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Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

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111–120 of 209 posts

Re: Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not greed, it's licensing. Copyright owners wouldn't allow it, facilitating copyright infringement isn't good business

Still greed if you ask me, how would it be different from me renting a movie at home and having friends over? 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 stiflin…

Greed enforced by copyright law is still greed. It’s ok to call it what it is.

Re: Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

#113

My friends and I do this through Discord. One person shares their screen playing netflix/disney/whatever and then everyone just hangs out in voice and watches together. It's a really seamless experience and the re-encoding is usually not a problem, action scenes can get a little blocky but the quality is really pretty great.

Whenever I tried this, HDCP or similar DRM kicked in and the video was blacked out. How did you get around it?

Re: Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

#114

similar to netflixparty.com except: - 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?

>it doesn't actually sync across the viewers? (start time, play/pause) What is even the point then? It's litearlly the only feature I expect from such service.

From the description on homepage:

> Wait until the countdown hits zero and your movie night starts

So it does sync across viewers (I haven't actually tried it yet).

Re: Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

#115
post #43
post #36

Does this require everyone to have an account for the paid services (Netflix for now)? Does this require anyone to have an account for the paid services if you happen to be able to get your hands on a Netflix URL?

Yes. Everyone involved need an account and needs to be logged in as well. It works by basically redirecting to the streaming website.

It would be awesome if it worked also for people with a local copy of the movie so people with Netflix could watch simultaneously with people with a digital file or physical media!

Re: Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

#117
post #31

> To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends. I would call it "CoVid: watch videos together, remotely."

Hope folks will use it after corona as well, so no corona pun name for it xD

well, the name works outside of the pandemic and will get lots hits when covid-23 and covid-28 come out ....

Re: Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still greed if you ask me, how would it be different from me renting a movie at home and having friends over? 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 stiflin…

Technically, when you rent a movie, you are not allowed to invite friends over to watch it with you. By renting the title, you were granted a temporary private viewing license. Inviting people over constituted a public viewing. Copyright laws are ludicrous.

First off, great concept! I would like to try this at least once.

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.

Re: Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

#119
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://plug.dj/

plug.dj is the closest to turntable, in that they use embedded youtube/vimeo videos synced between all the users in the room. Completely offloading their biggest cost (media storage/bw) into public video platforms -- genius.

I would honestly recommend jqbx.fm instead if you have a spotify premium account. plug.dj goes through constant ownership changes, prolonged site closures, and suffers from over gamification+monetization. JQBX is a much cleaner experience with much better support for mobile / streaming on different devices that are connected to your Spotify account.

Re: Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends

#120
post #80

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18123862 is great. Really, really great. No idea why it's not more widely recognized or used.

Also Togethr.TV (https://togethr.tv). Created by me some years ago! People can watch videos together and chat (text/audio) and some other features.
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