Al Cinema: a movie app that is not quite there yet

techknow beat

by Bilal Iqbal

The bar for what goes as an acceptably-designed app in Qatar seems to have been set quite low.

Consider Al Cinema, developed by ADabisc, and a direct competitor to Cinema Qatar that I reviewed about three weeks back. Like Cinema Qatar, Al Cinema also aims to be the only app you will ever need when thinking about movies in Qatar if you happen to use an Android or an iOS device. Available for free on both Play Store and Appstore (the Apple Appstore also features a paid version), we will be looking at the free-of-charge Android version today. The iOS version should be functionally identical.

The current Al Cinema user base in Qatar is somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 (that’s the download category it has been placed in), which is less than Cinema Qatar (50,000 to 100,000). By the looks of it, Al Cinema is also newer of the two, sitting pretty at Version 1.1, when Cinema Qatar is already at Version 3.5. On the flipside, this could also mean that Aptrixx (Cinema Qatar’s developer) is a lot more active in developing its app.

Firing up the app, you see that the top one-fourth of the home screen is covered in ads, with there being no way for you to get rid of them. The Cinema Qatar solution of one-time full-screen ad in your face seems almost better in comparison.

Beneath the ad-tray, and the Al Cinema top bar, you are presented with a list of movies that are currently playing in Qatar. They seem to be presented in their order of release, with the latest films appearing on top. You can sort this list by Genres and can also instead choose to see them as in a grid — a useless feature given that it arranges the posters of the movies in a grid and takes away all the other useful information you could see at a glance in the list view, such as the Rotten Tomatoes and Al Cinema users’ scores, film age rating and the runtime.

Even in list view, the developers do not seem to have optimised the space available to them. There is enough space in each listing to offer — in addition to Rotten Tomatoes and Al Cinema users’ scores — IMDb rating of a particular film as well. This alone could have been enough incentive to jump ship. Cinema Qatar restricts itself to just IMDb ratings. Alas, by omitting the IMDb ratings, Al Cinema puts itself in the same category as Cinema Qatar, offering an incomplete picture of the opinion on a film around the world.

Tapping on a movie will take you to the movie screen, which is arranged rather nicely. The top third of the screen nicely summarises the movie ratings, allowing you to add your own rating as well. Again, I would like to see IMDb ratings added to it, but otherwise it is nicely done. Below, you can watch the movie’s trailer sourced from YouTube. Unlike Cinema Qatar, this feature actually works. You are able to watch the film’s trailer, although I couldn’t quite understand why all the trailers I chose played in a small window surrounded by black screen. I also encountered errors while playing ads at times, but it might have been due to the rather moody network performance I have been experiencing lately.

Below the trailer you are presented with information on the film, such as the synopsis, the writers, director and the cast members. Like Cinema Qatar, the information isn’t always complete. For instance, in the case of the latest Hobbit film, the app was missing the entire starting cast. Perhaps, nobody acted in the film?

Once you are done with the details, you can tap on the Showtime button right next to it to see all the theatres in Qatar where the film is playing. It breaks down movie timings according to the types of screenings. So it will tell you whether a screening is normal, VIP, 3D or in IMAX.

The developers need to be very careful with updating this information, though. Consider, for instance, Big Hero 6. According to Al Cinema, there are two shows for the film at the cinema in Villaggio: a 10:45am 3D show, and two normal shows at 1pm and 3:15pm. However, when I went to the cinema, the timings were correct, but there was no 3D show. All three shows were normal screenings.

Like Cinema Qatar, you can also choose to browse individual cinemas and see what they are playing, a useful feature if you happen to be in a particular area and don’t feel like driving elsewhere. You can also choose to search for shows at a particular time, a useful feature unique to Al Cinema. In practice though the feature does not work well: it will just take you to the movie screen in the app, where you will have to browse through all its showtimes. This is only slightly better than going through each movie individually.

The app also has a tab for What’s On. But what’s on was apparently three films released in Qatar a while ago. I failed to get the point of this section. ADabisc should remove or rethink this feature for their next update. It is completely useless in its current form.

There is also a tab for E-Tickets, which isn’t functioning at the moment. Instead, the developer wants to gauge your interest in booking tickets via the app. It asks for your e-mail and phone number (optional) and requires you to tick a box saying: “Yes! I want to book my cinema tickets online.” The feature may be made available in future if enough people show interest, I suppose.

Like Cinema Qatar, Al Cinema also features a useless location map for all cinemas in its database. The cinemas are marked on a Google-sourced map. What makes this feature useless, however, is that it doesn’t tell you where you currently are. It also does not allow you to navigate to a cinema of your choosing. Wouldn’t it be better if it offered coordinates to the cinemas that you can then navigate to in a mapping application like Google Maps?

Al Cinema is a perfectly okay app for your cinema needs in Qatar, but does not offer you enough incentive to switch from Cinema Qatar. In contrast, Cinema Qatar itself does not offer you enough incentive to switch from Al Cinema. Both seem to be on the same level at present, offering some features the other doesn’t but also losing out on other features. In the end, using one or the other might just be which of the two you downloaded first.

I like the look of Cinema Qatar, but it does not give you complete information on the screenings in Villaggio’s cinema (it doesn’t tell you which screenings are in IMAX). Al Cinema, in contrast, tells you about IMAX screenings in the City Centre cinema, even when they don’t have an IMAX screen (what’s up with that?). The Q-tickets website seems to have more accurate information than either of these apps.

In a pinch, either would do, but what they are both really waiting for is another Qatar-centric movie app to come and give them some serious whupping.

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