Show HN: Coplay – synchonizing video play between browsers

I've been looking for something like this, well sorta.

Many 'family' cars now come with the option of headrest ipad mounts for rear seat entertainment. This is great, but what about when my kids want to watch the same movie? Showing the same movie at the same exact time on two different ipads would be solve a tremendous pain point for me, and possible lots of other parents!

Why did you write it? What are the use cases for synchronising videos like this?

A sentence or two in your README to answer these would be handy.

I'm creating something like this, but as a desktop app in java using VLC api.

There is a screenshot[1] of the current state, but it's a bit ugly since I had to stop working on it because of my exams. The idea is to replace the VLC+Skype combo for watching movies together with automatically syncing the play/pause.

But there is another problem I haven't decided yet, and it's the communication channel for chat and syncing. I'm torn between creating a server on an own VPS or adding an IRC client to the app (since you can always find a free irc server and create a room).

[1]: http://i.pics.rs/jDvun

One of the projects I have on my list which I'll never get around to is distributed group karaoke using webcams. Seems like you should be able to sync both the karaoke video out and the return feed such that you could have a group sing-a-long experience over the web.

Does it also work for the "Live" streams on Youtube? That's the use-case in which I could use the most this kind of synch.

Does this necessarily have to be a browser extension or is there any hope of using the video provider APIs to accomplish the same thing?

At first, I thought the app name was "cosplay" :P