Tee Vee 3 tracks your TV viewing habits from your iOS device.
It’s June. That means that all my regular TV shows are on hiatus for the summer. But, that also means that the summer shows we enjoy watching around our house are coming back with new episodes. The problem we run into is knowing whether or not a show is new or a rerun. I find myself digging through the tomes of Wikipedia to determine if the title of an upcoming episode is one that is first run or not. On more than one occasion, I find myself saying, “There must be an app for this.” And, there is.
Tee Vee 3 for iOS is a one-stop shop for TV viewers. Tee Vee 3 helps users to keep track of there favorite TV shows through a wonderfully clean and elegant interface. Some of the main features of Tee Vee 3 include:
- A huge database – over 30,000 TV shows to search through
- A very clean design for both iPhone and iPad
- iCloud sync and Trakt – information saved and synced across all your devices
- Unwatched management – helps you keep track of episodes you’ve seen
- Push notifications when your favorite shows are going to air locally
- Localization for 9 different languages including English, Czech, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, German and Slovak (more coming soon)
I was immediately taken with Tee Vee 3 when I began testing its interface. It’s simplicity and gorgeous design were enough to mesmerize me and made me suggest it to others. Tee Vee 3 utilizes iOS gestures like swiping across the screen to reveal the functionality of the app. When you first start up the app, the first thing you should do is go to the preferences. In my opinion, this should be the first stop when you are familiarizing yourself with any new app, but I must say that with Tee Vee 3, it’s much more of a necessity than some other apps as it really defines the functionality of the app.
In the settings section, you can set functions like notifications, time zone and alerts. You can also change some GUI settings like whether or not to show titles on the homepage (if not you will only see the wallpaper of the show) and whether or not to hide spoilers form the synopses within episode information. Also, something that’s a little quirky – you can replace the word ‘dead’. This is something very unique to Tee Vee 3. When a show has been cancelled or is no longer running, it will show up as dead within your home page queue. You can choose to replace the word dead within settings and will instead see ‘Ended’.
Another feature from within settings that is important to look at is TraktTV. TraktTV is another viewers’ service that builds a history of TV shows and movies you watch. Tee Vee 3 links into this service and sends your tracking information from the iOS app to the TraktTV database. In addition to the TraktTV service, you can monitor your TV habits and unwatched episodes right from the homescreen. Simply turn on ‘track unwatched episodes’ and you will know at a glance when you’ve missed an episode. Marking the episodes is easy. Simply go into the show details and select the episode list. Then, tap the episode number to show that you’ve watched it. Once you do, the details of the episode will appear if you have ‘hide spoilers’ selected in settings.
Adding TV shows to your homepage couldn’t be simpler. You tap on the plus sign and are met with a search field and a list of trending shows. If the show you are looking for doesn’t appear in the trending list, you can type in a search term. To add the show, you only need to tap on the title. It automatically gets added to the queue in order according to when the next new show is running. If the next newest episode is TBA, the list will be in order according to how many missed episodes you have for the show.
I’m really looking forward to using this app throughout the summer and into the fall TV season. It’s a great way to keep up with your favorite shows and never forget when one is coming on. Tee Vee 3 cannot be used to view episodes – only track them.
Tee Vee 3 is currently on version 3.0.2 and retails for $2.99 in the App Store. For more information on Tee Vee 3, visit the developer’s website at teeveeapp.com.
