Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends
bingetogether.com
bingetogether.com
I would call it "CoVid: watch videos together, remotely."
But I feel pretty confident that there’s going to be a whiplash change in public perception over the next month, as a large percentage of the population comes to know Covid-19 as the thing that killed friends or members of their families.
So if you (the reader, this isn’t necessarily aimed at GP) are considering naming something after Covid-19, Corona(virus) or the word “pandemic”: I understand where you’re coming from, but I’d advise you to think twice. You really don’t want your brand to remind someone of the month they spent tending to a loved one with fluid in their lungs.
Further evidence: Coronavirus jokes have not become taboo in China.
In addition, my father is in his late 60s, has lupus, and recently finished cancer treatment. My mom has an “essential” job so there’s a risk of transmission from her.
In short, everyone please be aware of how this is affecting people. Don’t complain if you’re still getting your paycheck. It’s fine to make jokes, but for god’s sake if someone is talking to you about how it’s going to make life hard for them don’t say “yeah, it’s going to be hard on everyone.”
PS sorry, I couldn't resist
Playback control is currently not supported.
There was nothing quite like being in a chat party watching movies together. You could talk as loudly as you wanted while doing/eating what you wanted. Blew the actual theatre out of the water.
Really amazing experience that was killed off way too soon (greed, Netflix didn't want non subscribers to watch free).
Hopefully this is a road back there, definitely going to spread this around and show some $love
edit: not finding a donation link, but if you get a link up I'm happy to do so!
Binge Together, still needs everyone involved to have an account with the streaming services, thoug.
I dread the day when we have forced ocular/ear implants that allow for the blocking of anything we dont have a license for.
Nonetheless I get your point, I just believe it's sad that for all the innovation a free market touts, all I remember are the cool/amazing/interesting things they took from us by stifling real innovation.
But second, is that really true? I’m actually curious. I can’t imagine watching a rented movie in a private residence would be considered a ‘public’ viewing. If that is the case, where do they draw the line? Is it literally only for myself, the one person who purchased the rental? How many other people can be in the room? One, two, five, before the terms of said private viewing license are infringed?
If anyone has any sources where we could read further into the legality of these types of things, it would be interesting to look into.
Of course, we were in college and laughed and said screw it and just rented the one DVD.
But I never went back to check up on this.
To perform or display a work “publicly” means—
(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
LegalZoom writes:
Most movies are intended for personal, private viewing only. If you're watching a movie in a group with your family and friends in your home, there is no issue under copyright law. Similarly, if you rent out a space for a private party and screen a movie for family and friends, and the party is exclusive to your guests and closed to the general public, there will not be a copyright law violation. However, if your event was open to members of the public outside your small group, the movie showing might be considered a “public performance."
If the showing is considered public, you are restricted by copyright law. Typically, you can't legally show a movie to the public unless you obtain public performance license from the copyright owner. You can obtain a public performance license by either contacting the copyright holder directly or by licensing from entities set up specifically for the purposes of licensing movies, such as Swank Motion Pictures or the Motion Picture Licensing Corporation.
https://info.legalzoom.com/article/copyright-laws-related-us...
What? The market brought you the personal computer revolution, the mobile phone revolution, the internet revolution, your Xbox, etc and “all you remember” is shared movie viewing?
having an idea or even a reasonable prototype is often not the hardest part of building something useful.
The internet created by the government was just a network connecting research labs together.
It would be different because Netflix has a contract to pay money for that licensed content, and sooner or later, that contract will need to be renewed. At that point, a Hollywood exec and a Netflix exec will sit across a boardroom table, and the Hollywood exec will say, "Your offer sounds OK, but we need to stop this watch party thing."
Whether that demand makes sense to your or I or the Netflix exec is moot. The Hollywood exec wants it, and it doesn't matter why, because they get to decide whether Netflix can keep licensing that content.
that doesn't seem to be the case in reality. Netflix streaming doesn't really have a lot of big Hollywood movies.
That's why Netflix borrows so much to spend on creating its own content. It's not viable otherwise.
Ideally you have both, but if forced to choose, you choose whatever makes sense for your business.
bingetogether@simon-frey.eu
Keep it small and intimate in Discord and it will probably be okay.
YMMV. This usually barely works for me, I suspect you need a really steady, high-speed upload to make this work.
Other apps/browsers are limited to 720P and don't use hardware-level Content Decryption Modules
I know a bunch of replacements popped up, but nothing seemed to capture the same kind of magic...
Which was the coolest online concert experience I ever had.
I recorded a session. But sadly, not the system audio. But you can get a feel for the experience.
Since then the cocnept has sort of died. I'm a little surprised it's not something that Spotify did more with. I know they have a colistening feature but I have yet to have anyone want to attempt that. As far as I can tell you need to link up by Facebook to even attempt that.
Another similar site (that a friend of mine built) is TeamFlix. He built it to stream with his brother and didn't find any alternatives (this was a few years ago now).
Have you ever tried to suss out how he is able conduct web searches so effectively? Would be interested in what you learned.
- it also supports prime/youtube/vimeo
- it has an audio/video chat instead of a simple text chat
- it doesn't require a chrome extension
- it doesn't actually sync across the viewers? (start time, play/pause)
does it mean you can literally support other platforms without any integration?
What is even the point then? It's litearlly the only feature I expect from such service.
> Wait until the countdown hits zero and your movie night starts
So it does sync across viewers (I haven't actually tried it yet).
What I am planing to do is to allow a later join into the movie night by calculating how much time has passed since the movie night start and then send the late attendee to that time code in the movie. Not supported by all services tough :/
What I want to provide is an auto start and a jump to timecode 0. All platforms that allow that via query parameters can be supported by binge together :D
A solution could be to stop the movie for everyone, get the timecode. Send everyone the new timecode and start the movie from there after the countdown.
(heck, this could even be a sync/break feature. If someone’s internet connection gets disrupted everyone can stop and sync. Or if they want a movie break, they can do it like this.)
edit: alternatively since the URLs are hard to guess, you could have the creator of the watchparty specify a "auto-start ASAP after this many people have joined" number, so once Bob and Carol have joined, it just starts.
Also, youtube ads are going to disrupt the synchronized start, since each person is going to see a different ad (or no ad), but I think you've said elsewhere in the thread that there's no way to get around this without requiring a browser extension.
What you are currently seeing is the MVP. I plan to integrate websockets for the communication between clients. So you just can hit "start now" and it would start (or after X people joined the websocket channel). This will take some time, as it is a lot harded to get scalable as the current (static solution is.
Yes, the youtube ads will be a problem that sadly can not be circumvented with my tech stack.
With streaming video, I can pause, rewind and then continue. But in this case, that would no longer be in sync with where the others are. The biggest advantage of streaming is being able to take breaks and continue at any point in time. I’m not sure how well this platform would work if there are many people and each one decides to take a break at a separate time (making others wait if they wish to be somewhat in sync).
This may work better if participants pre-decide how many breaks will be taken and approximately at what times or points.
I was waiting for someone (even Netflix) to do this the last couple of years for Valentine's day (as I realized I won't spend the time on building it myself). Being in a long distance relationship made me realize that this would be a fun way to nurture the relationship - watching the movie together, while apart.
The problem would be on how to start the next video, as it is a javascript redirect only, so I have no information when a video in the queue is finished. Maybe websockets and someone pressing "next" could be an option.
It works by basically redirecting to the streaming website.
Who watches a movie sitting at their computer?
For now I do not plan to support TV applications with Binge Together.
It makes me sad that the idea didn't work out and in times other than this... it still won't work out. But it's glad to know there are times when this absolutely valued.
Will have to add this to the list!
Also there appears to be a timezone issue? I have to input a time an hour ahead of what I actually want.
Still working on the timezone. Some browsers are doing problems here.
If the problem still persists, would you be so kind and sending me a screencast on how the site behaves to: bingetogether@simon-frey.eu
Thanks so much!
I think it'd be interesting to accept file-based input, and stream via webrtc.
I imagine when the countdown ends, it enables the autoplay and the movie starts.
Mind sharing how it works and what stack you used?
Stack is quite simple: Frontend: Bulma.css, Vanilla Javascript, HTML Backend: PHP, MariaDB
It works by redirecting in the right moment to the streaming sites, via a JavaScript redirect.
The voice chat is done via https://meet.jit.si/
To handle potential big load, I force cloudflare to cache all sites under url /p/* thereby after the creation of the watch party, no request hits my server anymore :D
To enable this feature a browser plugin would be required again.
With Binge Together I opted for not supporting that in favor of an easier use. (Not everyone included needs to install the extension etc.)
So I'm not able to share, sorry.
What information would you need for it? nico@sapico.me
It works by redirecting in the right moment to the streaming sites, via a JavaScript redirect.
The voice chat is done via https://meet.jit.si/
To handle potential big load, I force cloudflare to cache all sites under url /p/* thereby after the creation of the watch party, no request hits my server anymore :D
Currently I have no plan to open sourcing it
Works now. Thanks for reporting.
Would anyone be willing to share their hulu account with me so I can test it? bingehulu@simon-frey.com
Ads are planed, but I would like to go with another path than google as well. Maybe some movie sponsors :D
My wife was just doing this with a friend in st Louis over text.
It works by redirecting in the right moment to the streaming sites, via a JavaScript redirect.
The voice chat is done via https://meet.jit.si/
To handle potential big load, I force cloudflare to cache all sites under url /p/* thereby after the creation of the watch party, no request hits my server anymore :D
1. I start a "watch party" 2. I give the link to friends. 3. They click the button "Open the movie and check for autostart." 4. The video opens. At the beginning. Not where the other people are at.
What is "Autostart"? You mention to "Open the movie directly and ask in the voice chat what time you should jump to". How is this different than just sharing the link to the video and pressing play at the same time or having them skip ahead. I don't understand.
The actually watch party starts when the countdown hits zero, by redirecting everyone in the same moment to the video.
"Open the movie directly and ask in the voice chat what time you should jump to" is when you missed the start.
Syncing works via starting everyone at the same time in the beginning of the movie
It's heavyweight and probably better to just sync by somebody shouting a timestamp, but if you need things synced there you go.
Just calculating from the start time at what point in the movie everyone should be. e.g. You are half an hour late, so the others are around minute 30 (Y)
No need to start a new watch party (Y)
You have millions of journals, books, music tracks, tv shows, films and video games. You have tutorials on youtube to learn new skill, such as cooking, yoga, DIY, coding, etc. You can chat, phone or email to all your relatives and friends.
You can take the opportunity to produce something, write, build, create, imagine. Even without a computer you can write or draw.
You can take time for yourself, sleep more, meditate, rest, do things slowly.
Please explain it to me, I genuinely don't understand.
I understand solitude. You have a need. It's not fulfilled.
I don't get boredom: I see so many ways to fulfill this need.
Already subscribed now and excited to review few emails and their content. Thank you for starting and maintaining something like this.