Crackle, if you’ve never heard of it before, is a video streaming service and one of the fastest growing entertainment hubs in the world. It is backed by Sony, so you can watch top films, TV series and original shows for free and uncut straight on your Lumia.
There is a huge selection of films for you to choose from; contemporary movies, such as Pineapple Express and The Grudge 2 to cult classics, like Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day.
You can also watch favourite TV shows such as Seinfeld, cartoons, comedy and music shows, like the From The Basement series.
Using Crackle
Crackle is a free app that you can download from the Windows Phone Marketplace for your Nokia Lumia smartphone.
Once the app has been installed you will need to sign up for a Crackle account, or alternatively you can sign in using Facebook.
When the app starts, you swipe through a series of screens: featured, movies, shows and watchlists. Watchlists is where you can save films or shows that you want to watch later and there are also recommendations and celebrity watchlists.
Tapping on any film/show gives takes you to the overview page. From here you read an overview and description about it and press the ‘play’ icon on the film’s poster to watch it.
From this screen you can also pin the film/show to your home screen, add it to your watchlist, or share it on social networks, email or SMS.
Crackle has a large back catalogue so you might find it useful to find a film by looking at the most popular category, recently added or by genre. To do this you only need to select the ‘filter’ icon at the bottom of the screen.
There are a couple of other things you may want to keep in mind. The app does work over a 3G connection but obviously you need to be aware of data usage. For the best experience I would always recommend using WiFi if at all possible.
Furthermore, within Crackle’s settings you can set parental controls so that children are not watching films that they shouldn’t be.
Those precautions aside, Crackle is a, er, cracking app that brings a world of entertainment to your Nokia Lumia.
image credit: mark sebastian
