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Ask Slashdot: Movie/Video Search Aggregation? 96

Posted by Soulskill from the merging-millions-of-methods dept.
raolin writes "I have been running without television service for the last few years, relying instead on Netflix Streaming, Hulu Plus, Amazon, and my personal video library. I have the latter indexed and easily searchable, but I have not managed to find a good aggregator for the streaming services that I use, so when I have friends over and the question 'Can we see X?' is asked, I have to search three streaming sources, which is kind of a drag. I know Netflix has a search API that I could work with, and it seems at least possible that Hulu and Amazon do as well, but before I try to build something myself I thought I'd ask the community. Any thoughts?"
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Ask Slashdot: Movie/Video Search Aggregation? More

Ask Slashdot: Movie/Video Search Aggregation?

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  • I have never used it (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zsub ( 1365549 ) on Sunday April 15, 2012 @05:24AM (#39691691)
    but https://github.com/dacort/mwhich [github.com] MWhich seems to do exactly what you want?
  • I've been trying out http://gowatchit.com/ [gowatchit.com] . It allows you to set up a queue of desired movies and then alerts you when a movie is available to stream on a selection of feeds. My only complaint is that I've not found a way to distinguish between free (to me) and paid available sources.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Check out http://www.canistream.it

      It tells you the ones that are free versus paid. There are also iPhone and Android apps.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by green1 ( 322787 )

        I found a few problems here:
        1) it fails to search more often than it succeeds, even for movies I know for a fact are available on one of the services it claims to search
        2) if it does find something in a general search, it doesn't tell you which of the services it was found on, nor provide a link to go to it
        3) I never did manage to get the android app to find any movies at all, and it assumed portrait mode and wouldn't do landscape.

  • Solution already exists... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Have you tried http://zinc.tv? It works for me and does more than your 4 sites.

    • Clicker.com will automatically pull in your existing netflxi Queue and stay synced with it. This was the big deal for me. It meant I can continue using netflix as my primary but also find availability on Amazon or Hulu for the things netflix misses.

      The main problem with it is that it does not differentiate between free and paid so you have to go look.

  • google TV has it. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    googletv has it. i have Logitech Revue and it lets you search by name and displays where its available. but it not support hulu. searches amazon, netflix, cable, movie packages.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      if you configured your external media accounts in googletv, it will tell you whether its free/paid/rent and provides links to each.
      GoogleTV Search is neat.

  • Google it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm not trolling, I'm being serious. Do a google search that only includes particular servers with information about the material you want. For instance a google-search that only includes the hulu and netflix servers. You don't search the material, you search the index and it will take you to links that you click for the material.

  • I had one. gowatchit.com looks good for online. I like coollector for ripped video, it has a nice browse feature too.

  • Isn't this exactly what Boxee is for?

  • square peg round hole

    Streaming is the worst possible tech for your use. Download what you think you and your friends would like, watch later. Not as much buffering and related trouble, either.

    The standard /. automotive analogy would be your scenario is like randomly pulling over and stopping shipping trucks on the highway looking for a crate of model CA7094 air filters, instead of going to autozone and buying a air filter off the shelf.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeeeaahhhh, no. Netflix never buffers on me past the first time it loads the video. And I can just find a video I want and be watching it, without having to think hours ahead about what I want. It sounds like someone (you) hasn't used streaming technology since the 90's.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by BenEnglishAtHome ( 449670 )

        Netflix never buffers on me past the first time it loads the video. And I can just find a video I want and be watching it, without having to think hours ahead about what I want.

        Lucky you. What device are you using - your computer, sombody's little black box that hooks up to your TV, a TV with the right stuff built in, or something else?

        As a long-time Tivo devotee, I figured to dump my Roku box when I got my new Tivo a few weeks ago. For best connectivity, I used ethernet cable to hook it up rather than w

        • I think Tivo screwed the pooch by not including LOCAL streaming to its device. Im dumping my Tivo soon and switching to Xbox/MCE with CableCARD. No monthly fee($2 card rental), WAY better video conversion (Tivo 'highest' conversion setting is a crappy ipad resolution.) and streaming for everything. (with transcoding if needed). If they had jsut been able to make it stream to and from the device, I would own it forever, but all the nice streaming service integration on the Tivo is for naught if I cant also i

          • You actually CAN stream to your Tivo, at least using third party tools. (and no, I'm not confusing it with TivoToGo)

            Also, you talk about better video conversion -- you can download shows from your TiVo with lots of other tools, e.g. kmttg, and then convert them (if you want to) with any other tools.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by radish ( 98371 )

          Netflix on Tivo is abysmal, which is a shame because I love Tivo. Netflix on everything else (PS3, Xbox, PC, Roku, etc,) is pretty sweet. I bought a couple of WDTV streamers for under $100 each and use those for Netflix & local media streaming, keeping the Tivo for recorded stuff. It's a shame, but I have yet to find any solution which really works well for multi room cablecard DVR, network file playback & streaming.

          (and yes, I've looked at WMC, XBMC, Boxee and pretty much everything else - they all

        • What resolution does it stream in? In any case, it seems that the Tivo is rather the exception rather than the rule in this case.

          For me even with my cheap laptop or a cheap older PC, and on the cheapest slowest DSL plan, Netflix has always worked for me (as long as someone else in my family isn't streaming something else at the same time).

        • Once you've scrolled through your queue all the way to the bottom (no navigation buttons or methods that I can find except to hold down the "down" button),

          I'm not absolutely sure this works in the Netflix interface (which isn't built into the Tivo, AFAIK.. I think it's essentially a web app), but for the main Tivo menus, the skip to tick/30 second skip button ( ->| button) jumps to the end then to the beginning of a menu.. e.g. now playing or any other menu screen.

    • Re:square peg round hole (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nebular ( 76369 ) on Sunday April 15, 2012 @07:40AM (#39692103)

      Actually streaming is exactly what he wants to use. He doesn't want to pre-download what he or his friends might want to watch. He wants to just sit down and find out if he can watch x as soon as it pops into his head or his friends suggest it.

      In the automotive analogy, it's like he's driving down the road and he or his passenger wants a hamburger, but he has to check 3 different maps for Wendy's McDonald's and Burger King to see if there's one at the next exit. It would be easier if he could just check one place.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zsub ( 1365549 )
      Yeah, I concur. If friends are over and we want to watch a movie, either I already have it, or I can download it in about ten minutes, so while that is going on, we play a short boardgame or prepare some drinks and food and hé presto!

    • If it's some random thing my friends want to watch that there's a minimal chance I will feel the burning need for in the future, IMHO I'd rather stream it because a) I don't want to buy it and b) streaming for free is rather less illegal than downloading for free, right?

  • I found this thread [xbmc.org], but I don't know anything about its quality.
  • Hulu+, Amazon, Netflix, Xfinity and iTunes are all supported and you can toggle which services you wish to browse or search. Hope this helps.
  • seems to be great for finding television episodes. If you're looking for movies, zmovie.tv has been kind to me.

  • http://www.canistream.it/ (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    plus mobile apps ...

  • CanIStream.It (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Check out http://CanIStream.it
    CanIStreamIt searches Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Crackle, Blockbuster, Youtube Movies, EPIX, Vudu, Android, Amazon on Demand.
    There is also a reminder option for when movies become available.
    You can also download a free iPhone and free Android app.

  • This is exactly the problem that Clicker solves. It bills itself as the TV guide for the web. www.clicker.com The downside is it doesn't always index all the services right after they get a film. so even if it says no, still look and see. --Sam

  • XBMC Plugins (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Plenty of plugin's out there for XBMC [xbmc.org] of which Navi-X [navi-x.org] is one, and there are others over at XBMC HUB [xbmchub.com] so do check 'em out. I love XBMC its the best thing available anywheres right now.

    • Yessir thats the way to go! XBMC [xbmc.org] for the win! At least as long as you have unlimited cable or a very high cap heh. Especially since Boxee Box [boxee.tv] no longer supports pc's. :( Then theres PLEX [plexapp.com] and a few other variants out there, I'd stick to XBMC if I were you; plenty of plugin's and aggreators and repositories out there for XBMC you'll never be sorry.

  • Canistream.it (Score:3)

    by NevDull ( 170554 ) on Sunday April 15, 2012 @01:37PM (#39694235) Homepage Journal

    http://www.canistream.it/ [canistream.it] is a streaming (and physical media) metasearch for movies.

  • To take this down another tangent, why aren't sports available online? I'm missing a race today that I would love to be watching, but I don't get the channel it's on (NBC Sports Network). Of course, they won't provide a streaming option, even a delayed one. So, I'll be avoiding much of my online news sources for about a week, until I find some torrent I can grab and finally watch the race. Why is it so difficult?

  • AskSlashdot != Google laziness (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    http://www.google.com/#q=can+i+stream+it

    Not too hard.

  • Hey everyone, thought I’d post as I work in the Product group at Charter and we actually launched a service to let you figure out where an asset is available for playback online. If you go to http://charter.net/tv/ [charter.net] just enter an episode or movie into “What Do You Want to Watch”, we aggregate feeds from Netflix, Hulu and Amazon among others

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