What happens when a cable distributor with decades of experience in the linear TV name takes on the goal of continuing to provide that service through a whole new method? Do its customer interface mechanisms transfer directly, or are the user experiences that worked so well on old TVs incompatible with the distribution methods of the 21st century — namely, streaming through the internet?

I thought that was a fascinating question as I dove into the user interface review of DIRECTV. The company has not one, but two ways of allowing customers to stream its products, and I decided to test out how good of a job the DIRECTV app does at delivering old favorite cable channels via streaming. Check out my thoughts on its user experience here.

How do we score DIRECTV’s user experience?

How good is the DIRECTV home page?

First, my obligatory rail against autoplay. The DIRECTV home screen begins autoplaying the content of the channel over which the cursor is hovering when you first open the app on your smart TV. If you leave it hovered over that app long enough, it takes up the full screen. I will say this, however, DIRECTV does let you linger on a channel window for a while before going to full-screen mode, which makes its autoplay a little less pernicious in my eyes.

Something good immediately stood out to me when opening the DIRECTV home page, as well. The Your TV row at the top of the screen is the first area your cursor goes to, and it is packed with networks that DIRECTV had you specifically choose as favorites when signing up for the app for the first time, or recommendations based on your viewing history. It’s not exactly a Continue Watching row, but it is a great indication that DIRECTV knows you probably came to the service to watch what you were watching last time — your favorites.

Scrolling down, the home page does its best to put the highlights of your channel package on full display. The row for Sports: Live and Upcoming showcases all the programming on channels like ESPN, FS1, TBS, and more in one place, calling the viewer to remember that this array of sports across various channels would require the stacking of several on-demand streaming services at once.

There are recommendation rows based on the individual user, and more generic options like Fall TV: Drama and Crime. It’s clear that DIRECTV has set up its home page with the simple goal of showing users how to find popular shows that lots of people will likely be searching for, as well as more personalized offerings. To that end, I think the service has achieved a good amount of success.

Home page score: 8 out of 10

Is content discovery easy on DIRECTV?

Search is quite conspicuous at the top of the left-hand menu on DIRECTV, and allows you to search by channel name or individual title, which was very useful. I also have good things to say about the electronic programming guide on DIRECTV, which makes it easy to whittle down your options when you’re not sure what you want to watch, but feel overwhelmed by the prospect of scrolling through all the channels in your plan.

DIRECTV lets you sort by Recent, Favorites, Sports, Kids, Movies, and TV Shows, jump to a specific day, or sort by channel number. You can also favorite channels to jump to them even faster, and that makes content discovery much easier to accomplish on DIRECTV than I feared it might be with so much content. Coming from a mostly on-demand streaming background, I didn’t know what to expect from DIRECTV in this regard, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Content discovery score: 9 out of 10

Is moving between categories easy on DIRECTV?

The left-hand menu on DIRECTV gets more high marks from me, as I think it anticipates the needs of viewers quite well. It has options for Search, Home, Guide, My Library, Sports Central, and On Demand, and the Settings menu is within easy reach at the bottom of this list.

I especially like that sports and on-demand content are given their own segmented areas in the DIRECTV interface. A package like the streamer’s ENTERTAINMENT plan comes with a large number of sports games on any given day, and the Sports Central area offers an easy-to-use hub where you can see content related to teams you specifically identify as your favorite, as well as sports-related programming and channels that are live. You can also browse by sport, leagues, and more on this page.

The On Demand hub is no less valuable, as customers get thousands of TV episodes and movies to watch anytime they want with DIRECTV streaming subscriptions. Customers can sort on-demand content by network, by TV shows, or by movies on this page, helping to cut down scrolling effectively. Ease of navigation between categories is another facet of the DIRECTV user interface that gets a good score, despite my desire to find a nit to pick.

Category switching score: 9.5 out of 10

Does DIRECTV have decent playback controls?

The playback controls on DIRECTV are different than what I’m used to, to be certain, but it’s mostly because they’re designed to optimize live playback instead of on-demand. In that respect, I think they do a good job — though when watching on-demand content, the options are pretty barebones. You can change the subtitle and audio, get more info about the show, click a shortcut to return to your last live TV channel, and that’s about it.

Pressing up on your remote when watching live TV will pull up a list of previous live channels you’ve scrolled through recently, which is very convenient. And when watching a live TV channel, pausing playback brings up options to record the program you’re watching, or to start it from the beginning, which is a definite plus for frequent viewers.

I won’t grade the DIRECTV playback controls too harshly based on their lack of options for on-demand viewers like skipping to the next episode, since that’s not what most people are coming to the streamer to do. Its playback controls for live TV streaming certainly get the job done.

Playback controls score: 7.5 out of 10

Can you skip opening and closing credits on DIRECTV?

Unfortunately, this is an area where DIRECTV lags behind a bit. Whether watching DVR content or on-demand titles from the DIRECTV library, I didn’t see any way to skip opening or closing credits on the streamer apart from using the skip ahead or back 30 seconds button on my remote, which is imprecise and can lead to missing a part of the actual show or not getting all the way through a credits sequence efficiently.

Skipping credits score: 2 out of 10

Final thoughts

Again, I wasn’t too sure what to expect coming into this review of DIRECTV. But when I started using the service as an aficionado of on-demand platforms, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to access the ins and outs of the DIRECTV user interface. It laid things out in an easy and intuitive manner, and I found everything I wanted quickly and with a minimum of friction.

There are definitely tweaks to the DIRECTV user experience that could be made; attention should be paid to how the streamer lets viewers interact with on-demand content, especially. But overall, I have to give the DIRECTV user interface a good score for doing what it’s supposed to do: emphasize the top cable channels it offers.

Overall score: 8.5 out of 10