I came across a Funny or Die user that made some interesting videos. I was upset that the videos were not available on Youtube, because the Youtube Android app does an decent job acting as a TV interface. I decided to try out the Funny or Die Android app. It turns out this app does not cross over very well to the Android TV world.
The first comparison between Funny or Die and Youtube is the subscription model. On Youtube, I subscribe to multiple users. When I launch the Youtube app, I can see a chronologically sorted view of videos that were uploaded by the users I subscribe to. Funny or Die seems to have a similar subscription model, but there doesn't appear to be a login interface to the Android app.
Without being able to view subscriptions, I decided to look up the user. In the Youtube app, not only does it list the users I subscribe to, but you can also look up users to view all the videos uploaded by that particular user. The Funny or Die app does not support this. I could only view what was popular or do a search.
The last difference I noticed was the quality of search. Youtube is owned by Google, which is famous for search. If I know the general topic of the video I want to watch, I can just type in a few keywords. The auto-suggest also works pretty well. In the Funny or Die app, the search seems to be a simple pattern match based on the title. If I know the title of a video, I often will only type in the "important" words in that title. This is easier to type in a small keyboard. Youtube will find the video I was searching for. Funny or Die will not; you have to type in an exact title portion.
The Funny or Die service has potential for the Android TV space, but the app needs a lot of work.
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