[HN Gopher] Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming servi... ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: API to query catalogs of 20 streaming services across 60 countries Author : Saepirist Score : 281 points Date : 2022-01-09 12:13 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.movieofthenight.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.movieofthenight.com) | Cyph0n wrote: | Small typo in the list of countries: "United Emirates" -> "United | Arab Emirates". | marban wrote: | https://reelgood.com/ is really good. (US-centric) | bcook wrote: | Account required? | michaelmcmillan wrote: | Cool! Do you login with one account bouncing off 60 IP addresses? | simlevesque wrote: | They say "streaming" but mean "video streaming". I thought it | included music too but it does not. | hotgeart wrote: | You should add an order by: Rating, Year, etc. | Saepirist wrote: | It's already supported! Different plans have different order by | fields supported but if you have Ultra or Mega plan you can | order by the following fields: | | original_title, year, imdb_vote_count, imdb_rating | capableweb wrote: | Great website! One thing that is missing: Availability is not the | only criteria people use. One example: Last month I wanted to | watch Superhero Movie, but I was in Spain, where a lot of movies | are dubbed. I found out it was available on Amazon Prime (via | another similar website to the one in the submission) but when I | tried to watch it, it was only available in Spanish voice with | English/Spanish subtitles, so obviously wouldn't work. Instead I | had to result to using the holy pirate cove again to be able to | watch what I want. | | So if also audio/subtitles language could be added to this | service, it would make it 100% better and more useful for solving | the problem it's trying to address! | Saepirist wrote: | Thank you! Yes, I'm planning to add more details like these. | MailleQuiMaille wrote: | How often is the api updated ? And how did you collect the data ? | Very impressive | Saepirist wrote: | Thank you! The data is updated daily by automated tools that | checks the services regularly. | ape4 wrote: | This seems like the hard part. Does it need accounts with all | the services, use a VPN to appear to be in each country, use | a fake/rotating User Agent, etc | Saepirist wrote: | Depends on the service any of these might be needed. | toomanydoubts wrote: | What an uninteresting answer. People are interested in | the technichal details, come on. | Saepirist wrote: | Haha, sorry. But actually it's pretty much it. You need | VPNs to check catalogs in different countries, which is | tricky for some services (like Netflix) as they try to | block VPNs. So you gotta always have a large pool. | Catalogs of services like Prime Video is just there | without an account but for Netflix you need accounts to | see the catalogs (and not to send too many requests | otherwise they block you). | | Rest of it is just writing some regular crawlers. | toomanydoubts wrote: | Cool, thanks for expanding and congrats on the project! | chrismeller wrote: | I too would love more technical details on the harvesting | process. Something I've definitely thought about doing in | the past but wasn't patient enough to implement. | Readywater wrote: | I would kill for language options on this. Having been studying | Arabic while living in Northern Europe, none of the streaming | services have Arabic dubbed shows. The only thing I've found is | the expanse, which itself is in a different dialect than what I'm | studying. Being able to easily search by language availability | and subtitle availability would be wonderful. | salamandersauce wrote: | Only works for Netflix but unogs.com let's you search by | language and subtitle availability. | dzhiurgis wrote: | Not streaming but https://yts.mx/browse- | movies/0/all/all/8/latest/0/foreign has pretty good catalogue | | IMDB itself lets you filter by language: | https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature&releas... | but it's PITA to then go and search for these films | Saepirist wrote: | Thanks for the suggestion, planning to add more details about | these kinds of things. | edmcnulty101 wrote: | Very cool! | _of wrote: | Great project! | | Trying to find something good to watch on Netflix, my weekend | project consisted out of extracting all movies on Netflix and | sorting them by IMDB score. Here is the result: | | https://oscarfranzen.com/netflix-by-score/ | arthur_sav wrote: | You might want to include a "new releases" section. Sometimes | they release good stuff that is not rated yet. | grumpwagon wrote: | Do you support searching which country a movie is available to | stream in? | | For example the movie It is available in Netflix Austria (but not | many other Netflix regions), but to find that, I searched It, | then randomly picked countries from the dropdown list. It looks | like the API has country as a required field as well, so to do | this programmatically it would be similar. | Saepirist wrote: | It's available on the API, you can use /get/ultra endpoint to | see in which countries a show is available. Planning to add | that feature to the web app as well. | flippingbits wrote: | One of our customers is using your API to automatically generate | news for upcoming/changing/leaving shows. Keep up the good work! | freewizard wrote: | awesome tool! fount some interesting data explore the Compare | Streaming Services section [1] | | For example, Netflix and Prime Video are almost equal on total | number of shows (~5.5k movie + series) but on Netflix only 4% | shows are from pre-2000, while Prime has 20%. Also HBO Max has | half size of Netflix library, but when filter by IMDb rating and | voters, the gap is much smaller, and in certain cases HBO even | wins out. | | In terms of language diversity, Netflix is doing the best with | 45% content not in English, that is far more than anyone else | (except Zee5 which is primarily Hindi). However when it comes | down to a specific language, the number is usually much smaller | and around 100, which is less than ideal for someone primarily | consumes French/German/Chinese/Korean/etc. (tweeted more about | this [2]) | | [1] https://www.movieofthenight.com/compareservices | | [2] https://twitter.com/freewizard/status/1480246184887398409 | Saepirist wrote: | Thank you! Nice to see the compare page is being useful to | people. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Would be nice if it supported Kanopy, it has an eclectic catalog | for free if accessed with a library card. | nkrisc wrote: | I appreciate that this is available, so thank you. But it's | frustrating that this even needs to exist in the first place. | ju-st wrote: | My ublock origin adblocker is blocking ShareButton.js because of | "Fanboy's Annoyance" filter list (a default one) and not loading | ShareButton.js leads to a blank page. | [deleted] | Saepirist wrote: | Thanks for letting me know! Gonna check it. | hutrdvnj wrote: | Thx for explaining why I see a blank page, I have the same | problem. | shp0ngle wrote: | I'm in Vietnam, the results are wrong. | | I put the movie "Twilight" (the vampire cheesy movie) and the | results show me that there is no option, while it is on Netflix. | | https://www.movieofthenight.com/movie/Twilight/1912 | | https://www.netflix.com/search?q=twilight&jbv=70099113 | Saepirist wrote: | Thanks for letting me know! Gonna check how it went wrong. | tcmb wrote: | Also 'Succession' is available in Germany on Apple TV+, the | search says otherwise (not available at all in Germany). | Saepirist wrote: | Hey, just checked, in Germany it's available to buy on Apple | TV but not it's not part of Apple TV+. Currently the API only | supports Apple TV+. | tcmb wrote: | Oh ok, I misunderstood that. Thanks. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Apple TV+ is only content made by Apple. | ricardo81 wrote: | Very nice. Maybe you could build a recommendation engine on top, | Netflix seems to have a knack for recommending things I've | already seen. Relies in me telling you which films I like of | course, or an existing similar dataset. | Saepirist wrote: | Thank you! There's already a recommendation engine I've made | actually, it's the home page of the link I put: | https://www.movieofthenight.com/ | ricardo81 wrote: | Indeed, excellent work. Was thinking more of personal | customisation based on previous selections/ratings rather | than filters. | Saepirist wrote: | You can have that by signing in. Once you have couple of | stuff in your favorites list, in Feed page a new row called | "Movies for You" and "Series for You" will appear. Though | right now it's updated every 24 so it might take up to a | day for them to appear. | ricardo81 wrote: | Ah, excellent. I will most definitely give this a go. | BlueTemplar wrote: | I would assume that's quite a hard project, considering that | even for Netflix it took two decades of research and world- | class AI competition(s?) with a million dollar prize(s?) : | | https://netflixtechblog.com/netflix-recommendations-beyond-t... | | (Note that was for the much more USA-focused DVD by mail | Netflix, so the current problem might be even harder to figure | out !) | mason55 wrote: | https://www.tvtime.com/ | | TV Time does this somewhat - track what you've watched and | it'll recommend other stuff for you. It also shows where to | watch but needs some work on identifying what's free vs paid | streaming. | tantalor wrote: | Pricing: | | https://rapidapi.com/movie-of-the-night-movie-of-the-night-d... | | Free/Basic: 100/day | | Pro: 30k/mo @ $9.90/mo | | Ultra: 100k/mo @ $29.90/mo | | Mega: 1M/mo @ $99.90/mo | rusinov wrote: | Neat idea. But, I am checking Snowfall TV show | (https://www.movieofthenight.com/series/Snowfall/643) for Russia | and site says it is not available to stream in Russia, but it is | in reality, via Kinopoisk | (https://www.kinopoisk.ru/series/909854/). | beprogrammed wrote: | kinopoisk doesn't appear to be one of the 20 services it | searches. | rusinov wrote: | Got it. They get part of their content from Hulu, and if I | select US, results are correct. | slickdork wrote: | This is well done, thank you. As someone who's currently learning | a language using the refold method[0], this is really really | helpful. | | My one suggestion would be linking to letterboxd [1] in addition | to imdb -- the user scores on letterboxd are more accurate imo | than imdb as for what movies i'll like, and i can see what | reviewers I follow rated a movie, etc. | | [0]https://refold.la/ [1]https://letterboxd.com/ | benmanns wrote: | This is cool! At my day job I work on a lot of entity | resolution/record linkage and have wanted to do something like | this for TV/movie content. Maybe also linking against (ahem) non- | official sources. How are you disambiguating different shows and | movies and linking them to IMDb/TMDb? | Saepirist wrote: | I do have my algorithm to match them with IMDb/TMDb ids, though | of course it's not always 100% correct. | gurchik wrote: | I typed in Mad Men and it shows no streaming services for the | United States but I know it's available on Prime Video at least. | Saepirist wrote: | Currently it only shows free (included with Prime) shows on | Prime Video. I just checked it and Mad Men is only available | for buying or via AMC+ channel subscription. | gurchik wrote: | Interesting. I've been watching it and it's free (ad- | supported) with Prime. I have not bought it and don't have | the AMC+ channel subscription. | Jnr wrote: | Nice, maybe someone could finally make a site that shows how many | and which specific streaming services are needed to cover top20 | movies and tv series of the year. | jkukul wrote: | How would you define top 20 movies of the year? What would be | the criteria? | y4mi wrote: | Pick a site and use their list. | | I.e. IMDb, trakt.tv, rotten tomatoes etc. | _jstreet wrote: | I've been looking for this for some time. It's really useful to | be able to easily find out which streaming service a film/TV-show | is available on (or not on!). | | Are you making any profit off of this, or is there any way to | donate/contribute towards the upkeep of the project? | Saepirist wrote: | Hi people, | | I've been working on this API for sometime now. Thought I'd share | it here too. | | This API allows you to query what's available on 20 streaming | services (including Netflix, Prime, HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu) | across 60 countries. You can get the list of shows with filters | such as release year, genre, IMDb rating etc. You can also get a | show's global streaming availability via its IMDb or TMDb id. The | output includes show's IMDb/TMDb ids/ratings, direct url to | show's page in streaming apps, projected leave date from the | service if there's one, and other details such as genres, | directors, cast, runtime, overview, poster etc. | | There's also a free plan that allows you to make 100 requests per | day. | | Hope you'll find it useful. And let me know if you have any | comments or requested streaming services for me to add next. | ianbutler wrote: | This is great! This is exactly what I've been waiting for | someone to do. Google has done this on their "Google TV" device | for some time, you search for a show and it shows you results | across all of your streaming apps, it's not perfect but it | knows where most things are, and I was wondering when I'd see | an independent person release either an API or an App that does | something similar. Good stuff! | Saepirist wrote: | Thank you! | jacobwg wrote: | Looks great! How have you sourced the underlying metadata? From | past experience, access to such metadata, especially IMDb, was | rather heavily restricted, requiring a paid licensing agreement | for access. | | Does the Streaming Availability API use properly licensed data | sources? If so, you might mention this on the marketing site, | this would be a selling point for certain commercial projects. | For that matter, it might be worth mentioning if the API can be | used for commercial projects at all. | Saepirist wrote: | Hey, those are some valid concerns. | | Scrapping is still a gray legal area but recently there were | some court decisions in favor of scrapping already publicly | available data. | | The API can be used for commercial projects, it's stated in | Terms of Use on RapidAPI page but I'm gonna make it more | visible, thanks for feedback. | | Apart from that, obviously I'm not a lawyer and everyone has | to take their own decision but my two cents is that websites | that use streaming availability provided in this API should | be legally fine. In the end all you are providing to your | users are some links (that are already publicly available) to | streaming apps. | e40 wrote: | Reminds me of https://www.justwatch.com/ which is a non-API | version. Did they roll their own? Do they use your service? | dewey wrote: | It's all in-house, available in 84 countries and supports | thousands of streaming services. There is an API but it's | mostly available to larger partners: | https://www.justwatch.com/us/JustWatch-Streaming-API | | Source: I work at JustWatch. | dzhiurgis wrote: | Can I use it to find foreign films? Right now my best | option is yts torrent tracker[0] but there's a ton of hindi | films which I don't really like. | | Would be cool to find all non-english films from europe and | america. | | 0: https://yts.mx/browse- | movies/0/all/all/8/latest/0/foreign | atonse wrote: | I love JustWatch, it's the first place I go when I discuss | any show with friends, family, kids, anyone. | | My kids now, before we buy an episode, say "Dad check on | JustWatch if we can stream it for free anywhere" | | Do you have public examples of others that use your API? I | have a few ideas that can be used but no time at all to | build things :) | dewey wrote: | One public example would be TMDb (The metadata source | that also OPs project is using): | https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/568124-encanto/watch | elondaits wrote: | Letterboxd uses their API. I track my watchlist on | Letterboxd and can filter movies available to stream in | my subscriber services thanks to their use of the | JustWatch API. | timmg wrote: | Not sure it matters much, but I _had_ been using justwatch | often. It stopped working for me a while back: search just | wouldn 't do anything. | | I just cleared all my cookies and now it works again. | | Not sure how big the problem is, but at least for me, your | website seemed to be choking on its own cookies. | e40 wrote: | What a great website. I use it all the time. Thank you! | sborra wrote: | JustWatch is great. | | There's a trend in my country (Italy) where old movies are | being remastered in HD but not published on Blu-ray. | Instead, they're only made available on one out of a half | dozen or so streaming services. JustWatch helps me | immensely to spot new releases like that! | tcmb wrote: | I already commented elsewhere, but just wanted to add that this | is amazingly useful, especially via your 'Movie of the night' | service. I've bookmarked it and foresee to use it often! Best | of luck to you, I sincerely hope you get rewarded in some shape | or form for building this! | Saepirist wrote: | Thank you! | chris_st wrote: | I'm curious how you keep the results up to date -- found a | similar thing (without an API), and found lots of wrong results | as services add and drop movies. | endymi0n wrote: | I'm curious as well, as for so many countries ingesting and | matching that catalogue including error correction is | currently a full time job for more than a dozen people over 6 | years and 10k+ per month in infrastructure costs. | | Will check for canary traps tomorrow as I'm suspecting | they're just scraping us or our competitors. This is far too | expensive to build for how cheap they're selling it. | | Source: I work at JustWatch. | chinathrow wrote: | > Will check for canary traps tomorrow as I'm suspecting | they're just scraping us or our competitors. | | I bite: Aren't you also just scraping others? | Saepirist wrote: | Hey, it's nice to see you people under this post. | | Regarding your suspicion, surely this is not the first time | someone making a smaller-scale, more humble and cheaper | version of a future that some established companies already | have. | | There are two reasons for prices to be cheap: | | First one is that I'm a solo developer who has been working | on this for a couple of years now (I've launched the | website in 2017, and since 2019 I've been working on to add | streaming availability information). As I don't have a | dozen people working on this but only me, it's only natural | that my expenses are less than an established company. | | Second one is that when I decided to add streaming | availability information to my website back in 2019, all | the available APIs were either: 1-not available for small | developers like me, 2-too limited (like Netflix-only APIs), | 3-too expensive for my student budget (as I was still a | university student at that time). Due to that situation I | was in, one of my aims from the start was to make this | essential data available to small developers/teams/blog | sites. | Saepirist wrote: | The data is updated daily, so new/removed movies shouldn't be | a problem. | gukoff wrote: | Can I somehow get the list of all shows available on Netflix in | country X but not in country Y? | Saepirist wrote: | API doesn't offer that feature out of the box but I believe | you can pull off that with a bit of extra coding on top. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-09 23:00 UTC)