One site to rule them all is the mission of Reelgood, a service that just came out of beta on Monday and aggregates all the major cable and over the top (OTT) services in one place.
SEE ALSO:Netflix is totally destroying Hulu, Amazon, and YouTube in battle for screen timeThe beginnings of the site came together back in 2015, launched by former Facebook product manager David Sanderson and Catharine Burhenne-Sanderson, who is also a veteran of Facebook and Twitter.
Using the site you can search for shows on nearly any streaming service (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Showtime, HBO, and more) and then click on a particular episode to be taken to the exact, ready-to-watch episode on the external service's site. You need to be logged in separately to that site (e.g. Netflix), but assuming you don't log out of your streaming services frequently, Reelgood offers a quicker way to access your favorite shows, as well as discover new ones.
Credit: reelgoodEvery show is also listed with a rating from IMDB as well as a synopsis. Another feature lets you track various shows, a tool that helps keep you up to date on which episode you have or haven't watched. It might sound simple, but we're currently in the golden age of TV, and with so many new shows capturing our attention, a kind of "Google for streaming TV" is exactly what many of us need.
But what stops IMDB, with its robust movie and TV database, and backing from Amazon, from simply coming along and launching a similar service?
"Accurately matching the content libraries across all the streaming sources is a technical challenge no others have been able to crack," says Burhenne-Sanderson. "There is no industry standard ID to match up content, so a bunch of engineering work must be done to accurately match all availability and metadata. Thanks to the amazing ex-Popcorn Time developers we have on our team, we've been the first crack it. As a result, we've had a tremendous amount of inbound interest from major companies in our space looking to license our tech or use our data."
She wouldn't reveal Reelgood's user numbers, but if the activity on the beta version of the mobile app is any indication, this is something a lot of TV addicts have been waiting for.
For now, the free service is primarily accessible via internet browser, but the company plans to launch an official iOS version of the service in August.
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