Right now I see a lot of folks making light of Covid-19 by coming up with silly pun-based names for sites, groups, etc. and I totally understand why: Many of us (especially in tech, where layoffs have been less bad than other sectors) currently associate this event with staying indoors, being kinda bored, trying to find things to do to pass the time. People are intellectual aware that there’s a deadly virus out there, but haven’t really emotionally reckoned with it.
But I feel pretty confident that there’s going to be a whiplash change in public perception over the next month, as a large percentage of the population comes to know Covid-19 as the thing that killed friends or members of their families.
So if you (the reader, this isn’t necessarily aimed at GP) are considering naming something after Covid-19, Corona(virus) or the word “pandemic”: I understand where you’re coming from, but I’d advise you to think twice. You really don’t want your brand to remind someone of the month they spent tending to a loved one with fluid in their lungs.
There are plenty of Hitler jokes out there, and a ton of hurricane jokes for every hurricane that blows through the US. Cancer patients are sometimes sardonic about their condition. I really don't think a death toll of 100,000 is enough to stop people from using gallows humor to cope. In fact, the higher the death toll, the more gallows humor you are likely to see.
Further evidence: Coronavirus jokes have not become taboo in China.
I’m honesty quite fed up with how people are treating this like a fun vacation. I’m a wedding photographer. This is going to ruin me financially, the same year we were planning on doing IVF after trying for a baby for over two years.
In addition, my father is in his late 60s, has lupus, and recently finished cancer treatment. My mom has an “essential” job so there’s a risk of transmission from her.
In short, everyone please be aware of how this is affecting people. Don’t complain if you’re still getting your paycheck. It’s fine to make jokes, but for god’s sake if someone is talking to you about how it’s going to make life hard for them don’t say “yeah, it’s going to be hard on everyone.”
While that certainly seems like a reasonable and legally distinct name to me, 'Golf with Friends' was forced to change its name by Zynga, so be careful with that.
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
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
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 , 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.
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)
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.
It didn't seem like Discord sent desktop audio with the screen share. Does it do so, or did your friend do some magic to get it to work? I've read for ex you can use pulseaudio on linux to mix the input sources and then use that virtual output for Discord, but I'd be happy to find an easier way.
You are, and if you're in a big channel that brings a lot of attention and Discord notices it they'll probably shut it down. Same reason people don't just usually stream movies from Twitch. I've seen some Twitch channels that do, like the popular Bob Ross channel, but that's with approval of the rights owners who get a cut of the revenue.
Keep it small and intimate in Discord and it will probably be okay.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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?
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
I don't believe it would be considered public. IANAL but "According to the U.S. copyright law (Title 17, United States Code, Section 110), a public performance is any screening of a videocassette, DVD, videodisc or film which occurs outside of the home, or at any place where people are gathered who are not family members, such as in a school, library, auditorium, classroom or meeting room. " https://www.prattlibrary.org/research/tools/index.aspx?cat=1...
As far as i know (form my college days in mid-2000s), we had this issue for setting up movie nights. Some people claimed that rented videos had an agreed-upon audience of (i think) 8 people. So to accommodate, let's say 100 people, we had to rent about 12 of the same videos.
Of course, we were in college and laughed and said screw it and just rented the one DVD.
I’m not sure about the rental license, but copyright law says this:
To perform or display a work “publicly” means—
(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.
Most movies are intended for personal, private viewing only. If you're watching a movie in a group with your family and friends in your home, there is no issue under copyright law. Similarly, if you rent out a space for a private party and screen a movie for family and friends, and the party is exclusive to your guests and closed to the general public, there will not be a copyright law violation. However, if your event was open to members of the public outside your small group, the movie showing might be considered a “public performance."
If the showing is considered public, you are restricted by copyright law. Typically, you can't legally show a movie to the public unless you obtain public performance license from the copyright owner. You can obtain a public performance license by either contacting the copyright holder directly or by licensing from entities set up specifically for the purposes of licensing movies, such as Swank Motion Pictures or the Motion Picture Licensing Corporation.
> 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.
What? The market brought you the personal computer revolution, the mobile phone revolution, the internet revolution, your Xbox, etc and “all you remember” is shared movie viewing?
depends on whether you think creating a small research network is a bigger contribution than the billions spent by the private sector to build it into what it is today.
having an idea or even a reasonable prototype is often not the hardest part of building something useful.
No. At least not the one that has useful stuff on it. Companies selling it to consumers and consumers/businesses putting stuff on it is what made it such a resounding success.
The internet created by the government was just a network connecting research labs together.
> how would it be different from me renting a movie at home and having friends over?
It would be different because Netflix has a contract to pay money for that licensed content, and sooner or later, that contract will need to be renewed. At that point, a Hollywood exec and a Netflix exec will sit across a boardroom table, and the Hollywood exec will say, "Your offer sounds OK, but we need to stop this watch party thing."
Whether that demand makes sense to your or I or the Netflix exec is moot. The Hollywood exec wants it, and it doesn't matter why, because they get to decide whether Netflix can keep licensing that content.
Or maybe Netflix could say "no this is a service we are providing to our users" and then the big "Hollywood exec" would be like "ok maybe we will not sit on the million dollars we get from our agreement" and that would be it.
not exactly sure how to parse your wording for the Hollywood exec, but I assume you're saying Netflix has the leverage and the Hollywood person has to shut up and take the money?
that doesn't seem to be the case in reality. Netflix streaming doesn't really have a lot of big Hollywood movies.
Content is king; Netflix, as long as it doesn't have exclusive rights, is just a middleman trying to extract rents. As soon as technically competent competitors popped up (Amazon etc.) Netflix's margin on licensed content is liable to be squeezed.
That's why Netflix borrows so much to spend on creating its own content. It's not viable otherwise.
How much content are you going to sacrifice to preserve a feature? Which draws in more customers, having good content to watch or the ability to do it in a party format?
Ideally you have both, but if forced to choose, you choose whatever makes sense for your business.
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.
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.
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.
It's not as easy as dropping a link in a server and saying, hey come checkout my turntable room. I know that some voice chats have a music bot that works similarly for youtube though.
plug.dj is the closest to turntable, in that they use embedded youtube/vimeo videos synced between all the users in the room.
Completely offloading their biggest cost (media storage/bw) into public video platforms -- genius.
I would honestly recommend jqbx.fm instead if you have a spotify premium account. plug.dj goes through constant ownership changes, prolonged site closures, and suffers from over gamification+monetization. JQBX is a much cleaner experience with much better support for mobile / streaming on different devices that are connected to your Spotify account.
The closest I've come is auxparty.com; the Spotify integration is great and being able to pull from your own playlists makes queuing tracks a lot easier.
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.
I recommend adding an archive of the past emails so I can review the content before signing up. You also get web visitors that way, people that would rather read websites or via RSS.
208 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadI would call it "CoVid: watch videos together, remotely."
But I feel pretty confident that there’s going to be a whiplash change in public perception over the next month, as a large percentage of the population comes to know Covid-19 as the thing that killed friends or members of their families.
So if you (the reader, this isn’t necessarily aimed at GP) are considering naming something after Covid-19, Corona(virus) or the word “pandemic”: I understand where you’re coming from, but I’d advise you to think twice. You really don’t want your brand to remind someone of the month they spent tending to a loved one with fluid in their lungs.
Further evidence: Coronavirus jokes have not become taboo in China.
In addition, my father is in his late 60s, has lupus, and recently finished cancer treatment. My mom has an “essential” job so there’s a risk of transmission from her.
In short, everyone please be aware of how this is affecting people. Don’t complain if you’re still getting your paycheck. It’s fine to make jokes, but for god’s sake if someone is talking to you about how it’s going to make life hard for them don’t say “yeah, it’s going to be hard on everyone.”
PS sorry, I couldn't resist
Playback control is currently not supported.
https://musicpd.org/
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.
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
It's heavyweight and probably better to just sync by somebody shouting a timestamp, but if you need things synced there you go.
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)
Works now. Thanks for reporting.
Keep it small and intimate in Discord and it will probably be okay.
YMMV. This usually barely works for me, I suspect you need a really steady, high-speed upload to make this work.
Other apps/browsers are limited to 720P and don't use hardware-level Content Decryption Modules
Mind sharing how it works and what stack you used?
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/
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
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.)
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.
It works by basically redirecting to the streaming website.
Would anyone be willing to share their hulu account with me so I can test it? bingehulu@simon-frey.com
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!
Binge Together, still needs everyone involved to have an account with the streaming services, thoug.
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.
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.
Of course, we were in college and laughed and said screw it and just rented the one DVD.
But I never went back to check up on this.
To perform or display a work “publicly” means—
(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
LegalZoom writes:
Most movies are intended for personal, private viewing only. If you're watching a movie in a group with your family and friends in your home, there is no issue under copyright law. Similarly, if you rent out a space for a private party and screen a movie for family and friends, and the party is exclusive to your guests and closed to the general public, there will not be a copyright law violation. However, if your event was open to members of the public outside your small group, the movie showing might be considered a “public performance."
If the showing is considered public, you are restricted by copyright law. Typically, you can't legally show a movie to the public unless you obtain public performance license from the copyright owner. You can obtain a public performance license by either contacting the copyright holder directly or by licensing from entities set up specifically for the purposes of licensing movies, such as Swank Motion Pictures or the Motion Picture Licensing Corporation.
https://info.legalzoom.com/article/copyright-laws-related-us...
What? The market brought you the personal computer revolution, the mobile phone revolution, the internet revolution, your Xbox, etc and “all you remember” is shared movie viewing?
having an idea or even a reasonable prototype is often not the hardest part of building something useful.
The internet created by the government was just a network connecting research labs together.
It would be different because Netflix has a contract to pay money for that licensed content, and sooner or later, that contract will need to be renewed. At that point, a Hollywood exec and a Netflix exec will sit across a boardroom table, and the Hollywood exec will say, "Your offer sounds OK, but we need to stop this watch party thing."
Whether that demand makes sense to your or I or the Netflix exec is moot. The Hollywood exec wants it, and it doesn't matter why, because they get to decide whether Netflix can keep licensing that content.
that doesn't seem to be the case in reality. Netflix streaming doesn't really have a lot of big Hollywood movies.
That's why Netflix borrows so much to spend on creating its own content. It's not viable otherwise.
Ideally you have both, but if forced to choose, you choose whatever makes sense for your business.
bingetogether@simon-frey.eu
I know a bunch of replacements popped up, but nothing seemed to capture the same kind of magic...
Which was the coolest online concert experience I ever had.
I recorded a session. But sadly, not the system audio. But you can get a feel for the experience.
https://youtu.be/08SvwB9S53U
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.
[1] https://www.thinking-about-things.com/
Already subscribed now and excited to review few emails and their content. Thank you for starting and maintaining something like this.