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Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

movieofthenight.com

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Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#61

Post by jacobwg »

Saepirist wrote: post #2

Hi people, I've been working on this API for sometime now. Thought I'd share it here too. This API allows you to query what's available on 20 streaming services (including Netflix, Prime, HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu) across 60 countries. You can get the list of shows with filters such as release year, genre, IMDb rating etc. You can also get a show's global streaming availability via its IMDb or TMDb id. The output includ…

Looks great! How have you sourced the underlying metadata? From past experience, access to such metadata, especially IMDb, was rather heavily restricted, requiring a paid licensing agreement for access.

Does the Streaming Availability API use properly licensed data sources? If so, you might mention this on the marketing site, this would be a selling point for certain commercial projects. For that matter, it might be worth mentioning if the API can be used for commercial projects at all.

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#62

Post by freewizard »

awesome tool! fount some interesting data explore the Compare Streaming Services section [1]

For example, Netflix and Prime Video are almost equal on total number of shows (~5.5k movie + series) but on Netflix only 4% shows are from pre-2000, while Prime has 20%. Also HBO Max has half size of Netflix library, but when filter by IMDb rating and voters, the gap is much smaller, and in certain cases HBO even wins out.

In terms of language diversity, Netflix is doing the best with 45% content not in English, that is far more than anyone else (except Zee5 which is primarily Hindi). However when it comes down to a specific language, the number is usually much smaller and around 100, which is less than ideal for someone primarily consumes French/German/Chinese/Korean/etc. (tweeted more about this [2])

[1] https://www.movieofthenight.com/compareservices

[2] https://twitter.com/freewizard/status/1480246184887398409

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#63

Post by Saepirist »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #60
Saepirist wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the service any of these might be needed.

What an uninteresting answer. People are interested in the technichal details, come on.

Haha, sorry. But actually it's pretty much it. You need VPNs to check catalogs in different countries, which is tricky for some services (like Netflix) as they try to block VPNs. So you gotta always have a large pool. Catalogs of services like Prime Video is just there without an account but for Netflix you need accounts to see the catalogs (and not to send too many requests otherwise they block you).

Rest of it is just writing some regular crawlers.

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#64

Post by toomanydoubts »

Saepirist wrote: post #63
toomanydoubts wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an uninteresting answer. People are interested in the technichal details, come on.

Haha, sorry. But actually it's pretty much it. You need VPNs to check catalogs in different countries, which is tricky for some services (like Netflix) as they try to block VPNs. So you gotta always have a large pool. Catalogs of services like Prime Video is just there without an account but for Netflix you need accounts to see the catalogs (and not to send too many requests otherwise they block you). Rest of it is j…

Cool, thanks for expanding and congrats on the project!

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#65

Post by jkukul »

Jnr wrote: post #10

Nice, maybe someone could finally make a site that shows how many and which specific streaming services are needed to cover top20 movies and tv series of the year.

How would you define top 20 movies of the year? What would be the criteria?

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#66

Post by _jstreet »

I've been looking for this for some time. It's really useful to be able to easily find out which streaming service a film/TV-show is available on (or not on!).

Are you making any profit off of this, or is there any way to donate/contribute towards the upkeep of the project?

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#67

Post by endymi0n »

chris_st wrote: post #25
Saepirist wrote: post #2

Hi people, I've been working on this API for sometime now. Thought I'd share it here too. This API allows you to query what's available on 20 streaming services (including Netflix, Prime, HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu) across 60 countries. You can get the list of shows with filters such as release year, genre, IMDb rating etc. You can also get a show's global streaming availability via its IMDb or TMDb id. The output includ…

I'm curious how you keep the results up to date -- found a similar thing (without an API), and found lots of wrong results as services add and drop movies.

I‘m curious as well, as for so many countries ingesting and matching that catalogue including error correction is currently a full time job for more than a dozen people over 6 years and 10k+ per month in infrastructure costs.

Will check for canary traps tomorrow as I‘m suspecting they‘re just scraping us or our competitors. This is far too expensive to build for how cheap they‘re selling it.

Source: I work at JustWatch.

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#68

Post by timmg »

dewey wrote: post #28
e40 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of https://www.justwatch.com/ which is a non-API version. Did they roll their own? Do they use your service?

It's all in-house, available in 84 countries and supports thousands of streaming services. There is an API but it's mostly available to larger partners: https://www.justwatch.com/us/JustWatch-Streaming-API Source: I work at JustWatch.

Not sure it matters much, but I had been using justwatch often. It stopped working for me a while back: search just wouldn't do anything.

I just cleared all my cookies and now it works again.

Not sure how big the problem is, but at least for me, your website seemed to be choking on its own cookies.

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#69

Post by gurchik »

Saepirist wrote: post #57
gurchik wrote: post #56

I typed in Mad Men and it shows no streaming services for the United States but I know it's available on Prime Video at least.

Currently it only shows free (included with Prime) shows on Prime Video. I just checked it and Mad Men is only available for buying or via AMC+ channel subscription.

Interesting. I've been watching it and it's free (ad-supported) with Prime. I have not bought it and don't have the AMC+ channel subscription.

Re: Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries

#70

Post by e40 »

dewey wrote: post #28
e40 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of https://www.justwatch.com/ which is a non-API version. Did they roll their own? Do they use your service?

It's all in-house, available in 84 countries and supports thousands of streaming services. There is an API but it's mostly available to larger partners: https://www.justwatch.com/us/JustWatch-Streaming-API Source: I work at JustWatch.

What a great website. I use it all the time. Thank you!
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