6 ms·

Show HN: Omive – Find movies based on genre, rating, directors and more

132 points by caffeinewriter 12y ago

walden42 12y ago
Nice idea. It'd be great to have a MPAA rating as well to be able to filter out family-friendy movies (e.g. G, PG) and vice versa.
heyalexej 12y ago
Love how the frontend is implemented. It's also quite snappy. I've recently watched a tutorial on neo4j where they used this kind of app as an example. Is it built on top of a graph database? One odd thing I noticed is how the actors seem to be ordered alphabetically starting with special chars. I'd fill all the tabs that have word values with the most popular/relevant ones as a default/starting point. Search results might also have a count (like Google for example) so users have a clue through how many pages they have to click.
staunch 12y ago
Great job! I've long wanted to work on this problem because I think there's so much more that can be done. You definitely seem headed in the right direction. 1. I want to follow all my favorite movie-makers and actors and get an email every time they make something new. 2. I want to go through all the movies they've made that I missed. 3. I want to discover new great people to follow by finding great movies. In order of importance, for me. Good luck!
- dewey 12y ago
  I'm in the same boat, I was always looking for a way to get notifications when a new movie from a certain director or with actors I like is available, get a list with all the movies they were starring in or just get notifications if a movie produced in a certain country is available. Ironically the solution which works best are the notification settings from Gazelle [0] based private movie trackers. I blame the lack of sites offering this feature on the very restrictive IMDB API which isn't exactly fun to work with and expensive to get access to if you don't want to work with a dump which doesn't even include the latest data. [0] https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle
  - Chronic29 12y ago
    I'd rather stick to Google for searching movies.
nawitus 12y ago
I think the best site for finding movies is this: https://www.icheckmovies.com/ https://www.icheckmovies.com/ The lists are very addicting.
- cipher0 12y ago
  I was contemplating working on something similar due to my frustration with not remembering which episode I watched last of something, thanks! [Edit] The website has "keep track of all the movies and TV series you have seen" in the list of features but I wasn't able to add a show and check off episodes as I expected when I read that.
  - nawitus 12y ago
    You can add episodes if you want to.
  - Ecio78 12y ago
    If you have an Android phone I'll suggest you to try the app called Series Guide: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.battlelancer.seriesguide&hl=it https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.battlelanc... I use it exactly for that purpose. According to the page you can sync the info with https://trakt.tv/ https://trakt.tv/ (so maybe you're more interested in it than the app) but I found the app really handy, you finish an episode and you flag it on the app, that's it!
superasn 12y ago
The UI is very cool. Very easy to use and quick to search and aesthetically pleasing. Also thank you for not making me sign-up / sign-in with twitter first. I have already found 4 new sci-fi movies to watch so far :)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
erming 12y ago
Oh, I will so use this! Anyway, some feedback: When loading the page, a wild scrollbar appears (Chrome). A temporary overflow: hidden; on the body would probably solve this.
minimaxir 12y ago
Where are you getting this data from?
ammmir 12y ago
this is great! one suggestion would be to update the suggestions under each filter type based on the current search results. for example, say i'm interested in Sean Connery movies. now that i see the results, it'd be nice to further filter the results by rating, director, etc. the directors tab would show all unique directors appearing in the current search result set. maybe there's a better UX paradigm for this drill-down approach, but i think it would be a great addition.
yarone 12y ago
FYI I looked for the top documentaries on Amazon (Rating 9-10). Saw Africa. Clicked the Amazon link. It took me to the wrong Amazon link for a different Africa: http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Greg-Wise/dp/B00B99QINY http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Greg-Wise/dp/B00B99QINY EDIT - Seeing the same issue with other Amazon links.
- aaronblohowiak 12y ago
  http://www.fan.tv/shows/38235-africa/seasons/1 http://www.fan.tv/shows/38235-africa/seasons/1
araes 12y ago
This (multi-dimensional filter/search) is what I've been hoping IMDB would do for the last 5 years (and amazed they hadn't). Thank you, this is awesome, and an easy bookmark for a completionist. Although it weirds me out how much of the 7-10 sci-fi list I've seen.
silentbob46 12y ago
Looks like the data from different sources doesn't always match up properly...for example: Search for comedies, rated 8 and up, available on Netflix between 80-120 minutes long. Towards the bottom, you see a link to "Loaded" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/), released in 2013. Only IMDB says it's coming out in 2015. And the link to Netflix plays this "Loaded" from 1994: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/ Overall though nice concept and execution...hope this helps.
cpursley 12y ago
This is fantastic. Really creative UI. I've already found several movies to add to my Amazon/Netflix watch list that I didn't even know existed. Is there any way to sign up? I'd love to use it for movie wish lists and taste profile that auto-recommends. Otherwise, I may forget about the site (busy, etc etc).
resiros 12y ago
Great job! It would be nice if I could mark the films that I've already watched so that they don't come again.
aaronblohowiak 12y ago
If you like hacking on this sort of thing with a much larger dataset (hundreds of thousands of movies / millions of episodes) across dozens of streaming, dvd, vod, ratings, etc sources please reach out -- ablohowiak@fan.tv . You can see our current implementation of this on the iPad app under "smart browse". We're starting to work on our next implementation of smart browse soon. Our problem is also fun because we integrate with MVPDs (like Time Warner Cable) and unify streaming/live/on-demand in one set-top box.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Is there a TV/Movie equivalent to http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicBrainz http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicBrainz ?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
daurnimator 12y ago
Looks good :) Feature request: filter by released on dvd/bluray. I'm not a big fan of going to the cinemas, so its good to see what's available to watch from home. Netflix and Amazon streaming aren't everything!
kampsduac 12y ago
Cool. Would love to use something like this to see what service I can use to watch it. Finding a movie is hard enough, it would be nice to have help finding how to watch it at the same time.
- throwaway344 12y ago
  http://www.canistream.it/ http://www.canistream.it/ seems to work for me.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
chandika 12y ago
Awesome! Also - wouldn't it be better if Ratings, Votes were not ranges but had lower bounds? Ex. 7+ rating and 50K+ votes. I saw that you can choose multiples, but you'd rarely search for a 7-8 rated movie and not want to see a 9-10 in the result set :)
jaysonelliot 12y ago
Wonderful interface (once I realized that I was supposed to scroll down for the results). The only parameter I'm missing is what country the film is from. British crime movies are my favorite, and I'd love to be able to filter it down to the UK.
- shyn3 12y ago
  This! The actor drop down, year, directors all confused me. Not sure what you can do there though but looks really nice.
hindsightbias 12y ago
Neat - for my personal tastes, I've found that I only trust IMDB ratings and anything in the near the 7.5 range regardless of vote count - always hunting the missed movies. But can't find something like this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220644/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220644/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2 Searching on a rating of 7-8 and Johnnie To even if I put in 1-3K votes matching the imbd count. Which, btw, someone uploads to youtube every few weeks.
jdprgm 12y ago
Obviously a good UI and everything. I would suggest adding rating as an PG, R, etc as another filter. Also if there was some way to integrate with netflix and filter out all the movies I have already seen from my watched list. There should be a third party provider that keeps track of watched movies/tv shows and your ratings for them that could provide an api to the likes of netflix and anyone else that wanted it. The problem with sites like this is like 95% of the results fall into the category of I have seen it or I already know about it and don't want to see it. An app that could accurately show me movies I haven't seen or heard of that I would actually want to see would be so incredibly useful.
- shire 12y ago
  Rating PG, R, etc would be very cool because I watch movies with younger siblings.
sirdogealot 12y ago
Looks great! But your "votes" section that I browsed seems to be listed rather oddly. Items seem to be listed randomly. They don't seem to be listed by title, date, number of votes, overall score, or anything really. It would be nice too if you allowed the user to rank each list by whichever column they felt was most important to them.
Lobosque 12y ago
Awesome! I would suggest adding a filter for movies or shows.
pritambaral 12y ago
I'd suggest a way to share the current filter state. For example, if I want to send the list to my friends.
- dewey 12y ago
  I agree, some kind of permalink would be neat so it's possible to bookmark a selection you want to go through later.
chatmasta 12y ago
Damn, this is an awesome interface. Nice job. I did have one super minor moment of confusion. I'm on iOS 7 on an iPhone 5. I tapped "genre" then "action," and then my choice appeared at the bottom of my screen in the white triangle. I did not realize there was more content if I scrolled down the page, so I was confused why nothing changed except the appearance of my choice. So I would recommend finding a way to make it clear scrolling is available if you can't tell.
SNvD7vEJ 12y ago
Just excellent. Great user interface, simple and efficient. What is the rating and vote count based on? IMDB? RottenTomatoes? Maybe an option to sort the list would be useful. Edit: The search for key words work a bit unexpected. Typing a title, for example "Things We Lost in the Fire", returns many seemingly random movies, but not the movie actually named "Things We Lost in the Fire" Maybe a sort based on the Levenshtein distance could be used to sort the result when seraching on key words?
- TimPetricola 12y ago
  The rating count seems to be based on IMDB (the name of the argument passed to Omive's server is imdb_rating).
eghad 12y ago
Where are you getting your data from? It seems like you're running into problems with new shows/shows that share the same name as movies. For instance Utopia (UK sci-fi/thriller/mystery) or Fargo (TV show).
ryan-allen 12y ago
This is seriously cool, and fast! Great UI! Thanks for helping me find new stuff to watch on Netflix :) EDIT: Feature requests! * Please let me star movies for later! * Please make it auto-scroll when you hit the bottom! It looks like you DIY'ed this up with a bit of jQuery, am I right? Super cool.
reuwsaat 12y ago
This is great until it sells out to Amazon like IMDB or Goodreads. The problem isn't the interface. The problem is our relationship with our own data. It's no longer ours.
- walterbell 12y ago
  I wonder why a community metadata-base was possible for music (http://musicbrainz.org/ http://musicbrainz.org/), but not TV/movies?
happyhammy 12y ago
Imdb already has this, it's called advanced search
ivanhoe 12y ago
Interesting service, but your UX could be better on big screens (haven't tested on phone/tablet). I click on one of the tabs like Genre or Year and I'm presented with the 1500+ pixels wide hodgepodge of tags. It's very hard to read and puts a lot of mental strain on visitor to scan through that list of tags and find the one of interest.
afro88 12y ago
I'd love to know how you got the initial data on your servers. Did you just do a massive API scrape of IMDB, Amazon, Netflix etc? How do you keep it up to date?

132 points by caffeinewriter 12y ago

Nice idea. It'd be great to have a MPAA rating as well to be able to filter out family-friendy movies (e.g. G, PG) and vice versa.

heyalexej 12y ago

Love how the frontend is implemented. It's also quite snappy. I've recently watched a tutorial on neo4j where they used this kind of app as an example. Is it built on top of a graph database? One odd thing I noticed is how the actors seem to be ordered alphabetically starting with special chars. I'd fill all the tabs that have word values with the most popular/relevant ones as a default/starting point. Search results might also have a count (like Google for example) so users have a clue through how many pages they have to click.

staunch 12y ago

Great job! I've long wanted to work on this problem because I think there's so much more that can be done. You definitely seem headed in the right direction. 1. I want to follow all my favorite movie-makers and actors and get an email every time they make something new. 2. I want to go through all the movies they've made that I missed. 3. I want to discover new great people to follow by finding great movies. In order of importance, for me. Good luck!

dewey 12y ago
I'm in the same boat, I was always looking for a way to get notifications when a new movie from a certain director or with actors I like is available, get a list with all the movies they were starring in or just get notifications if a movie produced in a certain country is available. Ironically the solution which works best are the notification settings from Gazelle [0] based private movie trackers. I blame the lack of sites offering this feature on the very restrictive IMDB API which isn't exactly fun to work with and expensive to get access to if you don't want to work with a dump which doesn't even include the latest data. [0] https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle
- Chronic29 12y ago
  I'd rather stick to Google for searching movies.

nawitus 12y ago

I think the best site for finding movies is this: https://www.icheckmovies.com/ https://www.icheckmovies.com/ The lists are very addicting.

cipher0 12y ago
I was contemplating working on something similar due to my frustration with not remembering which episode I watched last of something, thanks! [Edit] The website has "keep track of all the movies and TV series you have seen" in the list of features but I wasn't able to add a show and check off episodes as I expected when I read that.
- nawitus 12y ago
  You can add episodes if you want to.
- Ecio78 12y ago
  If you have an Android phone I'll suggest you to try the app called Series Guide: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.battlelancer.seriesguide&hl=it https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.battlelanc... I use it exactly for that purpose. According to the page you can sync the info with https://trakt.tv/ https://trakt.tv/ (so maybe you're more interested in it than the app) but I found the app really handy, you finish an episode and you flag it on the app, that's it!

superasn 12y ago

The UI is very cool. Very easy to use and quick to search and aesthetically pleasing. Also thank you for not making me sign-up / sign-in with twitter first. I have already found 4 new sci-fi movies to watch so far :)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

erming 12y ago

Oh, I will so use this! Anyway, some feedback: When loading the page, a wild scrollbar appears (Chrome). A temporary overflow: hidden; on the body would probably solve this.

minimaxir 12y ago

Where are you getting this data from?

ammmir 12y ago

this is great! one suggestion would be to update the suggestions under each filter type based on the current search results. for example, say i'm interested in Sean Connery movies. now that i see the results, it'd be nice to further filter the results by rating, director, etc. the directors tab would show all unique directors appearing in the current search result set. maybe there's a better UX paradigm for this drill-down approach, but i think it would be a great addition.

yarone 12y ago

FYI I looked for the top documentaries on Amazon (Rating 9-10). Saw Africa. Clicked the Amazon link. It took me to the wrong Amazon link for a different Africa: http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Greg-Wise/dp/B00B99QINY http://www.amazon.com/Africa-Greg-Wise/dp/B00B99QINY EDIT - Seeing the same issue with other Amazon links.

aaronblohowiak 12y ago
http://www.fan.tv/shows/38235-africa/seasons/1 http://www.fan.tv/shows/38235-africa/seasons/1

araes 12y ago

This (multi-dimensional filter/search) is what I've been hoping IMDB would do for the last 5 years (and amazed they hadn't). Thank you, this is awesome, and an easy bookmark for a completionist. Although it weirds me out how much of the 7-10 sci-fi list I've seen.

silentbob46 12y ago

Looks like the data from different sources doesn't always match up properly...for example: Search for comedies, rated 8 and up, available on Netflix between 80-120 minutes long. Towards the bottom, you see a link to "Loaded" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/), released in 2013. Only IMDB says it's coming out in 2015. And the link to Netflix plays this "Loaded" from 1994: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110374/ Overall though nice concept and execution...hope this helps.

cpursley 12y ago

This is fantastic. Really creative UI. I've already found several movies to add to my Amazon/Netflix watch list that I didn't even know existed. Is there any way to sign up? I'd love to use it for movie wish lists and taste profile that auto-recommends. Otherwise, I may forget about the site (busy, etc etc).

resiros 12y ago

Great job! It would be nice if I could mark the films that I've already watched so that they don't come again.

aaronblohowiak 12y ago

If you like hacking on this sort of thing with a much larger dataset (hundreds of thousands of movies / millions of episodes) across dozens of streaming, dvd, vod, ratings, etc sources please reach out -- ablohowiak@fan.tv . You can see our current implementation of this on the iPad app under "smart browse". We're starting to work on our next implementation of smart browse soon. Our problem is also fun because we integrate with MVPDs (like Time Warner Cable) and unify streaming/live/on-demand in one set-top box.

walterbell 12y ago
Is there a TV/Movie equivalent to http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicBrainz http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicBrainz ?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

daurnimator 12y ago

Looks good :) Feature request: filter by released on dvd/bluray. I'm not a big fan of going to the cinemas, so its good to see what's available to watch from home. Netflix and Amazon streaming aren't everything!

kampsduac 12y ago

Cool. Would love to use something like this to see what service I can use to watch it. Finding a movie is hard enough, it would be nice to have help finding how to watch it at the same time.

throwaway344 12y ago
http://www.canistream.it/ http://www.canistream.it/ seems to work for me.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

chandika 12y ago

Awesome! Also - wouldn't it be better if Ratings, Votes were not ranges but had lower bounds? Ex. 7+ rating and 50K+ votes. I saw that you can choose multiples, but you'd rarely search for a 7-8 rated movie and not want to see a 9-10 in the result set :)

jaysonelliot 12y ago

Wonderful interface (once I realized that I was supposed to scroll down for the results). The only parameter I'm missing is what country the film is from. British crime movies are my favorite, and I'd love to be able to filter it down to the UK.

shyn3 12y ago
This! The actor drop down, year, directors all confused me. Not sure what you can do there though but looks really nice.

hindsightbias 12y ago

Neat - for my personal tastes, I've found that I only trust IMDB ratings and anything in the near the 7.5 range regardless of vote count - always hunting the missed movies. But can't find something like this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220644/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220644/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2 Searching on a rating of 7-8 and Johnnie To even if I put in 1-3K votes matching the imbd count. Which, btw, someone uploads to youtube every few weeks.

jdprgm 12y ago

Obviously a good UI and everything. I would suggest adding rating as an PG, R, etc as another filter. Also if there was some way to integrate with netflix and filter out all the movies I have already seen from my watched list. There should be a third party provider that keeps track of watched movies/tv shows and your ratings for them that could provide an api to the likes of netflix and anyone else that wanted it. The problem with sites like this is like 95% of the results fall into the category of I have seen it or I already know about it and don't want to see it. An app that could accurately show me movies I haven't seen or heard of that I would actually want to see would be so incredibly useful.

shire 12y ago
Rating PG, R, etc would be very cool because I watch movies with younger siblings.

sirdogealot 12y ago

Looks great! But your "votes" section that I browsed seems to be listed rather oddly. Items seem to be listed randomly. They don't seem to be listed by title, date, number of votes, overall score, or anything really. It would be nice too if you allowed the user to rank each list by whichever column they felt was most important to them.

Lobosque 12y ago

Awesome! I would suggest adding a filter for movies or shows.

pritambaral 12y ago

I'd suggest a way to share the current filter state. For example, if I want to send the list to my friends.

dewey 12y ago
I agree, some kind of permalink would be neat so it's possible to bookmark a selection you want to go through later.

chatmasta 12y ago

Damn, this is an awesome interface. Nice job. I did have one super minor moment of confusion. I'm on iOS 7 on an iPhone 5. I tapped "genre" then "action," and then my choice appeared at the bottom of my screen in the white triangle. I did not realize there was more content if I scrolled down the page, so I was confused why nothing changed except the appearance of my choice. So I would recommend finding a way to make it clear scrolling is available if you can't tell.

SNvD7vEJ 12y ago

Just excellent. Great user interface, simple and efficient. What is the rating and vote count based on? IMDB? RottenTomatoes? Maybe an option to sort the list would be useful. Edit: The search for key words work a bit unexpected. Typing a title, for example "Things We Lost in the Fire", returns many seemingly random movies, but not the movie actually named "Things We Lost in the Fire" Maybe a sort based on the Levenshtein distance could be used to sort the result when seraching on key words?

TimPetricola 12y ago
The rating count seems to be based on IMDB (the name of the argument passed to Omive's server is imdb_rating).

eghad 12y ago

Where are you getting your data from? It seems like you're running into problems with new shows/shows that share the same name as movies. For instance Utopia (UK sci-fi/thriller/mystery) or Fargo (TV show).

ryan-allen 12y ago

This is seriously cool, and fast! Great UI! Thanks for helping me find new stuff to watch on Netflix :) EDIT: Feature requests! * Please let me star movies for later! * Please make it auto-scroll when you hit the bottom! It looks like you DIY'ed this up with a bit of jQuery, am I right? Super cool.

reuwsaat 12y ago

This is great until it sells out to Amazon like IMDB or Goodreads. The problem isn't the interface. The problem is our relationship with our own data. It's no longer ours.

walterbell 12y ago
I wonder why a community metadata-base was possible for music (http://musicbrainz.org/ http://musicbrainz.org/), but not TV/movies?

happyhammy 12y ago

Imdb already has this, it's called advanced search

ivanhoe 12y ago

Interesting service, but your UX could be better on big screens (haven't tested on phone/tablet). I click on one of the tabs like Genre or Year and I'm presented with the 1500+ pixels wide hodgepodge of tags. It's very hard to read and puts a lot of mental strain on visitor to scan through that list of tags and find the one of interest.

afro88 12y ago

I'd love to know how you got the initial data on your servers. Did you just do a massive API scrape of IMDB, Amazon, Netflix etc? How do you keep it up to date?