
Show HN: Trailer Nite – Find something to watch tonight - mattkenefick
https://www.trailernite.com/
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malloreon
This is a neat implementation.

I stopped watching trailers for movies a few years ago - headphones and closed
eyes during movie previews and everything, and it greatly improved my
enjoyment of nearly every movie I see.

I go for the story and visuals, and studios long ago decided that story and
visual surprise were worth sacrificing to get people into theaters.

As for figuring out what to see, I find that a combination of any of title,
director, writer, genre, and occasionally performers are enough to make up my
mind.

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babolivier
Is it only me or does this website (supposed to help me "Find something to
watch tonight") mainly gets me trailers of movies that'll get release in weeks
or months?

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mattkenefick
The category you land in is "Hot" which represents items that are new and
popular. They generally end up being movies/tv series that are soon to be
released.

If watch enough or click "Browse", you can start watching things based on what
VOD you have (Netflix, Hulu, etc), what genre you're interested in, general
rating, and more.

We thought that new-comers to the site would be more interested in seeing a
trailer for Venom, Avengers, or Deadpool than seeing a trailer for Jaws or
Scarface.

You can definitely browse the VOD, newly added, genres, etc to find something
for right now at home... but you can also learn what's coming out, what's out
now, and what was recently released (soon to be on DVD).

~~~
babolivier
Oh, great, thanks for the tip!

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mattkenefick
Author here: The point of this project is to discover movies and TV shows that
you ordinarily wouldn't find because the studios put their advertising money
into something else.

Now that we have so many ways to watch content: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO,
theaters, cable/dish, etc... there are so many options, so many new original
series, and it's nearly impossible to follow along with new releases. It's
great to have all this new content, but not if you can't find it.

Trailer Nite is a fun way of discovering new content on platforms that you
use. Every trailer is like a short film. It's about 2 minutes long with its
own tone, with its own entertainment value, and if you like it... you can
watch the real thing.

Anyway, this came out of a utilitarian need for me and then grew to be more.
Hopefully it helps some other people out there that enjoy movies/tv like I do.

\-------

Backstory:

A few years ago, I got into a show recommended by Hulu. After the second
season ended, I was like "Hmm, I wonder when the next one is coming out?"
Turns out, the show had already been canceled for a year. I had never even
heard of it. I probably would've watched it if I knew about it. That would've
increased their ratings (if enough people watched) and it could still be on
today; but it's not.

I've found several movies using Trailer Nite that I never heard about. Some
were recently released with several famous people starring in it, but it
didn't matter. I watch plenty of TV and I see plenty of commercials so it's
really surprising to me that this many movies and shows are released with
little to no advertising.

Edited for grammar / wording.

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falsedan
The scrolling is awful, it fades out the trailer roll if I stop moving my
scroll wheel. Looks like it's not resetting the 'hide trailer roll' timeout
when scroll events happen.

~~~
mattkenefick
The logic around that is:

If you're scrolling, it stays open. If you pause the video, it stays open.

If you stop moving your mouse, we wait a couple seconds then fade out. If you
move your mouse, it resets the timeout.

Some people would scroll a little then stop moving the mouse to watch the
current trailer and were expecting details to fade away since they were no
longer interacting with it.

I think I understand your point, but it's tough when some people expect A and
some people expect B.

~~~
falsedan
You should configure it to wait a second or two, instead of instantly
disappearing. It happened whenever I moved the scrollwheel as far as I could,
and then moved my finger to the other side of the wheel to continue scrolling.

Note that scrolling once and waiting causes the roll to stay up for a short
while before fading out. Scrolling a lot and waiting causes the roll to
almost-instantly disappear, when I expect the same delay as the first case I
described.

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mynameismonkey
Finding something the whole family can agree on would be great, this could be
a fun way to look at the options while training a picker. However... I am not
going to mix my watching habits with a Twitter or Facebook sign-in.

Secondly, under "Browse" one of the options is "Available Now". Does that mean
everything else is not (available now)?

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mattkenefick
1.) We'll save your list to localStorage so that you can come back to it later
on the same computer. The reason we have Facebook/Twitter sign-in is so you
can sync the saved list across devices. We chose FB/Twitter for single sign-on
so people wouldn't have to do email/password. We're considering adding Google
to it as well.

So you don't have to use login to save items for later; just use the same
computer next time and they should be there when you come back if that's what
you prefer.

2.) "Available Now" represents content that has a release date of today or
earlier. We do have some content on here that's unreleased, upcoming, or early
release.

I understand that "upcoming content" may conflict with the "Find something to
watch tonight," slogan, but considering that over 98% of our content is
available to watch now... I think it still applies.

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mynameismonkey
>We'll save your list to localStorage so that you can come back to it later on
the same computer

This will work really well on the HTPC (where all the debating happens) -
thanks for replying.

All I really want, and am still failing at, is something where I can say "I
have Netflix, Amazon and HBO" and then have recommendations from all of those,
but just those. I don't know if I want to browse HBO or AMazon, or whatever, I
want a TV guide to tell me what I might enjoy chosen from the services I have
access to...

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o_____________o
It looks like you're using the "Want to see" percentage as the Rotten Tomatoes
rating, this is misleading

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tfandango
FYI, maybe too late for you to see this, but I first looked at
browse->netflix, then I switched it to amazon, same movies listed there
(netflix movies). I did not sign in.

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ondrae
The trailer for the Netflix Barack Obama movie "Barry" is showing the
description and cover art for the HBO tv show "Barry".

~~~
mattkenefick
Good find. Saw the flags for that, it should be adjusted (depending on cache).

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brandoncordell
It looks really nice. Scroll wheel scrolling is broken though :(

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amritsub
which API are you using? AFAIK Netflix doesn't have an API

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always_good
Unfortunately modern trailers are just SparkNotes spoilers for movies.

For example, if you have seen Get Out, go back and watch the trailer. How are
you supposed to immerse in a movie when you know who the bad guys are upfront
and what the whole twist is? (If you haven't seen Get Out, I recommend just
watching it knowing it's a thriller)

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mattkenefick
It can be tough for thrillers / suspense films where it's best when everything
is a surprise, but I have no idea how you market something based on: "Trust
us, it's really good but we can't tell you anything about it."

Infinity War did some interesting advertising where they changed scenes
intentionally so you couldn't follow the timeline in the actual film. They
"lied" in the trailers, but I think it worked out for the best.

~~~
always_good
The Alien franchise has some good marketing material that both interested me
without knowing what the movies were about:

\- The original trailer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEVY_lonKf4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEVY_lonKf4)

\- David's intro from Weyland Corp:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ7E7Qp-s-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ7E7Qp-s-8)

I know it's kind of a lame time to rant on this subject. Obviously trailers
are popular despite how I feel. For example, I'm probably the only person in
the theater that closes my eyes and plugs my ears for previews that look any
good (not just thrillers), so I certainly don't think your project is a bad
idea.

