Cinema HD: Review & Guide

★★★★

[Movies, TV Shows, Other Originals]

Cinema HD is often voted among the top free streaming apps by many reviewers and users on the Internet. It has been around for quite a few years and seems relatively more stable than some of the other free streaming apps that often come and go. Its collection of stream sources for movies and TV shows may not be the absolutely largest, but it belongs in the top tier. The app itself is well-rounded in all essential functionalities, making it a good choice on TV boxes. Shadowed by some of the actively developed newcomers like NovaTV and BeeTV, it may not always be the first app to go to for a video title. But definitely keep Cinema HD as a backup choice when other apps fail.

Pros

• A large collection of stream sources.
• Can change stream during playback.
• Has an automatic viewing history in addition to the manual list of favorites.
• Can resume playing from where you left off last time.
• The voice search function works well with the remote control buttons.

Cons

• Some streams play the wrong video.
• Can’t use the arrow buttons on the remote control to rewind/fast-forward.
• Downloading feature doesn’t seem to work.

Details

Large Source Collection

Cinema HD has a large collection of stream sources, including some titles not available in any other free streaming apps. However, compared to NovaTV and BeeTV, its sources are slightly fewer, and there is no indication to separate more reliable sources from the ones of less quality. Also, some streams play the wrong video. You may need to try a few sources before finding a good one to play.

Movie Database

Cinema HD is fully integrated with The Movie Database project (TMDb). It shows detailed and useful information on every movie and TV show title (such as description, rating, and nice posters).

Downloads

Cinema HD will let you download a video stream to a local file. It manages the downloading process internally without using an external download manager. However, it doesn’t seem to handle exceptions very well and fails easily. In our experience, it is nearly impossible for a download to come to completion. So the feature is really useless.

Playback Features

Cinema HD has most of the useful features during playback:

• You can pick a different stream without having to stop playing first.
• It can resume playing from where you left off last time.
• It keeps an automatic viewing history. You can also manually add a video title to your list of favorites.

The only desirable feature missing is that it doesn’t allow you to use the LEFT/RIGHT buttons on the remote control directly to rewind and fast-forward. You must use the on-screen rewind and fast-forward buttons.

Voice Search

Cinema HD fully supports voice search. If you have an air mouse with a microphone, you can input your search phrase by talking to it and letting the speech recognition engine in Android turn your spoken words into text.

TV-Friendly User Interface

Cinema HD has a well-designed TV-friendly user interface that works well with the remote control. It was revamped recently, giving it a slicker look.

Subtitles

Cinema HD fully supports subtitles and it downloads subtitle files from the free service opensubtitles.org.

Third-Party Integration

Cinema HD supports several external video player apps including MX Player and VLC. It also supports online accounts with Trakt.tv, Real-Debrid, AllDebrid, and Premiumize. The free Trakt.tv service is really handy for tracking your viewing progress and history. And the other three paid services will provide you with additional high-quality premium stream sources with very little buffering.

Ads, But No Ads

The official Cinema HD app does have ads, but they are reasonable. After playing a video title, you will typically get two full-screen video ads, which you can easily dismiss with the BACK button after 5 seconds.

For those that are impatient, fortunately, there are modified ad-free versions out there, making a great app even better.

VPN Recommended

Due to the dubious copyright status of the free Internet video sources, it’s recommended that you protect your own privacy by setting up VPN protection on your TV box first.

Install & Setup

The Cinema HD app (com.yoku.marumovie) is not available from Google Play Store. But it can be found from various sources on the Internet.

If you have further questions regarding this app, please contact us. We will be glad to help you out.

Once installed, the app is pretty much good to go. If you have an existing Trakt.tv account, you may want to enter it under Settings. It will bring back all your viewing history and the list of shows you are currently watching.

If you experience performance issues with Cinema HD on an older TV box, you may consider upgrading to one of our latest TV box models. We have tested the app thoroughly and it runs smoothly on all our boxes. For example, our TX3 Smart TV box has high-quality and high-performance hardware, enhanced with a customized version of the SlimBOX firmware. It is very fast and reliable, and yet very competitively priced. The 4+32G model is only $65.

Useful Tips

1. When browsing through video titles, if you want to see more titles on the screen, you can reduce the poster image size by changing it from the default Large to Medium in Settings.
2. Cinema HD has occasional updates, and it’s best if you keep the app up to date.

Other Similar Apps

A pair of very similar streaming apps NovaTV and BeeTV currently seem to have the largest collection of stream sources. In addition, there are several other free streaming apps that we recommend. No app is perfect. Each of them has pros and cons. So check them out.