How can I find my favourite films and TV shows on-demand?

How can I find my favourite films and TV shows on-demand?

​Latest news for finding my favourite TV shows on-demandPirates and freetards will forever cling to their tried and tested ways to get hold of their favourite shows. But now that more and more streaming services are providing legal access to the likes of Mad Men or The Newsroom, legal favourites-finding services are popping up. 

Yes we’ve been taken for a ride for years. As Judge Patel famously said in the 2001 Napster case, there’s no such thing as free lunch, but sometimes lunch is more expensive than it should be.

Nowadays lunch is not only less expensive (in some cases free) it’s widely available too. The problem is, while there’s plenty of services streaming TV shows they’re all in various places; Blinkbox, Sky Go, ITV Player, Netflix, 4oD, BBC iPlayer, Lovefilm, Now TV, and Acetrax to name a few.

Compared to The Pirate Bay or Newzbin, which lets you search for what you want, drawing in multiple sources, the law-abiding model still isn’t as convenient.

There are a handful of ways to search for your favourites: Oric aggregates on-demand content from a variety of sources. Sky Never Miss lets you set up reminders for programmes on Sky, and for those watching BBC programmes on their desktop, you can register with iPlayer and have recommendations sent to you. TankTop Movies lets you build a watchlist of films and shows you what’s on with which service.

Oric

Oric is a new service which tracks your favourite shows and lets you know when they’re available on various streaming services.

Oric has deals in place with Blinkbox, iTunes, Lovefilm and Netflix. This means you can get alerts for when new episodes of Game of Thrones, Alcatraz, Arrested Development and Breaking Bad are up for viewing.

Oric also combs services like BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and 4oD, meaning you can set up alerts for free to watch shows as well. Sky Go TV shows also feature in Oric’s alerts/recommendations search engine.

When you’ve found something you want via Oric, you can then click through to the relevant site or stream and start watching as you normally would. Note that Oric doesn’t host any shows itself, it points the way. Much like The Pirate Bay points the way to torrents, rather than hosting any content itself.

How can I be notified of when my favourite shows are available with Oric?

On Oric, setting up a profile is easy – you can choose to sign up and give them an email address (meaning you’ll be notified via email) or you can connect with Facebook meaning you can have alerts sent to you that way.

Alerts can be turned on and off through your profile on Oric’s site. You can tell Oric when you’re done watching a show and adding new shows to track is simple.

We spoke to Oric’s product manager, Richard Cappin, who told us that mobile apps are in the pipeline:

“We do have plans for apps but they’re a way off. The short term goal is definitely to improve the website with recommendations and genres first. The apps are going to be important, because push notifications will be useful for new and expiring episodes.”

The priority for Oric’s mobile apps will be to let susbcribers manage reminders on the go, but eventually to launch programmes too – provided you’d have the requisite apps (iPlayer, Netflix etc) on your phone too.

“Apps for iOS and Android are on the cards, but we know it’s tricky to launch a particular video within an app like iPlayer or Netflix,” Cappin added.

To start using Oric, check out their site here.

Sky Never Miss

Sky Never Miss is a reminder service set up for Sky TV subscribers. Signing in with your Sky ID will let you search for a movie, TV show or match and then set reminders from your computer. You’ll be emailed reminders a week before a programme or movie is coming up, or whenever a new series of a favourite show is due to start.

How can I be notified of when my favourite shows are available with Sky Never Miss?

Though you can only access Sky Never Miss through your desktop browser, any email notifications ought to be picked up by your phone.

Plus if you’ve got an iPhone or Android phone then you can set programmes to record on your Sky+ HD box thanks to the Sky+ app.

To sign up for Sky Never Miss, follow the link here.

BBC iPlayer

The standard desktop version of the BBC iPlayer lets you sign up for recommendations, and notifications when your favourite programmes are about to start. As well as accessing the BBC as you would, signing up for a BBC iD lets you access your selected programmes and recommendations from any computer where you sign in.

Note that you can only sign in to the BBC iPlayer on the web – iPlayer apps for your phone, tablet, smart TV, set-top box or connected Blu-ray player will not let you sign in and check recommendations.

How can I be notified of when my favourite shows are available with BBC iPlayer?

The email account you use to set up your BBC iD is where iPlayer notifications will be sent.

TankTop Movies

Currently in private beta test, TankTop Movies has a simple premise but hidden depths: you build a watchlist from a graphical selection of films available on Blinkbox, Lovefilm, Now TV, Netflix, Sky Go, BBC iPlayer and Virgin Movies.

You can also tell it which films you’ve watched, and which ones you’re not interested in.

TankTop Movies will connect you directly to the films you want to watch, wherever they’re available, and also tell you which services have the most of your films – if you’re thinking of taking a subscription this could help.

The final twist works through social media: if you’re signed in with Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest, you can cross-reference your watchlist with your friends’, and create a super-list of films you all want to watch.

Latest news for finding my favourite TV shows on-demand

• Tank Top TV allows viewers to compare the box set
• DiscoverTV app brings the Radio Times to your iPad
• Netflix fan site NewOnNetflix UK shows viewers what they’re missing
• Netflix pulls films from TankTop movies-on-demand discovery site
• Film fans need both Netflix and Lovefilm in the UK
• TankTop Movies film-finding service adds Sony’s free Crackle catalogue
• TankTop Movies matches your tastes to BlinkBox, LoveFilm, Now TV, iPlayer, Netflix, Sky Go and more
• Oric says Netflix top for TV but Lovefilm’s best for movies

Oric says Netflix top for TV but Lovefilm’s best for movies

​Neither one costs as much as a Sky or Virgin subscription, but it’s been hard to know whether Lovefilm or Netflix is best for TV or film – until now.

Legal online TV and film search site Oric has compared the numbers of movie titles and series of TV shows available on Netflix and Lovefilm Instant.

Netflix wins the TV contest, with 925 TV seasons compared to Lovefilm’s 589. That’s not surprising, with Netflix’s recent push into home-grown TV shows like House of Cards and Hemlock Grove.

Lovefilm Instant was best for movie buffs, with 3,284 film titles against 1,668 on Netflix.

The streaming video rivals shared 210 TV series and 260 films that users can find on both.

January 18, 2013