The sheer enormity of on-demand entertainment these days can make it difficult to find that needle in a haystack. Maybe you’re in the mood for 70’s movies. Maybe you just want to see what’s streaming in your subscriptions. But do you want to go to all your different services to find out? If only there was a service that did all that in one place.
Just Watch is a free service for those looking for something to watch. There’s a website and an Android application for you to find what you want. As far as looking at a movie and seeing where it’s available, it does a pretty good job. You can see whether or not it’s available for rent, for purchase, or part of a subscription you already have such as Netflix.
It also grabs TV shows as well. If you know what you’re looking for and want to know where’s the best place to grab it, it does a fine job.
But Google does that fairly well too, at least for mainstream stuff. Just Watch is aiming to help you discover stuff and that’s where I think it still needs some work.
The problem I had was in the searching and integration of the application to my services. In searching, it showed me what was released today, yesterday, day before and so on for all the various services I selected. There was no real way that I could find in the Android app to group them differently. So let’s say I wanted to filter by movies released in the 80’s, which I could do. (You can also do genre, free, stream, and many other different filters.)
Great. But since it only shows my 80’s movies in order of when they appeared on the service, it made it a little difficult to find what I wanted. If Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was put on Netflix back in November, am I gonna want to scroll that much back in April? Not likely and I’m probably not going to find it.
Sure if I search directly for that title, it’ll find it just fine. But that really isn’t good for those trying to find something to watch and really don’t know what’s available.
Then let’s say I picked something I knew I owned on VUDU, for instance. Selecting that opened up my browser on my phone to the VUDU site. Why not open the native Android app if it’s on my phone? It’s what I would use to stream it, why make me go through the browser where I have to log in? The lack of integration to the other native apps on my phone was frustrating.
Lastly when I set up my account on the website with my laptop, I selected all the streaming sites I pay for. That will automatically filter out the other services when showing me movies that are available recently. Sure, if I pick another movie that’s on Showtime only, it will tell me that. Otherwise it just shows my services, Netflix, HBOGo, Disney+, etc. I appreciated that.
However when I logged into the app on my phone, I had to pick my services again. Why didn’t this flow with my account?
Just Watch is a good idea and being free, I hate to come down on it too hard. But I’m looking for something that can give more than what Google already does. It does tell me perfectly where I can find a particular movie on what streaming service. But so does Google. I was really looking forward to it pulling together a genre by all my services but putting the results by order of when the movie first appears on whichever service I’m subscribed to really limits it.
Still, when you just want to see what’s come out in the last two weeks, it’s a handy little thing to have if you want a one-stop search engine. I just wish it had more options and better display results.
