So Long, HIDIVE, and Thanks for…What, Exactly?

HIDIVE costs $4.99 /month or $47.99/year (7-day free trial also available)

At long last, the time has come! The time of which I speak, of course, if dropping my HIDIVE subscription with vigor and relief. I’ve been looking to drop this video streaming service almost from the start once I experienced the player first hand. There is no disguising the fact that HIDIVE lags far behind other services of its kind. Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hulu all outpace the video player on several fronts, not the least of which is the user experience.

When I first learned about HIDIVE, I remember the desire I had at the time to support a competitor in the hopes it would prove a worthwhile addition to my subscription services. We’re in an age, and have been for a while, where the need to keep up with all that each season has to offer requires tracking multiple sites. Even then, there are outliers that none of the companies pick up, and all you can do is hope that you’ll luck out sometime later, far past any hype, for the titles to get picked up and added to one of the libraries.

At the start, there were actually a handful of shows I wanted to watch only available on HIDIVE, so the cost seemed worth it. There were also older titles I didn’t see anywhere else; maybe in some future where a given season was lackluster, I could dip into them. Optimistic given the packed seasons we’ve had lately, I know.

Unfortunately, the longer I spent with the service, the less that the shows picked up by HIDIVE caught my interest. It seemed like the majority of the notable titles went to Crunchyroll, Funimation before the merge, and, for a short while, Amazon Prime. But, when I calculated the yearly subscription I’d chosen to the number of HIDIVE’s airing anime I’d watched over a given year, the cost seemed just enough to continue the service.

If their catalog maintained my attention now as it did at the start, I might be lenient in keeping them around. As it is, I have a million gripes about the video player that cheer me on when it comes to termination.

The interface, in a nutshell, is shit. Pure, smelly, squishy, dog shit. The type you can’t even pick up with a poop bag without leaving a horrid smear across the pavement.

Dog owner, here, if that wasn’t immediately apparent.

I’ve accessed HIDIVE across multiple mediums, so can say with confidence that they are all inadequate and infuriating, especially when I know how much better a video player can be. 

First, the web browser experience: this was actually my first foray into HIDIVE, and it gave me a somewhat watered down version of the monstrosity I was to expect in the future. Watching anime through my Chrome browser is actually the most palatable method of consumption. The site loads without any lag time, I can easily navigate to my watchlist as well as their recommended categories. The player interface isn’t great, but, at the very least, it allows me to skip forwards and backwards ten seconds at a time, adjust the volume, you know, the basic stuff. 

I don’t get a preview thumbnail along the timeline like on Crunchyroll, so there’s definite room for improvement there. There’s also no handy skip button for credits, recaps, or previews. There’s no option to download and watch offline for when you’re off the grid, on a plane, whatever. Again, quality of life that I am okay going without. Too bad there are a slew of other problems that bog the player down.

Now imagine you’re standing across two rooms, in the kitchen, and trying to see the subtitles on a light background.

When I said I prefer accessing the site  through a web browser rather than on my TV through an app, I am specifically thinking about subtitles. I also occasionally use HIDIVE on my iPad through the Apple Store app, which seems similar enough to the web browser to disregard. I’ve downloaded and experienced both the Google TV and ROKU apps, finding, to my horror, that the subtitles are nearly illegible unless one stands far too close for eye safety. 

There are two options provided: yellow and white. Unfortunately, neither is an improvement on the other. The biggest problem is the font, which is too slight to stand out against the background. I had hoped, at the beginning of my subscription, that this would be an issue easily remedied over time; they just had to scale the font properly to the TV apps, right? I’m not at all knowledgeable about the coding required for this fix, but I would have thought my two years of patience would be rewarded. Foolish, foolish me.

Left: Google TV (apologies, phone pic), Right: Chrome web browser

Now consider the Apple Store app, probably the most easily read?

So, in the rare chance that I do watch HIDIVE on the TV, I only do so when I can sit close enough to squint and make out the subtitles. On second thought, maybe this is optimal for those trying to learn and practice Japanese. What better way to integrate yourself in the language than your inability to read the captions?

My next complaint is, again, related to the subtitles. It also straddles another issue of HIDIVE’s, namely settings preferences.

You can specify your preferred color of subtitles, but not the language. The default is Portuguese for some unknown reason. Why? Every time I start a new show I have to pause the episode to change the subtitles to English, which seems just as disruptive as having to change the spoken language. Make them both available as preferences.

Just like before, this is an annoyance that has persisted for at least the past two years. How has this not been fixed by now? What is the point of user preferences if they aren’t actually implemented?

In addition to language settings, there’s the ever important Queue. This category is an obvious must have for streaming services; it allows users to keep all the shows they want to track in one spot. When a new season begins, the first thing I do is add every single show so I can easily see which ones I have or haven’t watched at a glance.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Without fail, HIDIVE sabotages my efforts to add titles to my queue. I’ll click the little plus button, see the button flip to indicate that it has accepted my input, go back to the home page to browse other anime, and then notice that the show I’d just added is not included in my Queue lineup. Did I hallucinate the entire sequence of events? So I try again, and sometimes even a third time, before the addition takes and the show remains on my watch list.

Until the next day, or the next week, when I open up HIDIVE to catch the next episode and can’t find the show. I have to hunt it down, add it again, and go through the nightmare process repeatedly until I finally finish the anime and can look forward to more of the same in the following season.

So, HIDIVE, I will not mourn your loss. I will rejoice with glowsticks and the written word, because at least here I know they will remain as posted. A not insignificant part of me wants a larger service to gobble you up. Better if you get your shit together and improve enough for me to reconsider. Then we can both be happy. 

Until then, so long!

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• There is an optional workaround to accessing HIDIVE libraries by subscribing to its channel on Amazon Prime Video. Prime Video Channels is a Prime-member add-on that lets you choose your channels. All include a 7-day free trial, with $4.99/month/channel after the trial ends.
• Additional reading: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/hidive