My library offers content through Hoopla Digital.
Movies, music and audiobooks.
There is some pretty good content, and it's nice that there's no waiting lists or the like.
But, man, the Android app is horrible, and with each new update, it becomes more painful to use.
If a book is paused, it will start playing again whenever the phone makes a notification sound.
It's as if they intend for the app to pause for an audio interruption, and play again when it's done, but it just blindly starts playing, regardless of what did the pausing. So I have to constantly kill the app to avoid books starting play out loud at inappropriate times.
The playback often freezes for no apparent reason, and won't restart until I kill the app and restart it.
And with the latest update, playback over Bluetooth is often choppy and stuttering, making it really unpleasant.
Their customer service, while polite and responsive, is virtually useless. Here: a summary:
Me: App is horrible, here are the logs.
Them: Please try uninstalling and reintalling the app.
Me. OK, I did, still horrible.
Them: It appears your device is not compatible with the app.
Me: Really? It's EXPLICITLY listed as compatible on your website.
Them. Oh, sorry, you're correct, it is compatible. Please try uninstalling and reinstalling the app.
ME:
<writing this post on MR.....>
And since the content is DRMed (excusable for a time-limited library loan, I guess), I can't play it on a better player.
If anyone knows an efficient way to strip it, I would happily delete it when I'm supposed to, as I do with various mp3 format library loans.
Anyway, that's been my experience.
I'm loving that a bunch of the "Matt Helm" and "Coffeehouse Mysteries" and other books are readily available for me to listen to....I just wish it would work properly!
ApK