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Show HN: I made an app that helps you find where to stream movies and TV shows (whereto.stream)

335 points by danilotanic ↗ HN
I often found myself searching for that one movie or TV show not currently available in my country. Whether it was on Netflix, Apple TV, HBO, or any other platform, the effort to pinpoint the precise country of streaming availability routinely became a burdensome task. Realizing the need for a streamlined solution, I created one. Now you can effortlessly find your desired content and simplify your entertainment journey beyond borders.

169 comments

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datguyfromAT
i guess there are not a lot of public apis provided by streaming providers like netflix which makes your service very unreliable. I am from austria and for rebel moon part 2, which is a netflix exclusive, no available streaming providers are listed.
monstajoe
Yeah I'm curious myself. Did you find an API for it, or did you build your own that scrapes the internet for services that offer this content?
danilotanic
This will be a primary focus moving forward — improving the reliability of displayed information. We're currently working with an API that doesn't come from any official streaming providers, which, as you mentioned, generally do not offer such support.
Protonu3102
Loved your app, searched for a movie that I wanted to watch but it wasn't in my country. Thanks for this app.
danilotanic
Appreciate the kind words! I'm looking to improve the product with more advanced features in the near future, so stick around :)
100721
How is this different / better than justwatch?
vundercind
Justwatch’s UI has gotten a ton worse recently, I assume to make it more likely for people to click sponsored links. It’s getting really hard to use. Last time I used it it was bad enough I thought “hm, this has achieved enshittification, time to look for an alternative…”
lencastre
JW never really works outside the USA. Honestly…
soci
hmm, I don’t share the same experience. Works flawless in EU.
dewey
Any specific issues you were running into? It's a German based company and we try to be as accurate as possible everywhere.
chgs
Doesn’t matter too much as this coincides with the streaming services dying too. Netflix has just decided to force adverts on me, so that’s been cancelled.
oefrha
> the effort to pinpoint the precise country of streaming availability routinely became a burdensome task.

Which is why bittorrenting, TPB and shit are making a roaring comeback (if it ever faded).

cess11
I think there was a slump for a while. Usenet has probably been going relatively strongly through it though, but it comes with a cost which means it's not a direct alternative to torrents with their seeding-and-ratio-based communities.
me_me_me
there was drop for year. A platform where you watch your fav shows, that remembers where you stopped watching, auto loading next episode, skip into, persistent subtitles and dub options.

All of those were winning them business from people who have money but no time.

But now if a friend recommends a show or movie to watch. In time it takes to figure out where can I watch it, subscribing etc. I could be already watching it from torrents.

I dont have to mentaly juggle subscribing and unsubscribing from platforms that make it extra difficult to cancell etc.

Its too much hustle.

chrchr
This is nice! At first I thought it was wheel-reinvented https://justwatch.com, but unlike that site, this one shows you which services in each country have the content you're looking for, so that you can watch whatever you want, simply by traveling internationally, or by using a VPN.
danilotanic
That's correct. Thank you for your comment!
soci
At first, I thought you built a justwatch.com clone. But, after a quick inspection I realized you solve a related but different use-case where the user already paid for the streaming service holding the rights to the media, but not necessarily match the user’s country location. By enabling the user to check in what countries the media is available you also unlock a new business model based on VPN affiliation programs (brilliant!) instead of streaming service affiliation programs like justwatch does. I wonder if both revenues models are complementary in the long run.

It’s nuts that watching media from another country for a streaming service I pay for is as easy as changing my IP to the desired country. Does it really work in this way?

Also, I hope you can provide some light on whether you are gaining any traction and unlocking vpn subcriptions revenue.

Suggestion: let the user select from what country it connects And/or automatically detect it. I’m in Europe and it’s confusing it offers me to stream from my own country using a vpn.

GrifMD
It's been a few years since I've used a VPN with streaming, but I recall some services not working well with it. I was in Australia with NordVPN to the US on a fibre connection.
yurishimo
Yea it all depends on if the service allows it. Netflix commonly showed me a “sorry you’re using a vpn so disable it” message and no amount of new sessions or incognito windows or exit nodes would fix it.

Perhaps this has changed since that time, but I imagine it’s more likely a pacification measure to streaming services to point to for rights holders and if it “accidentally breaks” all the time, they can point the blame at someone else and spend 6 weeks “fixing” it, only for it to “break” again a couple of weeks later. /tinfoil

dspillett
> Netflix commonly showed me a “sorry you’re using a vpn

> Perhaps this has changed

It is an ongoing arms race. Sometimes the VPN providers are winning, sometimes the streaming services make a temporarily successful counter-offensive, sometimes the battleground is a mess with things working for some mixes of vpn/country/streamer but not others.⁰

The streaming services block the address ranges of known data-centres, though not commercial addresses more generally because there is often enough a cross-over between residential and commercial ISP accounts¹² so that is one workaround VPN providers can use in their choice of exit points (though bandwidth can be significantly more expensive that way than from a DC).

I'm not aware of it actually being done, but I'd not be surprised to find a less ethical VPN business hasn't tried to use their customers as a mesh and redirecting traffic around them as needed much like botnets use compromised hosts to forward requests. There are obvious technical difficulties here that make it a less practical idea³ but I can imagine someone trying it.

--

[0] Reference: I don't use a VPN this way myself, preferring the other major unlicensed media access route, bit I know a few people who do with varying levels of success over time.

[1] My home account is essentially a commercial one as that is the ISPs main customer base, I use them for a number of reasons (fixed IPv4 that I can run servers off, in fact a /29 of v4 addresses though that is a lot less important to me now than it was some years ago, native IPv6 which is still no commonplace here (though I still haven't set that up properly after all this time!), much better support when things fail, so I'm not the one spending time chasing BT OR, etc.)

[2] Similarly, many small offices actually run their access off what is targetted as a residential account. And small businesses based in/around a home are another grey area.

[3] In many places most residential users have significantly asymmetric bandwidth, throttling their ability to be used as a relay, and a mix of accounts from different countries looking to come from the same address might trip the streaming services' account anomaly detection heuristics.

supriyo-biswas
They could just use the country of the credit card as an indicator for what movies to allow access to.

I believe the reason for not doing this is simply because streaming providers would like to keep that option open to avoid losing a customer.

yurishimo
There is also the very real part of life that exists in traveling. Especially if you live in Europe, you can find yourself in a different country with different media rights in less than an hour or two in a lot of cases. In those scenarios, it's important to not only manage the complexity of your own customers and the needs of the business as well.
yieldcrv
Residential VPN

they're just blocking data centers

OJFord
Netflix never works for me ('title not available try another one or again later' or something, on everything). I'm not even using it to try to change my country, wish there was some other way to verify that. (Or better, that licencing was such that they just didn't care, and nobody would need to use one to change country anyway.)
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TylerE
Ironically the US is one of the worst countries to use as a streaming endpoint because so many of the primary rightsholders are based here, and only license content to their preferred network.
fastball
justwatch.com lets you check different countries as well.
ant6n
I used to pay for a service that only ran the Netflix country detection through a VPN, so we could switch countries easily. But Netflix cracked down on this service and VPNs about 5 years ago and it stopped working. Oh well.
jedberg
> It’s nuts that watching media from another country for a streaming service I pay for is as easy as changing my IP to the desired country. Does it really work in this way?

Not anymore. Netflix will block your account if the same device jumps countries faster than is possible via normal travel. Also they block all the public VPNs.

frankvdwaal
Man, there are a whole bunch of sites that cover the Netherlands, but they always seem to be out of date or dog slow to the point of timeouts and ad-laden.

This is fast and accurate - just type it in and boom. Why can't the web be more of this? Made for people, you know?

danilotanic
Haha I appreciate your comment and I'm glad you managed to find what you're looking for!
Lewton
https://whereto.stream/movie/8810?provider=hbo

Why does it claim that mad max 2 is streamable on hbo in denmark? Decided to watch the trilogy this weekend and had a laugh that only the first and the third was available here

sunnybeetroot
I also found it mentioned movies in my country yet they were not visible on Netflix.
14
It is funny how pirating is still by far the most convenient method of them all. Streaming services is becoming much like cable tv was and the various tiers of service. I simply use Yandex.com and type "x" movie stream and then can watch anything I want at a moments notice. I tried to pay for netflix and currently still have amazon prime but netflix stopped allowing my kids to use the account at their moms house so canceled. I just taught my kids how to stream free movies instead.
DeathArrow
Content is available on Stremio on any country. Problem solved.
lnxg33k1
Yeah its the only way to keep sanity, and to fight back greed, like having one series with seasons split between different services
GordonS
How is the UX with Stremio? Would it pass the "wife test"?

Like, does it buffer and cut out constantly, or require fiddling with settings all the time, or does it Just Work(TM)?

j1elo
Stremio works with plugins. There's certain plugins that are able to fetch contents directly from torrent downloads, so the typical warnings about torrenting apply there (not to receive an undesired letter on the mailbox).

However, that same plugin is able to use some paid for services that download the torrents for you, which is safe(r).

IMO if subtitles aren't needed, it does pass the wife test once it's all configured. Subs wouldn't pass it though; it's common having to fiddle with sync settings to fix them. Chromecast casting definitely doesn't pass the test either: it is finicky, it resets the connection completely for each change (like seeking or changing subs), and it very frequently ends up erroring out with issues.

GordonS
Ah, so realistically it's only likely to be a good UX when combined with a paid download service. I think I know which one you're referring to (at least, I only know of one such service, which I learned about from Reddit).

I have an Amazon Fire Stick, which works flawlessly with Plex across my local network, so hopefully Stremio works as well on it too.

DeathArrow
It passes the wife test with certain add-ons. The good thing is once you configure it on PC with add-ons, settings persist over TV, mobile and Mac apps.
coffee_
My wife loves this! Thank you building it as I’m sure she will use it tons.

Feature request: There’s a streaming service called Viki that has a show called “Lovely Runner” — the site doesn’t seem to contain Viki as a source.

danilotanic
Glad to hear that! We'll look into adding Viki and many other streaming services as a source. Thanks for your feedback.
lencastre
I’m exploring as I write this. In the age of VPNs, one could pass some filtering query and get cheapest to buy/rent, include/exclude countries, include/exclude platforms, and finally,… metacritic, steamDB, IMDb, RottenTomato. Is this in the works, already done?

Great stuff!!

danilotanic
Definitely on the roadmap. Thank you for your feedback!
supuun
it’s a pleasure since I’m Georgian, but there seems to be a bug that Georgia appears in every list without any logic.
victorbjorklund
Great. I would use this all the time of you added this functionality (that no one seems to have):

A filter to see all movies/series that stream in say France but not Germany.

That way you can find something new when you are abroad (or avoid starting a new series on the vacation that you can't continue at home).

danilotanic
Implementing soon! Thank you for your feedback.
highwaylights
This is really neat. I hope you dont mind some feedback as I’ve used a few web apps like this in the past and have a fair idea of my own needs as a user that you may or may not find useful:

I think your app would really benefit from letting me pick the country upfront (I.e. in the header). After this it would be useful to see the streaming options as soon as I’ve selected a movie or tv show with one-click, and with the free options at the top of the list.

Beyond that, it would be nice if you could link me directly to the streaming site’s player page so that I can begin watching right away.

Another really neat use for this would be an app for Android TV/Roku/Apple TV that lets me browse and link directly to content. They all have their own implementations of this but they’re pretty inconsistent when it comes to gaps in supported services.

Staple_Diet
Stremio (with add-ons like Watch Hub) does most of what you describe.
noisy_boy
Suggestion: in addition to the ability to select the "home" country, add an option to select the VPN provider I'm using so that it further filters to only show the countries where the provider has a server.
eps
From what I see this looks like an affiliate link farm for NordVPN.

Every single movie I tried shows up as being not available in my country with "Stream with NordVPN" slapped next to it. Even though they are available just fine.

zopper
Seems like the best way to monetize this. Doubt anyone will regularly pay for the website and banner ads are annoying. Buying a VPN is the logical next step if you find a movie in a different country, might be nice to have multiple affiliate links but this seems like a win-win, it makes it easier to get a VPN for someone who isn't too familiar and the creator earns a bit for their work.
vidyesh
I always wondered how does affiliate for such sites work? justwatch too has affiliate links to all streaming networks.

Do they sign up for affiliates for every available streaming network (which isn't possible as many don't have a program) or is there a syndicate affiliate network for this?

I am building an price aggregator for a category of products and its so hard to sign up for each of their affiliate individually and balance everyone's T&C.

lm28469
Many have hidden programs. First you bring them the traffic, then you call them and discuss an affiliate deal
INTPenis
You don't have to obey every button online, you can make your own decisions and use your own vpn.
addandsubtract
Some VPNs don't work with Netflix, for example, though. I've never used Nord, so can't judge them, but there's definitely a difference between VPN providers when it comes to streaming support.
crtasm
The point being made here is that the site is incorrect or lying about availability, I think?
andridk
I'd appreciate a top-level country filter. It helps reduce noise, and can still allow you to put VPN affiliate links when there are no matches.
sunnysogra
Nice! I tested a bit, the UI is clean and better than justwatch. Searched for a couple of movies and they are available. Congrats on the launch and thank you for sharing this with us. I will share my feedback and feature requests after using it more.
danilotanic
Thank you for your support! All feedback is welcome, especially as we iterate and improve.
serial_dev
Improvement ideas: let the user set their country. If I live in Germany, and I don't want to bother with VPN, knowing that a TV show is available in Argentina and 30 other countries is not important.

Also, I don't think this takes care of the case where some seasons of a show is available but not the others. Maybe that's also the reason for false negatives in some cases (others mentioned this).

Another thing: be able to search by subtitles and audio. In our household, we speak three languages, and I can't watch shows in 2 out of 3 with the standard location. It's also great for people learning languages (common VPN pitch).

Overall, great stuff! The mobile view's information density is very low, I can see 1.7 tiles, so I always need to scroll.

Tapping on the tiles doesn't do anything apart from changing the background.

Some more preset selections would be nice like "Sitcom".

Recommendations based on the selected movie would be also great, for example when I'm watching HIMYM, I'd not mind seeing where Friends is available (it's basically the same jokes but a decade apart with different actors).

felsokning
Along the same lines to your suggestion (thus, piggybacking): A filter based on principal language of the movie[s].

For example, if I want to discover new movies in German, Swedish, Norwegian, etc., I have to know the name, first, for the search operation; otherwise, I just movies with the term in the title (e.g.: Svenska returns Svenska tv-historier, Svenska fall, Svenska Hollywoodfruar, Barncancergalan - Det Svenska humorpriset, Svenska Truckers, and Svenska Powerkvinnor).

Which leads me to a suggestion, based on that:

If there's no steam available, don't return the result in the search[1]. The whole intent of the site to show "where to stream" but if there's no stream, returning a result with the message 'Sorry, we couldn't find any streaming information.' is a bit of a false positive -- in a "we have it but we don't" sense.

[1] - https://whereto.stream/tv/113371

nervousvarun
Definitely would be useful and worth adding but think the idea was to show other countries (for VPN IP-spoofing purposes).

Agree though it should have home country as the default (but also still show other countries in case your home country isn't streaming).

pipes
Random question, what VPN is good for location spoofing. My current vpn doesn't work for this purpose which is annoying
_heimdall
NordVPN worked like a charm for me when I needed to spoof countries for video streaming a couple years ago.
PastorSalad
A lot of streaming services have wised up to dynamic IP ranges and will kick you off pretty quick. I use a service with a dedicated residential IP in my target country and that’s worked flawlessly for over 5 years.
Galanwe
I use PotonVPN since a while and it works like a charm.

A note though, since some years now using a VPN is not really the panacea for streaming country restricted movies, as more and more the deciding factor is the originating country of your credit card.

danilotanic
That's an extremely valid piece of feedback and something I'm planning to spend more time clarifying on the platform so that people know how to navigate those and similar issues. There are cases where it's not only the credit card that's a deciding factor, but sometimes even the country from which you were creating your account (e.g. Prime Video).
miki123211
If you only need a single country, nothing beats a tiny VPS company based there. The kind of place where setting the VPS up takes a few hours because an employee has to do it manually. Those companies are usually small enough to escape the notice of streaming giants.
hashtag-til
Changing countries is very useful. You may want to have a look on "JustWatch" app.
foehrenwald
How would it work as a NordVPN ad then - probably the only reason this site exists, with astroturfing HN comments to match...
tiltowait
Really does seem to be the case. I just tried with The Omen and was given a list of countries. Next to the US was an ad to "Stream with NordVPN", suggesting that's the only way to view it here. However, I clicked the Hulu button, and it said US without the ad. Sure enough, I checked Hulu itself, and it's there—no VPN required.

The ad placement is confusing. Hopefully it's not intentional. JustWatch may not be as clean and may have ads of its own, but its entry for the same movie has zero confusion.

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cpeterso
> let the user set their country.

Or use GeoIP to assume a default country, but allow the user to change their country or clear the country filter. MaxMind has a free offline GeoIP database that’s good.

If the developer wants to keep the full country list, they could move the GeoIP identified country to the top of the list and/or highlight it for easy access.