited to finally get to watch The Tick again after 10 years.

Its also got a fantastic selection of movies.  While it’s no longer offering Brainscan, which was a movie I reviewed some time ago, it was offering Real Genius, another one of my favorite movies which to this day has not seen a decent DVD or Blu-Ray release.  The Angry Video Game Nerd will probably be overjoyed that it had an enormous selection of classic Godzilla movies.

Audio and video quality was quite good and will probably be limited by quality of the original source content opposed to anything else.  Most of the TV shows I watched were only available in standard, but that was probably due to the fact they predated HD.  Audio was output in 5.1 Dolby Digital, showing the program’s support of surround sound.

As with the other similar programs, it does take advantage of the Xbox 360 Kinect.  Full menu browsing is available by either hand gestures or voice command, and both are quite responsive so long as your Kinect is properly calibrated to the room that you are in.  I make mention of this because I did move my 360 to another room and I noticed problems while issuing voice commands, whereas in the previous room I had it in (which is the room it was initially calibrated in) had no such problems and noticed a fantastic range.  I consider that more of a Kinect issue and do not blame Crackle at all for it.  If you do change the room your Kinect was in, I recommend running the Kinect Tuner and recalibrating it to the new room.

Now, there’s one other thing I’d like to make people aware of.  While the service is free for Gold Members, there will be advertisements during your broadcasts, and that goes for any TV shows you watch (they will pop up at the logical commercial breaks in the TV shows) and even the movies.  In fact if you do a very long fast forward in a movie (say, to watch your favorite scene in it or resume a spot you left off at) you could find yourself loading up a commercial immediately before the video playback starts.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with Crackle’s commercials at all.  The commercial breaks are much shorter (I would say about thirty seconds on average) than what you’d see had you watched the program on television, and while it is only for Gold Members, you’re not being charged a premium fee on top of the subscription to use the program.  That, to me, makes it acceptable.

In my philosophy, you can either be a paid premium program which does not have advertising (similar to HBO or Showtime) or you can be a free program which makes its money from advertising revenue.  It is completely immoral to try to be both.  That’s what Hulu Plus did when I reviewed it, and I still think its wrong.

In short, if you’re an Xbox Live Gold Member, you owe it to yourself to download this program and give it a whirl.  You can also find the Crackle app for the iPhone/iPad, and in some internet equipped Blu-Ray players.