Show HN: Comment on on-demand TV as if everyone is watching at the same time | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Comment on on-demand TV as if everyone is watching at the same time

beta.spoilr.tv

53 pointsstefanwild44 comments

I know there are a lot of shows that don't require full attention, but I usually don't waste my time with those kinds of shows. I don't know how people can twitter, or chat on their phone and still pay attention to good shows that require a level of attention like Game of Thrones.

Agreed. It make a lot more sense for sports.

Which is one of the least time-shifted forms of content.

Well... that's what this fixes :)

I think they mean, it's one of the types of shows that people don't typically record because they want to watch it live, so this would not be useful for sports.

A major reason for wanting to watch it live is that it's so easy to have it spoiled. And for a lot of people, a game (much more than other TV) isn't worth watching if you know the outcome. So partly, people want to watch the "action" live, but also, they just don't feel like watching it later. This can address the second part.

That's interesting. I almost always time-shift sports. Stuff like American football is otherwise interminable.

Even when I want to get to the finish, live, I just start watching an hour after the recording begins. Fast forward through commercials and head-under-hood challenges, etc.

If it's a game I'm only semi-interested in, I'll wait until it's completely finished. Then just FF until I notice a score change, back up some reasonable number of minutes. Voila, personal highlight reel.

I likewise timeshift Formula 1 coverage so I can watch with my brothers, sometimes weeks later. This kind of timeshifted community to would be great to participate in.

Spoilers are generally hard to avoid. This year I've given in and accepted spoilers in exchange for following various communities. So far the participation has been worthwhile and knowing race outcomes and other highlights in some cases had made watching an even better experience.

That's interesting. Maybe we should try sports earlier than planned, then...

Whereas I can't watch recorded sports for the most part. I always feel like "why don't I just fast forward to the end?"

YMMV as they say.

We've thought about that but felt that the interest in non-live sports is probably a little less. Will experiment with it (and reality and casting shows), though.

With the users we have in the beta we have noticed that it isn't for everyone and not everyone uses it the same (some are just reading, others comment a lot, and some wait for the perfect moment and then post the best joke) for every show. With the speed of Silicon Valley, for example, my wife isn't actively posting while she watches.

I've watched terrible horror movies with live chat and it was a unique experience.

Maybe it's just a targeting problem.

Eventually it's going to be up to the users to figure out what they like to use it with. We're just restricting the number of shows during the beta to keep things manageable.

It works very well for light entertainment; we'll be doing it for the upcoming Eurovision song contest.

(One of the UK minor channels has just launched a programme "Goggle box", which is basically a reality show of people watching television and chatting over it. This may be taking the whole thing too far)

Twitter has actually encouraged me to only watch certain shows "live" because the backchannel snark and commentary is more entertaining than the actual show (The Apprentice is a particular standout in this regard).

And they're really good at that, agreed. But they're not catering to the (at least) two thirds of people that don't watch live.

This number from some relatively recent Game of Thrones ratings that admitted on not counting a lot of on-demand (as well as pirating, of course)

Seems like replaying the twitter chatter in time would be more interesting than creating a new content silo.

We thought about importing (and timecoding) twitter chatter during the first airing of the shows. And then we realized just how scattered and off-topic that chatter really is for the most part.

This seems pretty cool! Curious to try it out. One problem which doesn't seem to be addressed is the varying length of commercials (or no commercials) depending on what platform the show is viewed on.

or variable quality of the fast-forward button operator.

Yes, we're focussing on Netflix and HBO shows at the moment to circumvent that. Working on several approaches for automatic syncing. Thanks for trying it out!

This is niconico's main feature. I've wondered why it hasn't caught on elsewhere.

Came here to say this. It's entertaining to watch everyone commenting burst into laughter as the screen fills with w's.

That's great input. We were not aware of that site and feature. We have come across a few similar concepts, which were either split-screen for online video (as I understand niconico works) or not conversations (if they were 2nd screen).

In addition to their overlaid streaming comments on videos (think youtube) and live streams (justin.tv/twitch, etc) they actually have a section for live tv[1].

[1] http://jk.nicovideo.jp/

Thanks for the link. Now I have to brush up on my non-existant Japanese skills.

This is something I've actually wanted for awhile! Watching movies and TV is nice but whenever I watch it with an IRC chat it suddenly gets SO MUCH better.

Great to hear. Thanks for the tweet, too.

How will you deal with users who spoil shows on purpose? Could I watch the first episode of Game of Thrones, sync with the app and post "OMG ----- dies!" right at the start?

I assume if you can watch time shifted comments they're moderated in some way (or perhaps flagged by the community)?

Yes, there's upvoting and downvoting implemented in the beta, already and that will filter out spoilers pretty quickly. If we see anybody doing it on purpose, we'd block and eventually ban the user.

So the name makes sense?

I'm definitely not your target market here, if i'm devoting time to TV i'm focussed on enjoying that, alone or with the people in the room.

It reminds me of Soundcloud, where comments pop in at the moment where they're inserted.

Right to the point. Soundcloud's way of doing the comments was of our inspirations.

This combined with Shazam style listening to sync up the position would be killer.

Working on this and several other approaches to sync up. It's a challenge and won't happen in this phase of the beta, but it's doable.

I loved watching the Republican and Democrat National Conventions while tuned into Twitter. Maybe I'll use spoilr next time around.

I love everything about this!

Looking forward to having conversations with my family and friends spread around the US.

We love you, too. Thank you.

By the way, one of the shows that we already feature in the beta, is of course Silicon Valley. Be sure to check it out.

Very cool concept, great domain too :)

Thank you. I have a funny little anecdote how that came to be. Will save that for a stage appearance, though ;)

That sounds awesome!

Thank you. We appreciate the feedback!

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