
Show HN: To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends - l1am0
https://bingetogether.com/
======
kazinator
> _To fight quarantine boredom I build a site to watch movies with friends._

I would call it "CoVid: watch videos together, remotely."

~~~
willio58
Almost as perfect as it is morbid.

~~~
choward
The auction site for caskets?

~~~
messe
CoVidBid?

------
effingwewt
I love this. I still speak fondly of the early days of netlfix, when it first
got into streaming on the 360. You could invite an xbox live party to watch
movies on Netflix. It had a border you could enable that made it look like a
theatre screen with seats, with your live avatars sitting in them, a la
Mystery Science Theatre.

There was nothing quite like being in a chat party watching movies together.
You could talk as loudly as you wanted while doing/eating what you wanted.
Blew the actual theatre out of the water.

Really amazing experience that was killed off way too soon (greed, Netflix
didn't want non subscribers to watch free).

Hopefully this is a road back there, definitely going to spread this around
and show some $love

edit: not finding a donation link, but if you get a link up I'm happy to do
so!

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

~~~
effingwewt
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 stifling real innovation.

~~~
dylan604
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.

~~~
40four
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.

~~~
viklove
He's wrong. No one has, or ever will be prosecuted for renting a movie and
watching it with their friends in their living room.

~~~
JadeNB
Claiming that something is illegal, and pointing out that no-one has been
prosecuted for it, are not contradictory.

~~~
mm89
It is pretty pointless though!

------
errantspark
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.

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

~~~
errantspark
I've never encountered this at all! Honestly I've never in my life had any
problems with HDCP, guess I'm just lucky, I constantly hear about it being
problematic.

~~~
rnotaro
You are probably not using Edge or the Netflix App. (1080P+)

------
Reedx
Anyone remember turntable.fm?

I know a bunch of replacements popped up, but nothing seemed to capture the
same kind of magic...

~~~
MivLives
Yes, I actually helped make a clone of it for my final college project.

Since then the cocnept has sort of died. I'm a little surprised it's not
something that Spotify did more with. I know they have a colistening feature
but I have yet to have anyone want to attempt that. As far as I can tell you
need to link up by Facebook to even attempt that.

~~~
rdlw
You can colisten to somebody's Spotify through Discord. Sadly it's a pretty
obscure feature no one uses much, but it's worked well the couple of times
I've tried it.

~~~
lenocinor
I've used it some back when it was first introduced. Some people were just not
ever able to sync with the stream sometimes, and also it was a bummer asking
everyone to sign up for Spotify Premium to be able to listen. I don't know if
it's better now but I personally would not recommend it to others.

------
tommy_mcclung
I have a 15 year old and 13 year old at home, online with their friends
basically passing the time in quarantine with Zoom on all day. I literally
just told my 15 year old something like this needs to exist. Showing him
now... he’s going to love it.

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

~~~
freeqaz
(also shilling)

Another similar site (that a friend of mine built) is TeamFlix. He built it to
stream with his brother and didn't find any alternatives (this was a few years
ago now).

[https://teamflix.com/](https://teamflix.com/)

~~~
chx
I am not shilling, I found the site just yesterday after much effort in
searching and I am usually pretty good at searching. Learning it was basically
a family effort: my brother and I have been online since 1993 and he has a
librarian degree and I am a software developer / hacker and this combo has led
to much expertise. My brother is better -- he can search in languages he can't
read or write. It's like a magic trick.

~~~
sah2ed
> _he can search in languages he can 't read or write. It's like a magic
> trick._

Have you ever tried to suss out how he is able conduct web searches so
effectively? Would be interested in what you learned.

------
geoffreyy
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?

~~~
LudwigNagasena
>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.

~~~
virtualmic
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).

~~~
l1am0
It syncs the start time. As it works without a browser extension I can not
sync the actual movie as I do not get the information.

What I am planing to do is to allow a later join into the movie night by
calculating how much time has passed since the movie night start and then send
the late attendee to that time code in the movie. Not supported by all
services tough :/

------
philsnow
Feedback: I'd like a button that advances the 'start time' to "ASAP" \-- I
realize you're probably doing some NTP-like time syncing between clients, and
"just start right now" maybe won't have everybody synced already, but if all
my friends are already in the voice chat / already on the link, there's no
need to wait for the appointed time.

 _edit_ : alternatively since the URLs are hard to guess, you could have the
creator of the watchparty specify a "auto-start ASAP after this many people
have joined" number, so once Bob and Carol have joined, it just starts.

Also, youtube ads are going to disrupt the synchronized start, since each
person is going to see a different ad (or no ad), but I think you've said
elsewhere in the thread that there's no way to get around this without
requiring a browser extension.

~~~
l1am0
Awesome! I love the "start after X people joined" idea.

What you are currently seeing is the MVP. I plan to integrate websockets for
the communication between clients. So you just can hit "start now" and it
would start (or after X people joined the websocket channel). This will take
some time, as it is a lot harded to get scalable as the current (static
solution is.

Yes, the youtube ads will be a problem that sadly can not be circumvented with
my tech stack.

------
AnonC
I personally don’t like people talking when watching a movie or a TV show.
It’s fine if they exclaim or laugh or gasp depending on the situation (and not
being too loud), but anything that’s some kind of speech or commentary makes
me lose bits of what I’m watching and want to focus on.

With streaming video, I can pause, rewind and then continue. But in this case,
that would no longer be in sync with where the others are. The biggest
advantage of streaming is being able to take breaks and continue at any point
in time. I’m not sure how well this platform would work if there are many
people and each one decides to take a break at a separate time (making others
wait if they wish to be somewhat in sync).

This may work better if participants pre-decide how many breaks will be taken
and approximately at what times or points.

~~~
dhimes
It would be fun for stupid stuff though that doesn't really matter- you and
your friends could chat and make fun of it MST3k style.

~~~
klondike_klive
Some friends and I have started doing this with terrible movies, straight-to-
DVD Steven Seagal/Nicolas Cage style stuff. Problem is we're all starting the
movie at very slightly different times, like within 15 seconds but still
sometimes hard to guess what people are referencing. Oh, and we don't use
voice chat, it's just Whatsapp. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable piping
up in a group of ten or twelve, some of whom I haven't met, I much prefer
typing a joke, and am a fast enough typist that I'm not too much behind the
action I'm writing about.

------
Waterluvian
My favourite thing is watching stuff with thousands of people in chat. Like
Bob Ross or Mr. Rogers. The culture that emerges is magical.

------
derwiki
Page <title> says "Bing Together"

~~~
SwiftyBug
We gotta stop the Google monopoly, right?

~~~
l1am0
Love that one. Bing without e is fixed. Miss-typed it once and than copy
pasted it too often.

------
randomlogin
Thank you so much for this! I will spread the word and I'm sure it'll outlive
the pandemic.

I was waiting for someone (even Netflix) to do this the last couple of years
for Valentine's day (as I realized I won't spend the time on building it
myself). Being in a long distance relationship made me realize that this would
be a fun way to nurture the relationship - watching the movie together, while
apart.

------
Hamuko
There's [https://syncplay.pl/](https://syncplay.pl/) for video files.

------
goda90
So my movie nights with friends used to involve watching a movie(on some
streaming service or from disk), and then queuing up a bunch of random YouTube
videos over Chromecast. It would be great if this wasn't tied to a single URL,
but instead we could make a room and add videos to a queue to watch.

~~~
l1am0
Awesome feature idea! This is currently the MVP and a lot more is to come.
Will be added to my list.

The problem would be on how to start the next video, as it is a javascript
redirect only, so I have no information when a video in the queue is finished.
Maybe websockets and someone pressing "next" could be an option.

------
ghostpepper
This is very cool but I worry about your bandwidth bill if it takes off. Does
voice chat go through the server?

~~~
l1am0
I static cache all /p/* site via cloudflare and the voice chat is via jitsi
meet an external privacy friendly service

------
amflare
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?

~~~
l1am0
Yes. Everyone involved need an account and needs to be logged in as well.

It works by basically redirecting to the streaming website.

~~~
ryandrake
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!

------
tbrock
There are a lot of these. A way to stand out would be to make it work with all
the streaming gadgets like an Apple TV, roku stick or fire stick. Would be a
killer app right now.

Who watches a movie sitting at their computer?

~~~
l1am0
Would love that as well, but it is really hard to support even only chromecast
with my tech stack.

For now I do not plan to support TV applications with Binge Together.

------
irjustin
This is really interesting. A Seattle startup where I am friends with a number
of the old staff: BuddyTv [0]

It makes me sad that the idea didn't work out and in times other than this...
it still won't work out. But it's glad to know there are times when this
absolutely valued.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuddyTV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuddyTV)

------
awinder
This is on my reading / testing list earlier today:
[https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21191604/watch-movies-
fri...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21191604/watch-movies-friends-
online-netflix-hulu-youtube-party-twoseven-metastream-amazon-hbo-scener)

Will have to add this to the list!

------
adriand
Sounds a little similar to [https://rave.io/](https://rave.io/) Nice job!

------
jmckib
I couldn't get it to work. When I click "Join movie party" it just opens
another tab of the party page with a timestamp in the url.

Also there appears to be a timezone issue? I have to input a time an hour
ahead of what I actually want.

~~~
l1am0
Was that a youtube link? That is fixed now.

Still working on the timezone. Some browsers are doing problems here.

If the problem still persists, would you be so kind and sending me a
screencast on how the site behaves to: bingetogether@simon-frey.eu

Thanks so much!

------
corpMaverick
It is not clear to me if everybody in the party needs to have netflix. (or
whatever service was chosen)

~~~
l1am0
Yes. Everyone needs to have an account and to be signed in.

------
polishdude20
Can you easily add the ability to share screen or application so I can watch a
video file with a friend?

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I assume they avoided that on purpose due to copyright.

~~~
efreak
I don't see how you could hold someone liable just for allowing you to
screenshare.

I think it'd be interesting to accept file-based input, and stream via webrtc.

------
usrbintaco
Does anyone want to babysit my kids remotely to fight boredom cause I'm losing
my mind.

------
aldoushuxley001
does anyone know of a good website to do this but for music? Ideally I'd love
to be able to create room where buddies can join, we can chat and take turns
suggesting songs to play that we all listen to. I would literally pay money
for that.

~~~
a_t48
[https://cytu.be/](https://cytu.be/) \- works with YT, SoundCloud, and some
others.

~~~
Avamander
And also supports videos from various platforms and self-hosted content.

------
thrownaway954
your title attribute says "Bing Together", you're missing an "e"

~~~
l1am0
Thanks!

------
SubiculumCode
I posted this link on my social media, and it got a fair bit of attention.
Keep it up!

------
smoyer
This is an awesome project ... my daughters have been doing this a bit just
using group-chat on their phones but I'm going to propose our small prep
school has a movie night. I guess that will test it at scale ;)

------
thatguyagain
Really cool! How do you make the streams start the same time for everyone?

~~~
terminalcommand
On the website it says that they figured out the autoplay feature on those
sites.

I imagine when the countdown ends, it enables the autoplay and the movie
starts.

------
Animats
You can do this in Second Life, although only for non-DRM video. There are
movie theaters and big-screen TVs in the virtual world. You can watch with
your friends, and talk or text to each other over the video.

~~~
wolco
That sounds interesting. How do you find the places?

~~~
Animats
Look for movie theaters. Or buy a virtual big-screen TV for your virtual house
and invite friends over.

~~~
vxNsr
Finally! A use for the lumens I got from the Keybase giveaway

------
kolchinski
This is great, I've wanted something like this in the past! Thanks for
building. I'll be giving it a try for a watch party I was planning with
friends.

Mind sharing how it works and what stack you used?

~~~
l1am0
Awesome, hope it all works out.

Stack is quite simple: Frontend: Bulma.css, Vanilla Javascript, HTML Backend:
PHP, MariaDB

It works by redirecting in the right moment to the streaming sites, via a
JavaScript redirect.

The voice chat is done via [https://meet.jit.si/](https://meet.jit.si/)

To handle potential big load, I force cloudflare to cache all sites under url
/p/* thereby after the creation of the watch party, no request hits my server
anymore :D

~~~
joecot
I'm guessing it doesn't handle people pausing the video like Netflix Party or
SyncLounge does then?

~~~
l1am0
No that is currently not possible, as there is no way of getting the
information about the playback from the website.

To enable this feature a browser plugin would be required again.

With Binge Together I opted for not supporting that in favor of an easier use.
(Not everyone included needs to install the extension etc.)

------
NicoJuicy
I would love it if
[https://web.microsoftstream.com/](https://web.microsoftstream.com/) could be
added ( work related)

~~~
l1am0
What is that? Can't even login

~~~
JorgeGT
It's a corporate video sharing service in Office 365. Think Youtube for your
company.

~~~
l1am0
If you would be able to share a login with me, than I could check if it can be
included. Login could be send to office365bingewatching@simon-frey.com

~~~
NicoJuicy
It's my personal work email and has company videos on it.

So I'm not able to share, sorry.

What information would you need for it? nico@sapico.me

------
jjice
Really cool! Growing up, my friends and I spend many nights self queuing or on
similar sites. Out of curiosity, what's your stack? Also, are there any plans
for open source?

~~~
l1am0
From other comment: Stack is quite simple: Frontend: Bulma.css, Vanilla
Javascript, HTML Backend: PHP, MariaDB

It works by redirecting in the right moment to the streaming sites, via a
JavaScript redirect.

The voice chat is done via [https://meet.jit.si/](https://meet.jit.si/)

To handle potential big load, I force cloudflare to cache all sites under url
/p/* thereby after the creation of the watch party, no request hits my server
anymore :D

Currently I have no plan to open sourcing it

------
Hitton
There are already dozens of such sites (just search for alternatives to Kast
or Rabb.it), why should we use this one? Are there any advantages over
competition?

~~~
l1am0
e.g. Compared to Kast it works directly in the browser without any additional
software

------
leowoo91
I've entered a random youtube url, "open movie" test click worked fine but
when the counter hit, it went to netflix... (Safari)

~~~
l1am0
Oh wow. That was propably the dumbest bug I ever produced. Still hat my
testing (netflix) url hardcoded in the countdown javascript.

Works now. Thanks for reporting.

------
mattste
Have you investigated what it'd take to addd Hulu support? I find majority of
my shows are split between Netflix and Hulu.

~~~
l1am0
Not yet as Hulu is not supported in germany (my home country). Will digg into
it in the next few hours.

Would anyone be willing to share their hulu account with me so I can test it?
bingehulu@simon-frey.com

------
RangerScience
Does this work with Chromecast? Netflix Party doesn't, and that's the main
reason I don't use it.

~~~
l1am0
No it does not, as there is no api for controling the playback on the
chromecast

------
lsv1
You should get Google Analytics installed, and AdSense ads... at the least.

~~~
l1am0
No I do not want analytics. I use the privacy friendly matomo for that.

Ads are planed, but I would like to go with another path than google as well.
Maybe some movie sponsors :D

------
ganessh
I am not able to create an URL. Is it down?

------
amelius
But what if you have Netflix and your buddies have HBO Now?

------
spaceprison
Great idea!

My wife was just doing this with a friend in st Louis over text.

------
l1am0
Now bingetogether.com has multi language support :D

------
mceoin
I've been waiting for this product. Nice work.

------
russfink
What if someone is on a device like a Fire TV?

~~~
l1am0
Currently this can not be supported with the tech stack I use. (As it uses
javascript redirects to start a video)

------
lukeplato
the app is a 3rd party voice chat with a URL link and a countdown, I'm
surprised it's so popular tbh

------
crimsonalucard
Nice, also compatible with bit torrent.

------
Joof
I've wanted this for so many years.

------
noeltock
Any planned support for Plex? Thanks!

~~~
wrboyce
There is a similar product for Plex, I think it is called SyncLounge.

Yep: [http://synclounge.tv/](http://synclounge.tv/)

------
softwarejosh
cool project reminds me of rabbit.tv

------
Avamander
What differentiates this and cytube? ([https://cytu.be](https://cytu.be))

~~~
l1am0
BingeTogether.com is legal ;)

~~~
Avamander
What are you on about? There's nothing about cytube that's illegal.

------
moneywoes
What did you use to build it?

~~~
l1am0
From other comment: Stack is quite simple: Frontend: Bulma.css, Vanilla
Javascript, HTML Backend: PHP, MariaDB

It works by redirecting in the right moment to the streaming sites, via a
JavaScript redirect.

The voice chat is done via [https://meet.jit.si/](https://meet.jit.si/)

To handle potential big load, I force cloudflare to cache all sites under url
/p/* thereby after the creation of the watch party, no request hits my server
anymore :D

------
ryder9
treesnetwork.com still exists

------
codpiece
Sent it to my kids, thanks!

------
dmtroyer
this is not intuitive.

~~~
l1am0
What do you dislike about the interface? How can I improve it? Thanks for your
help.

~~~
dmtroyer
I'm just confused. How is syncing supposed to work?

1\. I start a "watch party" 2\. I give the link to friends. 3\. They click the
button "Open the movie and check for autostart." 4\. The video opens. At the
beginning. Not where the other people are at.

What is "Autostart"? You mention to "Open the movie directly and ask in the
voice chat what time you should jump to". How is this different than just
sharing the link to the video and pressing play at the same time or having
them skip ahead. I don't understand.

~~~
l1am0
Ah okay. So that button is to dominant Open the movie and check for
autostart." is just the preperation to check if the video starts correctly
e.g. if in firefox autoplay is allowed.

The actually watch party starts when the countdown hits zero, by redirecting
everyone in the same moment to the video.

"Open the movie directly and ask in the voice chat what time you should jump
to" is when you missed the start.

Syncing works via starting everyone at the same time in the beginning of the
movie

~~~
philsnow
If for some reason somebody joins late / gets kicked off, and you're watching
something on youtube, youtube supports time-index URL fragments like this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4-SxcCO5d0#t=3m17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4-SxcCO5d0#t=3m17s)
, and you could start a new watchparty with that URL.

It's heavyweight and probably better to just sync by somebody shouting a
timestamp, but if you need things synced there you go.

~~~
l1am0
Awesome idea! I plan to implement that today :D

Just calculating from the start time at what point in the movie everyone
should be. e.g. You are half an hour late, so the others are around minute 30
(Y)

No need to start a new watch party (Y)

------
justlexi93
This is will be fun since the lockdown is currently taking place all around
the world.

------
BiteCode_dev
I'm still wondering how people manage to get bored in today's age.

You have millions of journals, books, music tracks, tv shows, films and video
games. You have tutorials on youtube to learn new skill, such as cooking,
yoga, DIY, coding, etc. You can chat, phone or email to all your relatives and
friends.

You can take the opportunity to produce something, write, build, create,
imagine. Even without a computer you can write or draw.

You can take time for yourself, sleep more, meditate, rest, do things slowly.

Please explain it to me, I genuinely don't understand.

~~~
tov_objorkin
We're social animals, this is hardcoded part of our brain. Managing solitude
require training as anything else.

~~~
BiteCode_dev
Solitude and boredom is not the same.

I understand solitude. You have a need. It's not fulfilled.

I don't get boredom: I see so many ways to fulfill this need.

------
text_exch
For those who prefer text-based entertainment, I run an email newsletter
called Thinking About Things [1], which sends out a link to an interesting
article every day. It's aimed at curious people who don't have a lot of time
to read - each email has an extended quote from the article so that you can
see if it interests you. It's gotten very good reviews from readers.

[1] [https://www.thinking-about-things.com/](https://www.thinking-about-
things.com/)

~~~
drannex
Not the place for this, totally off topic.

