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Show HN: Followshows – Never miss an episode again
- imtyler 14y agoI use http://mytvrss.com http://mytvrss.com (no affiliation). You check off the shows you watch and it creates a customized RSS feed for you. Combined with Google Reader I never miss a show.
- DanBlake 14y agoThats our site too! We are merging it into this one shortly though, so you will be a member shortly either way :)
- vadvi 14y agoI just registered, selected some shows then on the home page all 6 episodes of futurama are marked as "watched". why? also: is it possible to delete my account?
- DanBlake 14y agoAny comments/suggestions let me know
- jedmeyers 14y agoNice idea overall, it is really annoying to follow all the shows I usually watch. First suggestion - somehow differentiate between shows that are currently airing, postponed, and canceled/finished. There is no point in following Fringe, for example, however there is a point in 'liking' it in order to get better recommendations.
- DanBlake 14y agoThe point behind following the show would would be if you never saw it before. For instance, if I just started watching fringe, I would have multiple seasons to go through since I have never seen it before- I can still use the sites 'watched' feature per episode, to know where I left off.
- jedmeyers 14y agoI see your point, but for me 'following' the show means getting notifications about when the new episode comes out. What's the point in following when it does not move anywhere. In any case, this is an argument about terminology. I would have used something different for shows that will not be aired anymore. BTW, this is what I used before - http://eztv.it/showlist/ http://eztv.it/showlist/ I find this status page to be quite useful, however I have to check manually every time if new episode came out.
- DanBlake 14y agoCheck out our iCal and RSS exports- You can subscribe to the feed and never have to check the site again. http://followshows.com/settings http://followshows.com/settings
- zabeth24 14y agoI agree with the previous commenter that, perhaps, you could separate out "like" (to get recommendations) and "follow" (to get future updates) actions. When I first signed up, I followed only shows that will have future episodes, but I'd love my past favourite shows to impact recommendations.
- juriga 14y agoI've been using followshows for some months now and I'm very satisfied overall. It's quite useful for keeping track of shows regardless of where I watch them. There have been some issues with double items in the queue for some shows. For example, seasons 11 and 13 have the same episodes here: http://followshows.com/show/Naruto-Shippuuden/episodes http://followshows.com/show/Naruto-Shippuuden/episodes Minor issues aside, thanks for the nice app!
- jonathanberger 14y agoWhat's the "unlock code"? I search for home help text or some explanation for about 30 seconds but have been left puzzled.
- jschuur 14y agoThis is pretty much exactly the kind of site I was looking for a few years back and couldn't find, so I started to work on my own (but never got very far). Let me see if I can come up with a few of my ideas: Allow me to tell my followshows friends why I liked a show. I don't always want to tweet it out or post to Facebook, but I do want people who see I follow a show to know what I think of it. Or I want to be able to look at a show page and see which of my friends already have opinions about it. Show me trends among my friends. If lots of them start following a new show, I might want to check it out. Be aggressive about adding shows that aren't in TVRage or TheTVDB yet. I want to follow that Star Wars live action show right now, and see more info when it's available. Add shows the moment the upfronts announce them. Heck, even introduce a category of speculative shows where it's not clear if they'll ever air. Email me a reminder when shows come back. I see you've got an RSS and calendar feed, but it would be nice to get a weekly summary for stuff like 'Hey, Game of Thrones is back next week!' or 'Star Wars has a premiere date!' Really bummed you posted to Facebook by default when I just used it for authentication. That should not have been on automatically. Feel free to let me know if I can help out: @joostschuur.
- jschuur 14y agoHere's the perfect example for one of my suggestions: I just went to the pogdesign/cat site and saw there's an Under the Dome series coming up, but not for another 4 months. Can't add it to followshows yet though to get reminded about it closer to its air date.
- plasma 14y agoHey. 1. The name doesn't suggest I can watch shows (rather, just a reminder service) 2. Asked to login/register without being able to try/see the experience makes me close the tab - I haven't found out yet whether I like the service, why would I sign up?
- DanBlake 14y agoWe try to do that with screenshots, but you can imagine the process of tracking/watching shows without a account might be frisky since we could only base it on a cookie. I might try that though and let them convert afterwards
- zhobbs 14y agoYeah, I also need more information before I sign up. There isn't anything that tells me about the sources of the shows, the genre/region of shows, the availability of shows I care about, etc. I would suggest a "How it works?" section or something.
- zhobbs 14y agoAlso, to follow up, I stumbled onto http://followshows.com/popular http://followshows.com/popular and that helped me understand the service better
- yeonhoyoon 14y agoI'd like to find more about how the site works without signing up
- jedmeyers 14y agoI does not verify your email - just make some stuff up.
- DanBlake 14y agoHmm, I try to get that across on the homepage. Heres a screenshot of my logged-in homepage. Its basically a TV guide for stuff you watch. http://i.imgur.com/rwapTVk.jpg http://i.imgur.com/rwapTVk.jpg
- jacalata 14y agobut when it says 'watch online' - does that mean it's only going to help me track shows that are freely pirated online? I just want to get an email when Game of Thrones starts again for instance, or Dr Who: how will that work? I don't want to watch them on the web even.
- DanBlake 14y agoThats all it will do right now. It doesnt do anything with sending links unless we have free links to hulu/netflix/etc..
- stcredzero 14y agoWith the setup I have, Game of Thrones will just appear in a list in one of my iPad apps. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5185974 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5185974 As it is, Colbert Report and Daily Show just appear for me.
- jacalata 14y agoI don't have cable, so I will be watching it at a friends house. I just need an email telling me it will be on soon so I can invite myself over ahead of time ;)
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- racbart 14y agoIt looks nice but I still prefer http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/ http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/ for two reasons: They have more upcoming shows, so I can follow some promising shows when I hear about them and they'll show in my calendar half year later when they start running. I have four upcoming shows on pogdesign that weren't found here. I selected my time zone when signing up, only to be disappointed that all dates and times in the calendar are still in the US time. I live in Europe so the difference usually means it's already next day here when the shows are aired. pogdesign can handle that. Other than that, this looks pretty neat. Recommended shows seems well-chosen but I'd like to have “not interested” button so that the show would be hidden and another one would jump in. Keep up the good work and fix the problems mentioned above and I'll switch!
- zabeth24 14y agoHere's a second vote for adding upcoming shows!
- gcarre 14y agofollowshows developer here. I just added a "new tv shows" page: http://followshows.com/new-tv-shows http://followshows.com/new-tv-shows We need to find a way to be more proactive when adding new shows to our database, we're on it.
- DanBlake 14y agoThanks- The time zone thing is a tricky one, since obviously the shows air on US time but I know what you mean and I will look into it. Will work on the other suggestions as well- Thanks!
- geoffw8 14y agoFYI I prefer your design to theirs. Theirs is teeny on my Air
- stcredzero 14y agoI don't miss episodes. I'm also relatively unconcerned about MPAA stuff. I bought Automatic after a 2 week trial. I have it downloading on 15 minute intervals from tvtorrents.com (from the UK, while I'm US), based on my "New Favorites" custom account RSS feed. I specify some words to match a show's title, get the format I want (match ".mp4") and exclude ones I don't. (Don't match "720p", don't match "mkv".) The torrents get downloaded to a directory, where Transmission automatically detects and starts downloading them. The result: Shows appear in Air Video on my iPad, and I only press an entry in a list (Table View) to watch them. My "karma" (called gigacredits) on tvtorrents.com basically takes care of itself because I start downloading when a bunch of other people are also doing so. That said, TVTorrents.com is a bit clunky. (Along the lines of "2003 called. Wants its Java app server and web design back.")
- jschuur 14y agoThat isn't what followshows is about though.
- stcredzero 14y agoReally? This is a bit suspicious that I was downvoted, then. The front page says, "Watch TV Shows in your Browser," and "Easily know when your shows are on next." Other headline-sized text on the front page basically reiterates those two points. That functionality is basically already served by the setup I describe. (TVTorrents + Automatic + Transmission + AirVideo.) I would rather watch TV on my iPad on the couch or on my bed than in front of the PC. I also get the "Know when the next show is" in just a few clicks. If anything, my story points out a packaging issue, which may well be an opportunity. Only a programmer like me is going to stitch together the functionality of four apps to get the same effect. Let someone download a single tablet app, maybe download a "server" on their PC, and it all just works. There's issues doing this on the iPad, because of what Apple might or might not allow, especially with regards to torrents. As it is, it looks like someone wanting to promote the site downvoted me to suppress competition. Not very cool, if that's the case.
- DanBlake 14y ago
- hayksaakian 14y agoHow is this any better than say, Sidereel.com ?
- DanBlake 14y agoWell, I am biased but I think the interface is years ahead. I feel like I am on geocities/myspace on sidereel. We also have many unique features not present on there.
- hayksaakian 14y agoMaybe you could list them :)
- missenlinx 14y agoI receive errors when trying to login with facebook. I want to be able to test this service without being a member like http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/ http://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/ I have closed the tab sadly though i'd love to use it if given the chance.
- gcarre 14y agohum, might be because of this? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5185440 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5185440 (#1 on HN right now)
- missenlinx 14y agoSimply letting the author know.
- DanBlake 14y agoThanks, was actually a bug on our end
- barumrho 14y agoSo, how does watching shows work? Is it legal?
- Shank 14y agoI tried to login with Facebook, and was prompted to make a password anyway. Doesn't this seem to defeat the point of having OAuth sign-in in the first place? I don't want to remember your password, and you've already got my login tokens, so I shouldn't need to.
- codecool 14y agoAgreed. It defeats the purpose of Facebook login.
- codecool 14y agoJust signed up. The main reason of signing up is to check your recommendation quality. Will check when have more time. A calendar showing episodes airing date is a good feature.
- meaty 14y agoI'd rather like to see a version of this that lets me know which ones I've already seen so I don't have to waste my life watching them again.
- SchizoDuckie 14y agoLooks nice graphically, but it still doesn't solve my problem of automatically finding a torrent and downloading. Also, I don't want to register for yet another site that keeps track of some stuff for me, and I'd like to watch my shows on the TV instead of on a computer. I've submitted my own solution for this a to HN a couple months ago: http://schizoduckie.github.com/seriesguide-chrome/ http://schizoduckie.github.com/seriesguide-chrome/ It's a chrome plugin, that automatically shows you the magnet link with he most result from a TPB mirror whenever an episode of your favorite tv shows came out. Click that magnet link and it' ll be picked up by your favorite torrent client. This takes the hassle out of the wole process for me: - Get notified - Track what you have already downloaded - Find a TPB mirror that works, execute search, sort by most seeds I've also included a general TPB search to just find the most-seeding torrent for any search term.