THE popular UKTV Play app, which has thousands of hours of free telly, is finally showing off its big rebrand to Amazon Fire TV Stick owners.
The ad-supported streamer has changed its name to U, in a controversial update rolling out across all channels on 16 July.
The UKTV Play app will now be titled as just U. While all U’s popular channels such as Dave and Yesterday, will be known as U&Dave and U&Yesterday.
The update has recently arrived on Amazon Fire products.
But viewers haven’t fallen in love with the rebrand yet.
“The rebranding looks and feels awful. And the naming of the channels is just clumsy,” on onlooker wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
“I suppose some marketing company has made millions from this totally unnecessary and really poor rebranding!”
A second viewer wrote: “What a load of crap, gone from looking professional to something that looks made up by a eight year old in their bedroom.”
While a third onlooker dubbed the rebrand “tragically bad”.
“I’d rethink this ASAP @UKTV,” they added.
By Millie Turner, Senior Technology & Science Reporter
Every few years or so, apps go under the knife for a facelift, often changing colour theme shades, fonts, layouts – and sometimes, even their name.
Then an executive comes out with a statement about how ‘contemporary’ the change is, and how it was ‘designed with users in mind’.
But apps, and the folks behind them, need to wise up to one simple fact: people don’t like change.
And there will almost always be backlash to the unveiling of a shiny new design.
We all know how it feels: opening up an app you use everyday, awash with that disgusted, frustrated feeling as your muscle memory is tripping you up over a new layout.
Whether its an “ugly” new WhatsApp update, a Facebook redesign that simply looks “gross” or a Twitter (now X) switch-up that literally gives its users headaches – people like what they know.
Human psychology plays a big role in this.
It’s obviously unreasonable to expect app’s to fade into relics of their past.
So what’s the remedy?
Time – time for consumers to have a little kick and a scream before settling into the new norm.
Check out more free TV apps available on Fire TV Sticks:
Freevee is Amazon’s free alternative to Amazon Prime Video.
It offers a selection of channels and on-demand content supported by adverts.
And there are plenty of big names.
The roster includes channels devoted to The Real Housewives, Judy Justice, Xena: Warrior Princess, The Bionic Woman, Hell’s Kitchen, The Addam’s Family, Pink Panther and many more.
Plex is a legal, free streaming app with a huge list of channels available to watch.
Most of their TV channels are broken down into themes or specific shows.
For example, there’s an Iconic Film Channel showing classic movies and a station devoted to real crime too.
There are channels for the kids too, including one stream showing nothing but the Smurfs, as well as Sonic the Hedgehog.
It’s free to sign up and start watching straight away.
Pluto TV is one of the biggest names in the free streaming world.
It’s owned by Paramount, so obviously has a big back catalogue of movies behind it, as well as channels like MTV.
The app has more than 100 channels, thousands of movies and must-see TV available to stream.
