The History Channel’s video streaming service features all of the network’s top shows, such as Pawn Stars and Forged in Fire, but you won’t be able to watch the vast majority of them via the app if you don’t have a cable subscription that includes the History Channel. The app is well-designed, but you can’t download videos for offline viewing, and all videos feature unskippable ads.
History vs. History Vault
The History Channel offers two dedicated streaming services: History and History Vault. History Vault is a paid service that provides access to long-form documentaries and docuseries such as America: The Story of Us, Ancient Discoveries, and Mysteries of the Bible. History is free to cable subscribers and features full episodes of fan favorites such as American Pickers and other reality shows that are currently in production.
What Can You Watch on History?
History features 99 documentaries and series and most fall within the reality genre. For instance, you can watch all 602 episodes of the hit television show Pawn Stars with a cable subscription, along with a live feed of The History Channel. Without a cable subscription, you can only watch 5 of the 99 series on the app, and live TV streaming is not an option.
While testing the app, I chose to watch Alone, a reality show in which contestants live by themselves in the wilderness; the person who lasts the longest in the harsh outdoor conditions wins $500,000. If brutal survival shows aren’t your cup of tea, there are 194 episodes of Forged in Fire, a show where bladesmiths compete against each other to recreate historical weapons.
If you’re looking for actual historic subject matter, the app offers a few military docuseries, such as The Warfighters, which features real images and footage from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sister app History Vault is a better option for documentaries, as it is home to thousands of hours’ worth of streaming films. CuriosityStream features many edutainment documentary titles that explore topics such as history and science, too. Streaming giant Netflix has hundreds of documentary and reality shows, including the popular Forensic Files series.
How Much Does History Cost?
First, the good news: History is free to download. The bad news, however, is that the overwhelming majority of the app’s videos are only available to cable subscribers whose plans include The History Channel.
Furthermore, the app requires everyone, including cable subscribers, to sit through several unskippable ad breaks during each program. For example, in testing, I encountered seven ad breaks during a one-hour-long episode of Alone. Each ad break consisted of three or four ads and each ad was between 20 and 30 seconds long.
History’s ad-supported content model is similar to that of the CW network’s twin apps: The CW and CW Seed. Both are free and include frequent ad breaks, too. Neither of those apps requires a cable login, however.
Editor’s Choice pick Kanopy is free for anyone with a library card or valid university email address. Hulu‘s ad-supported on-demand streaming plan costs $5.99 per month. MagellanTV‘s subscription tier starts at $6.99 per month and includes ad-free documentaries and support for offline downloads on mobile platforms.
A History Vault subscription costs $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year. A subscription provides ad-free streaming access to that service’s entire library. In the future, I hope the two apps from The History Channel combine into one ad-free, paid subscription app that allows offline downloads and doesn’t require a cable login.
History is not available on the web or game consoles, but you can download the app for mobile devices (Android, iOS, and iPadOS), media streaming devices (Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Roku) and Samsung TVs. I tested the service on an Apple TV, an iPhone 12 mini, and a Samsung Galaxy A71 5G.
Testing History’s Mobile Experience
I downloaded History on my iPhone 12 mini running iOS 14.7. The iPhone app has a black background and bright, vivid thumbnails for each video. In the top-right corner, there is a button for Live TV. The app lacks a navigation bar, so you need to scroll downward, past the featured shows, to get to the Watch Without Signing In category, home of the free videos. Scroll past that category to see the Shows in Premiere category. This is where shows that are currently airing on The History Channel are updated. Anchored to the bottom of the screen is a search bar. You can search for shows by name, but there’s no way to filter results the way you can with History Vault.
When you touch the thumbnail for a series or documentary, the app takes you to its landing page. Press the red play button beside any of the episodes to begin playback. To watch a video in a full-screen mode, rotate your iPhone into the landscape orientation or tap the full-screen icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen. To enable closed captioning, select the CC icon in the top-right corner.
In the Settings section of the app (located in the top left corner of the Home screen), there’s an option to stream video over your cellular connection. You can’t download videos for offline playback, unfortunately.
I also downloaded History’s Android app on my Samsung A71 5G running Android 11. The app looks much better on Android than it does on iOS. The layout features bright thumbnails against a navy blue gradient background.
I tested History’s streaming performance over a Gigabit Ethernet connection and a Wi-Fi connection (450Mbps download) on mobile. I watched an episode of Alone: Grizzly Mountain on my iPhone and an episode of Counting Cars titled “McQueen for a Day” on my Android test device. The videos played over Wi-Fi on both platforms without any stuttering or buffering.
History Interface on Apple TV
I also downloaded History on my Apple TV for testing. The app looks similar to the iPhone version with a black background and a simple layout of video thumbnails. Tabs for Live TV, Search, and Settings live at the top of the interface.
I watched half of an episode of The Food That Built America on my iPhone, and, when I logged into my profile on my Apple TV, the second half of the documentary was waiting for me in the Keep Watching section. The streaming experience was smooth and stutter-free on my Apple TV over a Wi-Fi connection.
Accessibility and Parental Controls
History lets you can turn closed captioning on and off, but that’s where the accessibility features end. You don’t get options to change the font size, font family, font color, or opacity of text. With Netflix, you can customize your subtitles. That streaming service and several others also offer audio descriptions. This accessibility feature provides vocal narrations of on-screen events, from facial expressions of characters to settings changes, that would not be evident from dialog alone.
The service doesn’t offer any native parental control functions, but, if you have a cable subscription and set up parental controls for that service, History filters videos accordingly. That said, the app doesn’t have much content that is aimed specifically at a young audience. The service does at least list content ratings for its videos, and during testing, TV-14 was the highest content rating I saw (for American Ripper, a show about serial killers).
In the future, History should let parents create separate profiles for kids with ratings-based filters. Disney+ lets you create specific profiles for younger viewers, while Kanopy has a dedicated section with kid-friendly programming.
History and VPN
A VPN makes your online browsing experience more private and more secure, but many video streaming services don’t allow VPN traffic. For testing, I connected my Samsung A71 5G to a ProtonVPN server based in the United States. The app crashed when I tried to load a video. Next, I connected to a server based in the Netherlands. When I tried to watch a show called The Machines That Built America, a message popped up on the screen, telling me the content was not available in my location. History’s support page states videos are only available to watch in the United States.
Choosing a VPN service that works with your favorite video streaming services can be difficult because video streaming services work to restrict VPN traffic to protect the rights holders of the videos on their platforms. While it may be tempting to pick a VPN service based on whether it works with the services you subscribe to, we recommend you choose a VPN based on its privacy practices and value.
For History Channels Fans With Cable
History has a large library of current shows and popular series from The History Channel that will appeal to reality show fans, until they realize that they need a cable subscription to watch most of the content. The app would benefit from including History Vault’s long-form documentary programming and we hope to see the two apps combined in the future. History’s other drawbacks include unskippable ad breaks, its inability to download shows for offline viewing on mobile devices, and limited accessibility features.
Of the other documentary apps we’ve tested, Kanopy, a free streaming service, is an Editors’ Choice pick because of its large library of educational content. Netflix continues to be another Editors’ Choice winner because of its impressive collection of on-demand originals and movies.
