QuickAdvice: Keep Tabs On Your Shows In A Weekly Glance With TV Forecast
TV Forecast ($1.99) by Big Bucket Software is an app to help you keep track of all those awesome shows you watch on TV.
I've been going through plenty of these apps lately, but I will have to admit, TV Forecast is a keeper. It takes the best of the other two TV tracker apps I've reviewed - TV Show Tracker and Episodes - and combines the best parts of both into one app.
The Search function in TV Forecast is fast and simple - the app will search for your shows as you type. The database is comprehensive, as I haven't had any issues finding the shows I have to watch every week (last time I had trouble finding Hell's Kitchen in Episodes). While there aren't images associated with the shows when searching, you see the original air year and whether it's a US show or from another country. It's pretty easy to identify your shows even without visuals, which is great.
It seems that you'll have to keep going to the Add screen to add shows one at a time, but this is the initial setup, which can be tedious for anything, but the rewards make it worth it.
When you finally have all of your shows, you will see your week's TV shows at a glance. There's a Today section, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week, Upcoming, and To Be Announced. It's all organized and gives you a great breakdown of what you have to look forward to every day.
Your shows will be shown with an image (if no image is available, you get a generic image that looks like the TV Forecast icon) and episode name, air date, and time. If the show airs today or tomorrow, you get a time to go with it. If it's two days or more from now, the number of days remaining until the air date will be shown. For shows with no announced air date for new seasons yet, you'll see a TBA in that spot.
There is also a Previously mode that you can view to see what aired Yesterday, This Week, Last Week, and "Previously" for anything over a week old. This is great to help keep track of anything you may have missed.
Tapping a show will give you a larger image for the show and shows episode name, air date and time, and an episode summary if available. You can get an email reminder about an upcoming episode or read more about the show at TVRage. If you missed the last episode then you can get a summary of it too, if available.
If you no longer want an episode, you can delete it via the Edit button. Additionally, you'll notice another circle on the right side of the shows - selecting this will change the air time if the show airs earlier for you than what is shown by default. This is pretty great for those that need it.
TV Forecast provides local notifications to alert you of when the show will be airing. Again, great for those that actually don't have DVR or TiVO. You can set it for any time from 5 minutes to 2 hours before the air date. Or Never, if you hate notifications. This can be found in the Settings, along with a toggle for Adjust Time Zone by default.
The only thing I don't like about TV Forecast is that you can't add shows that are no longer being aired. This is only for currently airing shows, so if you are catching up on an old series or past seasons, you'll have to find some other method of keeping track of what you've seen. TV Show Tracker did a good job of keeping a complete list of all episodes of any show, which gives it a bit of an edge against this app.
However, if you are one to only watch currently airing stuff, then TV Forecast is great. It's simple, fast, and gives you what you'd expect from the app name - a forecast of your shows. It's worth the $2 if only current shows are your thing.
