Show HN: Showgoers – Watch Netflix with friends remotely | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Showgoers – Watch Netflix with friends remotely

showgoers.tv

281 pointseremzeit84 comments

Cool stuff -- at AltspaceVR we support the same concept with Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, etc, but as avatars within a virtual space (ideally in VR.) You can hang out while watching netflix with voice chat, body tracking, etc. This was a big challenge for us to get working well, so I can sympathize with the authors :)

http://altvr.com

Just install our browser plugin, go to a netflix vid, hit "watch in AltspaceVR", and you'll have a virtual space dedicated for that netflix movie.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/altspacevr/ijjkiof...

I feel like I'm the only one who is annoyed when people plug their products in someone else's post. I understand you're just trying to increase your userbase, but it just seems disrespectful.

I'll take the other approach here - I think its useful to see products in a competing space for everyone involved. The poster, and the readers alike only benefit from understanding the full landscape more clearly.

Disagree. I like to hear about the other work in the same space. Otherwise, being not familiar with each space on HN, I may think something is unique just because I haven't heard about it before.

To me it seems more like the most relevant time to pitch your own project. It also might introduce the original poster to his/her competition - of which they might not have been aware. If I'm interested in the post, then I'm probably interested to know what other similar tools are out there. My opinion, of course.

I see where you're coming from but we're not really competing. If we were competing I agree it'd be pretty lame. We're a totally different experience for a similar use case. If the OP requests in the thread to do so I'll remove the comment but I also thought it might result in a back in forth on the tricks for doing this, which is actually pretty tough.

1) The problem is that your comment offered nothing extra. All it was was a plug. The other people who plug usually provide some interesting information.

2) If you claim your product isn't the same, then why bring it up?

Let the better product win I say.

I love it! Compare and contrast, man. He could have provided some ideas and suggestions for the OP though. I am sure he has great insight having done the same and it would be great karma to start off with that. Anyways, it's better doing it openly rather than astroturfing nonsense.

As long as everyone is being honest, it is in the interest of the user and also the greater good to be made aware of all alternatives. The free market is built on the assumption of rational and informed choice, and often fails because of the lack thereof.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! Politeness be damned!

It depends. Too much (I don't think we have too much) would be bad. People rocking up just to pitch would be bad.

But, if a long term HN-er (gfodor is) is here anyway and wants to jump in and pitch, I am happy to hear from them. For one thing, he probably knows a lot about this stuff.

I think the only problem I have with it is when the only response to the posting is something like this "Cool stuff" isn't relevant to the post at all really, then the rest is just plug. At least leave some feedback for the post you're hijacking..

Hey, your ad is getting in the way of reading this ad!

We (SpeakerBlast) do something similar, but for live events; syncing audio and video across multiple/varied IP devices via a URL.

Here's a video where 50 ppl/devices are blasting audio in sync - https://vimeo.com/71647538

Here's a video where we sync audio to video; drive in movie app - https://vimeo.com/93899424

Any chance of an OSX or iOS client for AltVR? Would love to try this with Cardboard VR or Homido VR

Can you explain how this relates to OpenCobalt or OpenSim?

http://www.opencobalt.org/

http://opensimulator.org/

I tried AltspaceVR, I'm a bit annoyed by the screen door effect. I can't see the video clearly.

The Netflix app on the Xbox 360 used to do this. And you and your friends could put on your headsets and watch the same thing on Netflix while chatting.

I was pretty disappointed when they ditched that feature, my friends and I used it pretty extensively as we were all attending different colleges, but still loved to play games and chat online. It was buggy for sure, especially when you added in disparities in lag (which was very common back then).

IIRC Microsoft maintained this functionality however and not Netflix, which is probably why it was eventually discontinued and as far as I can tell Netflix has expressed no interest in making their own similar feature.

This and the top 100 game show thing are some of my best memories from using the xbox 360

Agreed Top 100 was a great live mass(ive?) multiplayer gameshow. I hope to see something similar to it again some day.

How was that played? I'm having trouble googling it.

Try googling by it's name of "1 vs 100". The game played out where one person was randomly chosen as the main contestant who answered trivia questions. If they failed a question they were booted.

The kicker to the game was, 100 other randomly selected players were playing against you answering the same questions. If they got it wrong, and the contestant got it right they were eliminated and the contestant continued.

The goal of the main contestant was to outlast the 100 players, and the more they outlasted the better prizes (usually MS Points) they won. The goal of the 100 was to outlast the main contestant to also win prizes (usually less than the main).

All other players watching the game could participate for fun and play along for no reward. It was actually pretty fun and the events all happened live with an announcer and everything.

It's also known as streaming the same content and talking over skype.

I'm having a wonderful vision of a global group of friends all tied in via headsets and shushing them all whenever they try to talk.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to find people talking through a TV show really annoying. I love to chat with people, I even love to chat about things we've watched with them, just not while its on.

The interface [1] made everything a little better by adding some interactivity. Your Xbox LIVE avatars would sit in front of a movie screen, and you could express simple emotions through them while watching the film. It was actually pretty fun back when the feature was around, especially as high school kids.

I never quite understood why Netflix removed it.

[1]: http://i.imgur.com/6W99ylc.png

The far less polished solution I came up with for syncing viewing with my friends: https://github.com/wcummings/vlc-irc-rc

I'll be bookmarking this because sometimes I want to sync watch with files that I have on my computer.

I personally have used http://syncplay.pl/

It seems to be similar in concept :)

Huh. I've been using a very hacky script I wrote myself for this purpose, but I hadn't seen syncplay - strongly considering switching to it.

One of the main reasons I use it is because it supports MPC-HC, which I often use instead of VLC.

Ha, my long distance relationship survived with a good old fashioned "3, 2, 1, go!" :)

Yeah, what's with all the tech?

/think better delay pressing start by the latency amount ;]

This is actually what we were doing (on IRC), but it doesn't scale up to 5 or 6 people over IRC very well.

In the tradition of declaring something new as "X for Y", I declare this is "Cytube for Netflix". Or it will be, when you add chat functionality.

It's a really neat idea, and it's basically second-best to watching a video in the same room as someone else. It's really fun to watch shows with other people, have discussions about the show, and share the experience.

References (I didn't make these):

https://github.com/calzoneman/sync/wiki/CyTube-3.0-User-Guid...

https://Cytu.be

Yeah it's like Cytube. My use case was that I'm in a long-distance relationship and we both are huge movie buffs. YouTube just simply doesn't have the content that we want. Netflix does but it doesn't allow embeds so it took a bit more trickery :)

This reminds me of when my wife and first started dating long distance - Skype screen sharing movies was our jam

How did that work for you? Isn't skype screenshare super laggy for a movie? What about audio?

In our case, we did netflix that we manually synced up and just do videochat on skype. Facetime doesn't work because it hijacks your sound, turns down all other audio sources and you can't turn it off. Silly apple.

The skype is nice because it puts a thumbnail of their face that stays hovered over the netflix even while it's in fullscreen.

Though I originally made it for me and my SO, it was surprising how many people have told me that they also have done the whole netflix, skype and "3, 2, 1, go" combo. Its interesting to think about things we could make that would better allow shared experience or emotional intimacy with people over distance.

This is pretty much exactly what myself and fiancee did - though for us, the '3, 2, 1, go' became part of the tradition, and we took it in turns to make up 'alternative countdowns' for programmes. Interesting the way that technical limitations can also translate to shared experiences.

Of course, the biggest issue was that netflix offerings in the US were very different to those in the UK, so we'd spend about an hour where one of us tried to find dubiously legal ways to watch a programme the other could watch fine on netflix.

I recently made a similar desktop app to watch movies with my gf. It has only video sync and text based chat.

Check the screenshot: http://i.pics.rs/64I0n

Maybe I will open source it when it's done. Btw I used Qt and libVLC.

PLEASE open source this! I will use it and might even help you finish it.

To be honest, it's pretty bad, you can't imagine. Everything is in one single C++ file (+ the main.cpp), the chat is a webkit widget (it was the easiest and fastest solution), there is no error checking or anything so it can crash any time, etc etc...

Actually, this is my first C++ project, I don't even know C++ (only a bit C from high school).

On the other hand it's a working piece of software, it serves a purpose, there's demand for it, etc etc...

In my opinion you're being way too harsh on yourself. What you said basically amounts to "it's too simple, I used a library, I cannot guarantee it won't ever crash".

Congrats on the first of those three, and welcome to the club with regards to the last two.

let me refactor it!

As I said over on /r/netflix, great app, and the implementation is hands down better than rabb.it's RTC method.

Did you start after Netflix switched to HTML5 video? I'm curious how you might've dealt with the old flash player- I basically gave up on any actual control of Netflix in my side project because it was too black-boxy.

Yeah, the HTML5 was key. It's way easier to listen to player events without really interacting with Netflix-specific stuff. I probably would have given up if I was doing it with silverlight. Actually, this is why this is only a chrome extension because Netflix uses silverlight in Firefox.

Wow right it was Silverlight... I think I raged so hard I blocked that out of my memory.

Not that the flash on Hulu or Amazon are any better. I did have some luck with YouTube's old player and injecting their js->flash API, but still, HTML5 was a damn relief.

I'm in a long distance relationship and have been working on a project to do just this! I've been thinking about open-sourcing it.

I have video chat, a synced shared web browser, and support for Netflix & Hulu.

If anyone is interested: https://www.distanceflix.com

Interesting stuff! I enjoy watching movies with friends at the cinema hall together and discuss about the movies soon after. Recently when I made a decision to move abroad, I was wondering if there was a feature that would give us a similar experience of watching a movie together.

I was thinking of using Skype screen-sharing with friends, where one user plays the movie and acts as the movie-host taking control of the pause/play, seeking controls and others watching the movie on Skype via the host's screen. Doing this provides us with the option of chatting real-time about the movie too - like how we'd do when seated next to each other in the cinema hall. The issue with this is that it would take up a lot of bandwidth to stream a movie and then share it with others simultaneously.

This - Showgoers - claims to solve many of these issues, so I'd definitely give it a try. One main downside is that Netflix still isn't available for users in my home-country India. And with limited movie-collections on Netflix and the other on-demand video services, I'd almost-never again be able to get the experience of watching a 'newly-released' movie at the cinema hall with a bunch of close friends.

Does this do something like rebroadcasting the stream, or does it merely sync your place on a show using their own Netflix account?

I'd assume it just syncs the place. Otherwise, there would be a whole legal component to this that would likely result in a swift shutdown.

Actually, there's another product that does that and somehow gets away with it. They actually open netflix on a virtual machine and use a ton of hacks to make it look like its you controlling it. The performance is horrible though because there is two hops.

https://rabb.it/

Good question. It uses websockets to send/receive sync commands to each individual browser, each of which has its own instance of netflix. So theoretically every user still needs to have their own Netflix account.

The concept seems very similar to Rabbit: http://rabb.it

I've messed with rabbit before. I wasn't a fan because in their implementation actually open netflix on a virtual machine GUI and use browser tricks to try to make it seem like you're just controlling the computer like its your desktop. The performance is horrible though because there is two hops, from netflix to their servers, and their servers to you.

I had a web app to do this a few years ago (2011?) For thematic music video content at http://80smtv.com/#80smtv (still up but a ghost town).

Here's the source (https://github.com/kristopolous/emptyv) ... most of it was written during the 3 or so weeks that it had lots of traffic, coming from all places, Poland.

I worked hard on the anarchistic anonymous vj feature as a social experiment. It was interesting but not traction building.

One day I'll build something that can sustain traffic. One day...

There's another solution called https://rabb.it/, but it also has HBO, Hulu and a bunch of other stuff, seems like a better alternative.

My girlfriend and I tried using rabbit but we weren't happy with the performance. Their implementation is actually to open netflix on a virtual machine GUI and use browser tricks to try to make it seem like you're just controlling the computer like its your desktop. The performance tends to be bad because there is two hops, from netflix to their servers, and their servers to you.

Also used it with my girlfriend. Didn't cause any problems, sitting on different continents (EU, US).

The only problems I experienced were with the sound slider.

What happens when one client stops to buffer?

Add support for http://www.google.com/cast/ and I'm in.

Sounds a good idea, social TV in general sounds good, but think I just would find it annoying. "What, another toilet break!".

Zeebox/Beamly also had/have some good social features but I think they even struggled for people to actually use it. After the initial curiosity people just want to veg in front of the box. I think. http://beamly.com

For plex users, if your friends can access your plex server, this is trivial.

One of you starts watching a movie, the others start watching the same movie and it asks them "would you like to resume from X". Just say Yes and you're all watching the movie in sync.

I love that you can do this with Netflix now though, this seems like one if those features that could have (was?) In the original release.

Does that keep them in sync if someone pauses, jumps back, seeks, etc?

Does this work with Plex for XBox One? If so, can you do a party chat while it's running? That'd be the awesome hacky answer to 360's great Netflix Party Mode.

This would be a lot cooler if it weren't necessarily a chrome extension and was rather a native app for windows and mac...and it'd be even better if it had video chat included along with a embedded chat client. Something along the lines of http://distanceflix.com

Heh, I had the same idea for a while, but using HTML5 and streaming it to friends directly via P2P. But I was too lazy to implement it and afraid of getting into troubles with the MAFIAA.

Just using netflix is definitly suitable for the masses too :)

Great idea. I used to always just count down so we could start Netflix at the same point, and then sync up after a bit by pausing and restarting occasionally, this is a very elegant solution!

We used to watch TV with my grandma over the phone.

Instead of commercial breaks they could have intermissions like old movie theaters allowing people to smoke and chat.

Is there anything like this for VLC or some other desktop video app?

Used this one way back http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Syncplay+interfa...

you should also check out Let's Gaze. https://letsgaze.com/#/

it works for YouTube and local files.

Is this OSS? If not, are there any plans to add Plex to it?

Plex already does this. If you go to now playing it will let you start playing where someone else on your server is at.

just add webrtc voice chat to complete the experience

Very cool. Thanks for sharing :D

Love it! You should OSS this!

This is Nice, Will use.

If only Netflix was avaliable in Poland...

pops champagne cork

DRM loses again! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx3EMvZrFR4

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