Not worth the time to download.

Summary: "Watch offline" feature doesn't work, be wary of heavy data usage on LTE. Review: I first used the NFB app several years ago. It was great for finding shorts, clips, and even PSA's I hadn't seen in years. It was also good for discovering lots of lesser-known Canadian films and shows. A few weeks ago I re-downloaded the app in anticipation of a long car trip with our two young children, and I selected several items that my older child likes to save them for "offline use" as we were traveling through areas with limited cell coverage. I selected these items while I was on Wi-Fi the night before we left (more than 12 hours before leaving home). Halfway through our trip we stopped to allow the kids to play outside, and I decided to look at one of the shorts I had saved. I got less than 2 minutes into the movie before being interrupted by a series of text message alerts from my cell provider, Telus, about data use over my 1 GB monthly allowance, then that I had gone over my data limits and my data access had been restricted. At first I thought it was a mistake, because it was the first day of my new billing cycle, but I checked my cellular data settings and discovered that the NFB app had used up 1.8 GB of data in the couple minutes it had been running. I was horrified, and immediately turned off all cellular data for the app before calling Telus customer service. While they were kind enough to reverse the $50 in extra days fees incurred, I still had to pay an extra $15 for a 1 GB data add-on so that I would still have some data to use for the rest of the month. After looking through the app's own settings, I think the problem may be that it has not been updated to account for LTE cell network data, so it seems to treat LTE as though it is Wi-Fi. (The app's internal data settings only allow you qto restrict the resolution of videos if you are on 3G wireless as opposed to Wi-Fi. Based on the rate at which it consumed data I can only conclude that it must have been streaming my 7-minute video at 1080p resolution.) The frustrating thing is that it still used cell data even though I ONLY accessed that one movie from the "watch offline" tab. There is obviously a glitch here, both in the watch offline option and the resolution settings when on cell network instead of Wi-Fi. (Before all this happened, the setting for the app on my phone was the default of 1080p resolution on Wi-Fi and 360p resolution on the 3G network.) I contacted the developers through their online form but haven't received a reply after 10 days despite a promise in their auto-reply that communications would be replied to in 2-3 business days. In summary, the app itself is great but make sure you turn off cellular data for the app unless you have unlimited data usage, or you could be in for a rude surprise.

I absolutely love having all these great NFB selections available. My only nitpick is that the search function doesn't work well: I searched for both "The Sweater" and "The Cat Came Back" and neither one came up at the top of the search results; in fact, just saying "Sweater" works even though the title in the screen clearly says "The Sweater."

NFB content is great. The actual app is broken. Frequent crashes and search rarely works even if you type the exact title in. Downloading for offline viewing seems broken. And no chromecast support. Needs lots of work.

Films play until flipped to landscape mode then the app crashes immediately.

When I first ran this app everything was in French which I am not fluent in. I found the configuration area and set the top two options to 'Anglais' - now the film descriptions are in English but the entire 'More' section, the Rentals area, the top menus and what I'm assuming are the play and download buttons are still all in French. The pictures show these things in English so I'm not sure if there is a bug with this version or if something else needs to be changed. If you cannot read French this app will be more frustrating than enjoyable for you.