Ask HN: Service to find minimal set of streaming providers?

Re:Ask HN: Service to find minimal set of streaming providers? by robcohen on Thursday March 10, 2022 @05:16PM (#30633255)

It think something like this would need to scrape the information from each service, which sounds like a lot of scraper upkeep for a variety of different sources.

I think a more interesting question is whether there is a public API that has data for what shows are on what services. The app itself would be pretty easy to build with good data coming in.

My strategy is to subscribe to a service if I want to watch something on it, binge everything worth watching on the service then unsubscribe and repeat in 6 months or a year. Yeah, I need to stop watching television.

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Re:Ask HN: Service to find minimal set of streaming providers? by mttjj on Friday March 11, 2022 @12:26AM (#30636573)

This was my thought too (about the API part). From my experience, the TV app on Apple devices has a pretty good search and it shows you all the services a show or movie is available on- even the ones you aren’t subscribed to. For example, if I search ‘Modern Family’, it tells me I can buy seasons 1-11 on iTunes, watch seasons 1-11 on Hulu, watch seasons 1-11 on Peacock, watch season 1 on the ABC app, season 7 on the NBC app, and for some reason also watch specifically season 7 on 6 other apps (Bravo, Syfy, USA, among others).

I really doubt Apple has a public endpoint for these searches and data but I also have never really looked. The point is they’ve done the scraping; they have the data. If someone can leverage it and do the curation, I can see a really useful product.

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Re:Ask HN: Service to find minimal set of streaming providers? by rlewkov on Friday March 11, 2022 @10:48AM (#30641301)

Thanks, I'll have a look at this. Have been thinking of cutting the cord from cable and want to know most economical way of getting my must-have set of shows/networks

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