Fanhattan for iPad review

Fanhattan is a free iPad app that feeds you a gallery of available movies and TV shows from Netflix, Hulu Plus, iTunes Movies, Crackle, ABC iPad app, Amazon Video on Demand, BlockBuster Video, Cinema Now, Playstation Network, Vudu, and Zune into a single easy to browse app. Walt Mossberg called Fanhattan a “launchpad”. You just choose your favorite services from a list and Fanhattan shows you all the available content. The power is in having a single source so you can search for the entire set of movies and media that you have access to, but might not be aware of. Since the app is free you might be wondering how they make any money? They take a cut on the iTunes movies you rent, plus a commission on new Netflix signups they generate.

Fanhattan does a wonderful job of suggesting shows and movies to you, so it will actually aid in discovering things you might not have heard of. The navigation in Fanhattan is a bit confusing at first but you’ll get the hang of it eventually. You swipe invisible hotspots to go back and forth so it takes some time getting used to.

Each movie or show has a ton of related content in the Fanhattan app. You’ll find a very nice photo gallery, all the show’s info, reviews from Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, cast and crew, video clips, album soundtrack, Amazon merchandise, Facebook sharing, and similar movies to look out for.

Filter your shows by Genre, Star ratings, release date, and Ratings. You can sort the results by either popularity, release date, or alphabetically. Planning a trip to the movies? You can even find movies coming to theatres, in theatres now in Fanhattan as well.

Unfortunately, there is no way to hook Fanhattan into the HBO GO app right now. I really hope the developer can find a way to add this one in. The app also has trouble remembering your stored set of preferred service providers, so I have to go back and pick them each time. I hope the developers fix this issue soon. The app uses a ton of slideshows and animations, so it works smoother on the iPad 2. The flow is that once you start watching something, you’re bascially out of Fanhattan. Since the app is doing a redirect to other apps, getting back to where you were takes a few taps and clicks.

Overall, Fanhattan is a wonderful meta-searching app for all things movies on the iPad. They’ve thrown in enough content to keep you entertained for a very long time, and its all free. We’re a huge fan of Fanhattan.