I dusted off an old app (2012 or so) that I wrote for me and my girlfriend who are in a long-distance relationship which I call "Date Night Movie Player". It needs updates and she mentioned that she missed using it. Basically it lets two people sync watching a video/movie together, while chatting in a side transparent overlay and has a remote control with interesting buttons like timed "beer break", "bathroom break", along with pause so you can draw an arrow on the screen or circle something of interest. There is also a button that might (it is random chance and you can only do it a few times) let you steal the remote control from the other user. Only the person with the remote can really pause after all! It gives the experience of watching a movie together and being able to comment about things happening like when we are together.
Have you seen the YouTube Watch Together app on Discord? It's built into the client
I have! It was one of those "I should have moved when I had the chance" moments. But such is life as a developer.
I would 100% pay for this as a big movie fan and living away from my gf
Interesting to hear. One big thing I had to address was the fact that she lives in a rural area with very slow internet access and I don't. So I built in and option for us both to select a movie and a time for the date and it would pre-download a high-quality version.
It's a shame that apps like these are "illegal". There's so much fun innovation to be had.
I don't think the apps themselves are illegal any more than VLC is illegal. You could likely watch something on the app that is illegal depending on where you live.
Maybe the legality is clearer if they are self hostable? Then all the liability is on the user who downloaded the movies in the first place
I think this is the way to think about it. Mine was a desktop application with no central server.
Would love to learn about this. I am building something similar for my family
I had this usecase, Ended up using google meet and screensharing.