Ask Slashdot: Movie/Video Search Aggregation? 96
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?"
Re:square peg round hole (Score:5, Interesting)
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:square peg round hole (Score:2, Interesting)
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 wireless. It's been a mixed blessing. I now have one less device and one less remote cluttering the entertainment center and the Tivo is, as always, superb for watching TV.
The Netflix functionality built into the Tivo, however, just sucks. You can't search; you can only view your instant queue. While there's always an iPad on the coffee table that I can use to search and update the queue, then go back to the Tivo to watch, I still find that to be a painful kludge of a workaround.
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), starting up the video is not always a smooth process. Sometimes the screen goes black and nothing happens; you have to back out and start over. Sometimes the initial buffering progress bar shows up and, still, nothing happens. Start over.
I will, however, say that once the movie starts, it rarely pauses to buffer. When it does, it generally just stops and bounces completely out of the movie, back to the movie information screen.
I love Tivo and will never give it up but their Netflix implementation is crap. I can't tell you how many times I've found my sister watching a movie on Netflix using her iPad while sitting in the living room, right in front of the main TV/entertainment center, with the big TV turned off.
My point: The Netflix streaming experience varies widely with the method/hardware used to access it.
Re:playing Devil's advocate (Score:5, Interesting)
My problem is I work a menial job and have only moderate brainpower so I don't think I will every be able to work on the questions of space travel.
But I love to watch movies about it.