
Show HN: JustWatch – Choose your favorite streaming providers and see what’s new - endymi0n
https://www.justwatch.com/us
======
avalaunch
The site looks beautiful and the load time is terrific. You probably shouldn't
have invoked Popcorn Time in comparison though because the value prop is
totally different. This isn't streaming - it's aggregating. This isn't free -
it's very expensive. I think you lose the comparison pretty handedly.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I do think this site offers a lot of value as an
aggregator. I just think inviting the comparison to Popcorn Time is a mistake
because, to the limited extent that they are comparable, Popcorn Time is
better.

~~~
rkangel
The remarkable thing about Popcorn Time was how easy it made watching anything
you wanted to. To me, the fact that it could only do that by pirating was a
_downside_. I don't want to pirate, I want to pay, but there's nothing on the
market that has the range.

This solves a major current usability issue with the legal streaming market -
that different providers have different things on offer and you have to go and
search around to find whether you want to be on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

What it doesn't solve is the major issue with the streaming market - watching
TV shows as they are broadcast rather than 6 months later as a box set.

~~~
avalaunch
I agree with all of that. I think this site has a lot of value as an
aggregator. It doesn't solve the Popcorn Time problem though because it
doesn't make legally streaming movies easy. It just makes them easier to find
them. That's not the same. It feels too much like they're trying to ride the
wave of Popcorn time's success despite having very little in common.

My main point in writing the critique is just that if you invite a comparison
between your product and another you should make sure that they're actually
comparable and that yours will come out on top. Otherwise you'll turn what
could have been a warm reception into a cold one.

~~~
stalowa29
For me Popcorn Time's biggest value proposition is not free content, but
ability the selection and ability to watch with one click. Most media
companies, with all the resources at their hands still haven't nail the
experience. To find the movie I want I really need to browse multiple
catalogues (itunes, amazon, netflix) - neither of them always have what I
want. Then you have to login, updates cards and all this hassle.

So although right now their sites just aggregates, in the future it could
allow you to prepay/buy credits which would be used to pay off the content
owner/distributor (i.e amazon) each time you click Play.

Point being - to me it make complete sense to compare it PT

------
deanclatworthy
This looks great, congratulations.

That said, the one takeaway I got from exploring your site is that almost all
the interesting movies that I picked were only available to rent for $5 or
_buy_ for over $15. I'm not even in the US, but those prices seem a little
far-fetched for watching a movie at home. Netflix has been a step in the right
direction but as the studios wake up to this model, it seems the catalogues
are becoming fragmented making it cost-prohibitive for consumers to buy
multiple subscriptions.

~~~
xur17
If it was a dollar or two to rent a movie, I'd rent a lot more. $5 seems
excessive when I can buy the blu-ray version for a few dollars more.

~~~
iamthepieman
most movies I only ever want to see once. Actually, most movies I don't even
finish. I watch fewer and fewer movies since I don't want to take the chance
that I'll turn it off half way through or even 15 minutes in.

I can't imagine wanting to fill up my physical or digital movie shelf with
things I might not even like. I'm much more likely to buy a blu ray or dvd if
I've already seen it and enjoyed it. That and kids dvds for the car are the
only movies I ever purchase.

Because I know that I am extremely unlikely to buy a movie I am happy to pay
anything less than the purchase price to rent it if that's the only way to see
it. I paid less and got exactly the value I would have gotten if I purchased
it. More actually because now it's not taking up physical, digital or mental
space.

------
eridius
How does this compare to [http://canistream.it](http://canistream.it)? Does it
offer any different functionality?

How are your search results generated? I searched for "Witch Hunter Robin" and
got 30 results, none of which were that show (and many of which don't even
seem to be related to the search query, such as "Red: Werewolf Hunter"). For
comparison, canistream.it gave me a single result for that query, which was
the show I wanted. Granted, the show isn't available on any streaming provider
(canistream.it says it's available on Cable Xfinity only). Do you only provide
matches for shows that are actually available somewhere?

Also, curiously, your site lists "Good Will Hunting" under the title "Will
Hunting".

Edit: The site does appear to be quite fast, which is nice. And you have a
mobile-optimized version, which is great as I nearly always perform these
kinds of searches on my iPhone.

~~~
grimgrin
The most obvious thing to me is that I can filter on multiple sources with
JustWatch, and only a single source on Can I Stream It (in regards to the
gallery view).

I really just use CISI for looking up a very specific thing. JustWatch might
improve discoverability.

------
eterm
The UK experience isn't very good because the netflix listings are the US
listings.

(Which just serves to remind me how much better netflix US is and makes me
think of cancelling netflix UK.)

~~~
sghi
You can use a VPN from the UK and it works well - there are others around, but
I use hola on Chrome and Firefox and it works pretty well, for free -
[http://hola.org/](http://hola.org/)

~~~
etcet
Using Hola will allow other users to use your connection and their privacy
policy is awful:
[http://hola.org/legal_privacy](http://hola.org/legal_privacy)

Just spin up a VPS and install OpenVPN on it. I use ansible but used to use
this one-shot script here: [https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-
install](https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install)

------
pyre
When I click through to iTunes from (e.g.) 2001: A Space Odyssey the pricing
is different than listed on the site ($9.99 vs. $14.99).

EDIT: Also, the title on the detail page is "How the Solar System Was Won
(1968)" which, IMDB lists as a "working title." To be fair, this looks like
the first entry in the "Also Known As" section of the IMDB release info
page[1] that has a country of "USA".

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/releaseinfo](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/releaseinfo)

------
umeshunni
Would be nice if you showed a movie title and perhaps an IMDB link where
there's an exact title match, but no one streams it yet: e.g. for
[https://www.justwatch.com/us/search?q=american%20hustle](https://www.justwatch.com/us/search?q=american%20hustle)
should show a link to the IMDB page
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800241/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1800241/)
and maybe a YouTube link to its trailer.

------
radley
To clarify:

"Popcorn Time used to look better than anything legal, so we fixed it"

... so now here's something legal that looks as good as (or better than)
Popcorn Time.

------
jongala
This is nice, a more attractive alternative to
[http://www.canistream.it](http://www.canistream.it)

It would be great to be able to set buy/rent/stream filters alongside
selecting providers. If you know you don't want to buy, for example, the
current interface relies on a lot of clicking.

Nice work!

~~~
chkuendig
Another nice alternative is [http://moreflicks.com/](http://moreflicks.com/)
\- especially as it includes all netflix regions (which justwatch doesn't) as
well as BBC iPlayer.

Edit: Just saw that justwatch actually includes international offers - the
submission links to the US-section though.

------
beenpoor
Looks great! How does it load so fast!! I am more amazed with the page load.
Can you share any secret sauce ?

~~~
endymi0n
Thanks so much! Let me think. Cloudfront, heavy NGINX caching, precompiling JS
assets, using Go as a backend language, doing as few requests as humanly
possible and lots of hard work. No silver bullets unfortunately, but some
smaller nice tricks like using Thumbor as a Cloudfront custom origin. We'll
definitely share some stuff on our engineering blog soon!

~~~
randomguy7788
as someone who has worked on really large angular apps (and also someone who
knows a bunch of the ng core guys) the load time on this is terrific and was
pretty surprised by how quickly ng-repeat rendered. did you have to do
anything special (i could probably poke around the code more but i thought
asking might give me more insight)?

------
rco8786
Infinite scroll is broken, fyi. It starts back at the very beginning when the
first batch comes in.

------
EpicEng
"Popcorn Time used to look better than anything legal, so we fixed it"

Fixed what exactly? This site just aggregates info on where you can find a
movie and pay an absurd price for it. I already knew that I could pay $20 for
a movie. No thanks.

~~~
christophersu
I think they mean they made a legal alternative/equivalent to Popcorn Time
that looks just as good. Not particularly useful or innovative, but I guess it
does look alright.

------
Daiz
You know what would be interesting? If the site also had a filter for
streaming/digital rental and digital buying. It'd be a pretty concrete example
of how terrible the digital media buying landscape is as you'd see the list of
titles shrink to basically nothing (since DRM-laden purchases obviously
shouldn't count - that's just renting with an undefined rental period, not
actual buying).

While you're at it, you could also add a country filter to have yet another
way to reduce the list to nothing, showing yet another _great_ feature of the
legitimate digital media landscape - region locking!

------
jack-r-abbit
Very nice. I plan to use this the next time we search for a movie to watch on
Family Movie & Pizza Night. It can some times take like 30 minutes just to
search the various subscription sites we use (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime,
etc) to find a movie. We try to find a free one first but when we can't, we
then check around for which service has it cheapest. Seems this is going to
make searching a whole lot easier. Thanks!

Would be great if I could also filter by rating. And exclude those that are
"Buy" only.

------
AjithAntony
Seems to have some bugs arond movies with the same title. For example, I
clicked on "inside man":

1\. Navigate to [https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/inside-
man](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/inside-man)

2\. Observe the photos and descriptions for the 2006 denzel washington version

3\. Click on the "prime instant video" streaming link

4\. Observe that the movie starts playing but it is the much older "Dennis
hopper" movie of the same name

------
glitcher
Nice job, I often find it frustrating to find new movies in the interfaces
provided on streaming providers' websites.

That being said, one very minor critique. When filtering on release year where
I only want to display the last 2 or 3 years, the slider interface is a bit
awkward with overlapping year labels making it difficult to read what is
selected.

Would also be nice to see more advanced filter options added, but great start!

------
15thandwhatever
Looks like there's a problem with displaying content in one language, but
pulling descriptions from the wrong store language.

'THE EQUALIZER - WATCH ONLINE: STREAMING, BUY OR RENT

You can buy _"Le Justicier"_ on Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, Google Play
Movies, Apple iTunes as download or rent it on Amazon Instant Video, Vudu,
Google Play Movies, Apple iTunes online.'

------
markbnj
It's a nice looking interface. Obviously you're trying to make a point that
legal alternatives should be as nicely made and attractive as illegal ones,
and some are dinging you for it. But regardless of the motive it's well done.
Perhaps think about maintaining my scroll position when I click down to a
detail view of a film and then back.

------
foomoo
Nicely done! Hi to Berlin! As others have stated, the load time and
completeness of the catalog is impressive. Also has - no surprise - providers
specific to Germany here
[https://www.justwatch.com/de](https://www.justwatch.com/de)

@op: Some background on the sourcing/aggregation process would be very
interesting.

~~~
endymi0n
Well done leaking our German site... okay, wasn't hidden too hard :)

As for the aggregation, it's much deeper and more interesting than the simple
surface will make you think. We've handbuilt a massive, distributed crawler
framework in Golang just for this purpose. Will surely share more on our
engineering blog as time passes!

~~~
hanley
Where can I find the blog?

~~~
endymi0n
probably
[https://engineering.justwatch.com](https://engineering.justwatch.com) as soon
as we're done celebrating and TV shows are in :)

------
rkangel
That looks great and has gone straight into my Favourites.

I look forward to you expanding to include the UK!

------
qeorge
This is great! Thanks for building this!

I use my Roku's universal search to do this now, but I can only use it on the
device. Having this function in a website is so useful!

Suggestion: automatically highlight Hulu when I choose "Hulu Plus"

------
kin
I have a lot of use for this. Love the distinction between Amazon Prime and
Purchase as well as the Hulu Plus and Hulu regular.

Any chance you could include premium streaming services such as HBO Go, Max
Go, and Showtime Anytime?

------
bonif
The item you've requested is not currently available in the ____* Store, but
it is available in the U.S. Store. Click Change Store to view this item.

Nice product, though

------
jared314
Does it do Pandora-style recommendations like Jinni [1]? I only see popular
and new titles.

[1] [http://www.jinni.com/](http://www.jinni.com/)

------
vlad
Nice! If anyone wants TV shows & episodes as well as movies, plus all the
sources, Guidebox.com shows you both. Guidebox also support 150+ apps/sites
including tv networks, hulu, all the digital media stores, etc. and provide a
Developer API. I made the new iOS and Android apps which take you to the right
app to play the movie or show you choose (or the app store if that source app
is not installed.)

[http://vlad.github.com](http://vlad.github.com)

is my portfolio with some screenshots while the apps are pending review, but
you can visit guidebox.com to start using it today.

------
sejje
I get repeat videos. I've selected netflix and amazon prime.

There's about 20 unique items, then repeats of all of those rows, then fresh
content.

------
27182818284
Is this different than the existing
[http://www.canistream.it/](http://www.canistream.it/)

~~~
endymi0n
Yup. Different page, different people, different providers.

------
ryanmcbride
No Crunchyroll?

------
keslert
This looks really nice! I'd love to see it include the mpaa rating and be able
to filter by it.

------
prawn
Any reason not to put affiliate strings on your iTunes links? Didn't spot any
when I looked.

------
brooklyndude
By year is pretty cool. Even a film made in 1900. Working my way to the future
now.

------
stalowa29
Implementing IMDB / RT scoring would definitely add value to your service

------
meritt
Are you going to add coverage for television/episodic content?

~~~
endymi0n
Definitely. Working on it as we speak.

------
Animats
Black screen with third-party cookie blocking and Ghostery enabled.

"SecurityError: The operation is insecure. mc-webapp-0.1.9.js:17"

Fail.

~~~
endymi0n
Hi Animats - thanks for noticing. We know we still have a bug with stealth
mode but decided to launch anyway. Will be fixed by tomorrow.

~~~
Animats
Thanks. I run very locked down browsers, and it's amusing to see what sites
break. Some of the effects are strange. I can't watch video on ABC, while
video on CBS plays without ads.

------
gtallen1187
this is exactly what i've been looking for. Thanks!

would be great to see HBO Go as well.

------
gtallen1187
this is exactly what i've been looking for. Thanks! maybe add hbo go?

------
SchizoDuckie
'big hero 6' $19.99

Dream on K? thx. bye.

------
lobf
15 dollars to stream Nightcrawler, when a movie ticket might cost half that.
What am I paying for exactly?

~~~
aganders3
To be fair, that's the cost to buy it. If you watch it with three friends
you're saving money. Plus you can watch it again and again if that's your
thing.

Movies have been ~$15-20 for a long time. I'd guess not much of that cost was
physical media.

