Can I Stream It?

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on February 25, 2013

In recent years, new technology, fast Internet access, and an explosion of portable devices has meant that you can access hundreds of thousands of movies and TV shows almost instantly, as long as you have an Internet connection and a credit card. At the same time, with dozens of streaming services and stores, it's harder than ever to find any one show or movie quickly. Can I Stream It? is designed to solve that problem, compiling data from Neflix, Google, Hulu Plus, Amazon, Crackle, iTunes, Vudu, and more to show if a movie or TV show can be streamed, purchased, or rented.

At a glance, the app is simple enough to use. Registration is recommended but not necessary, and you can instantly start searching for shows and movies to see if they are streaming, though you will of course need to open the apps individually for each streaming service to watch those shows or movies. Additionally, you can set reminders for shows not yet available streaming and Can I Stream It? will push notifications to your handset to remind you that it's available. We were able to explore the app in its entirety in just seconds, and features were laid out in an intuitive manner.

All of this sounds and looks very good. Unfortunately, Can I Stream It? stumbles in execution at several points. To start, registration offers Facebook integration, but we were unable to get it to work when we tested the app. In fact, more than once during testing, the core function showing if a movie can be streamed or downloaded would freeze up or fail to retrieve data. Additionally, the menus often resulted in different screens, even when the same button or tab was pressed in different test runs. While the program is free and opens quickly, the actual data retrieval appears to be glitch-prone at best right now, making it hard to offer an endorsement of the actual service, though the idea it represents is a great one. If Urban Pixels repairs some of these issues, it will have a powerful, useful tool on its hands. For now, we recommend waiting or seeking an alternative.