IOS APP

CzCrimpy

Hi everyone,

For the past three months I've been working on an iOS client for TVHeadend in my spare time, and it's finally getting close to a first public release. I've attached a few screenshots and would really appreciate some honest feedback from the community.

I'm particularly interested in hearing your thoughts on:

the overall design and user experience,
features that you feel are missing,
anything that looks confusing or could be improved.

I'm also still undecided about the release model. At the moment I'm considering one of the following options:

releasing it as open source on GitHub and accepting donations,
offering it on the App Store with a small yearly subscription (€3 / $3),
or a one-time purchase (€10 / $10).

As TVHeadend users, which option would you personally prefer?

Thanks in advance for any feedback. It's been a significant amount of work, so before I take the final steps I'd love to hear what the community thinks.

Flole

CzCrimpy releasing it as open source on GitHub and accepting donations,

I would prefer this as this ensures, that even if you no longer want to maintain it on some day, the app lives on and I can fix stuff myself if it breaks. There are also other clients available for iOS, paid and free btw. so you might want to look at their pricing scheme to make sure you are not over- or underpriced if you choose to go the subscription or one time payment route.

Btw: The capitalization that we agreed on for Tvheadend is only the first letter is uppercase. While of course you can choose to ignore that agreement and spell it however you want, I just wanted to mention it as I saw it in the screenshot with the mapper 🙂

CzCrimpy

Flole

From my perspective, open-sourcing it on GitHub has two major drawbacks:

Very few people have an Apple Developer account, so most users won't be able to build and install the app themselves.
I've done something similar before, and the result was zero donations and a clone of the app appearing on the App Store within a week, being sold for money by someone else.

As for the App Store, I did some research and actually bought around four different TVHeadend clients. In my opinion, they were either missing important features or simply didn't look very good.

So far, I haven't found a "Netflix-like" TVHeadend client with full TVHeadend configuration available directly from within the app. 😄

Flole

CzCrimpy Very few people have an Apple Developer account, so most users won't be able to build and install the app themselves.

True. Tvheadend has reimbursed developers for the annual (quite high) Apple Developer Account fee, so if someone really wants to pick up the abandoned work there's always a way. You can of course also start with a paid model and open source it later on if you no longer want to maintain it, or have it open source and paid (as users won't be able to install it themselves without the much more expensive developer account).

CzCrimpy and a clone of the app appearing on the App Store within a week, being sold for money by someone else.

Choose the license wisely and go after them. A single won lawsuit can bring more money than any donation or subscription model 😉 Also you can just file a DMCA takedown request if they are violating the license and Apple will remove the app.

I can only speak for Tvheadend, and in fact you can check yourself on opencollective for the exact numbers, but the monthly donations wouldn't be enough to make a living (not that anyone ever tried that, the money donated towards Tvheadend is used only for project-related expenses like Hosting, Domain, Apple Developer Account, Test Hardware and so on). Assuming that only a subset of these users will be using and donating towards an App, you'll likely get (significantly) less than that.

chewitt

CzCrimpy I did some research and actually bought around four different TVHeadend clients. In my opinion, they were either missing important features or simply didn't look very good.

Obligatory XKCD link 😁 https://xkcd.com/927/