[iPhone] Stay up-to-date with your favorite television shows with Renewed

Do you find yourself being so busy that you can’t keep up with your favorite television shows? If so, then give Renewed – TV Show Renewal and Cancellation Guide a try. The app will save you the headache of keeping track of multiple television shows and when they are airing. Just open the app every day and see if your favorite TV shows are on that night.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Renewed allows the user to follow when their favorite television shows are airing, as well as introduce them to new programs.

Pros

Appealing interface
Follow any TV show
Provides a list of all episodes and descriptions since premiere of show
Keeps track of episodes watched
Running timeline of episodes to be aired
Shows timeline of seasonal premiere episodes
Shows timeline of all relevant shows on tonight
Connects to several social networks

Cons

Shows past episodes in Upcoming timeline
No video previews of TV shows
No push notifications
No use of badge counter
Some users complain of missing TV shows in database
No option to mark all previous episodes as watched (just season by season)

Discussion

There are several TV show trackers out there, but very few are both free and reliable. Renewed is an example of one that not only can keep you up-to-date with all of your favorite TV programs, but also can introduce new ones. Your first step of renewed is to use your email or Facebook account to log on. Renewed requires an account be set up in order to keep track of your favorite shows. When you are logged in, you will be quickly searching for and adding your favorite shows to a running database, and having an account guarantees that you won’t ever lose that database of information.

The first thing you want to do while adding a TV show is mark what episodes you have seen already. This will help keep some of built in timelines more accurate. And don’t worry, there is a special check mark next to each season that allows you to mark the whole season as watched. This is will come in very handy for shows that have been on for several seasons, although it would be nice to have the option to mark all previous episodes as watched.

Renew’s main screen (called Forecast) is basically a summary timeline of the TV shows the user chose to follow. There is an Upcoming column for all TV shows in your database that will be on soon, though for some reasons the app gives past episodes in this timeline as well. It doesn’t make too much sense, so I can only think it is a bug of some kind. The Missed timeline is a summary of shows in your database that you haven’t marked as viewed.

Besides your own timeline, Renewed also provides a Premieres timeline, which shows first episodes of of all TV series in the app’s database (not just yours), and a Tonight timeline, which shows all relevant TV programs in the app’s database that are on that night. You can use these timelines to explore new TV series you might be interested in or just to find something to watch when none of your favorites are on the TV or DVR.

While Renewed seems to have quite attractive interface and has good functionality, there are some features missing that can be seen in other TV tracking apps. It was disappointing to see the lack of push notifications to alert the user to when their favorite TV shows are on, so you must actually open the app to see that. Renewed also lacks other convenient options such as video previews of shows/episodes, the option to mark all previous episodes as watched, and the presence of past episodes in an upcoming timeline. It is worth noting that some users complained of missing TV shows in Renewed’s database, but I found all 55 of mine. Yes, I watch too much TV.

Conclusion and download link

While Renewed does lack some extra features that would be quite convenient for the user, it provides an attractive user interface and most of the functioning you would want in a TV tracking app. Since it is free, you can try it and see if it works for you.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 2.0