Reelgood, a service that makes it easier for cable-defying TV users to find something new to watch and keep track of their favorite shows, is coming out of beta today with the launch of a new website that aggregates content from over 250 streaming services into a single interface. The end result is something like a TV guide for the new streaming era.
The startup launched in 2015 as an iPhone social networking app with a focus on movies. But the team soon realized that the real challenge for streaming users today is finding content. Shows and movies are spread across different services – making it difficult to keep track of what’s available where and find new content to watch.
If you subscribe to multiple services – and many do – you often have to scroll through different apps and interfaces, each of which only promotes its own content.
Reelgood founder David Sanderson explains this puzzle.
“Until now, people have accessed their content in a way that was driven by business needs – not consumer needs. People shouldn’t be forced to waste time every night switching between streaming apps to see if there are new episodes of the shows they watch or what content they have access to. Everything should be in one place and there should be no barriers between them and the perfect show or movie,” he says.
“You would never go to the websites of American Airlines, Southwest, Alaska, etc. to book a flight – you would just use Kayak,” Sanderson continues. “It’s time we offer the same experience for (video-on-demand subscriptions), and that’s exactly what we’re doing at Reelgood.”
The beta version of the website Reelgood launched last winter, offering a service for discovering shows and movies from what was then only a handful of the top streaming services, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and others.
Today, the site tracks a wider range of streaming sites and apps, including a large number of free, ad-supported TV sources — like Fox, CBS, ABC, CW, Crackle, and many more. It also tracks cable TV channels like FX, Starz, Showtime, and HBO.
When you first visit Reelgood, you can configure which services you want to see by checking off the ones you’re subscribed to. In addition, you have the option to search for free movies and TV shows.
The site offers a variety of tools for filtering and browsing the available content, including tools for browsing by genre or keyword search. It also displays rows of recommended content – similar to Netflix, but from a compilation of your favorite sources. These include groupings such as popular and trending shows, new TV shows, new movies, top picks on Netflix, and more.
While the earlier version of Reelgood worked similarly, the company learned during the beta phase that users were most concerned with keeping track of which episodes of a show they had already watched. Unlike linear TV, you no longer have to tune in to a program on a specific date and time, which means you may not remember all the shows you’re watching, where you left off, or when a new episode is available.
Reelgood allows you to keep track of all of this with its “Watch Next” feature, which shows you what’s next on your list. To use this feature, click the “Follow Shows” button on the shows you’re following, then indicate which episodes you’ve already seen. This isn’t unique to Reelgood – apps like TV Time also offer a tool for this, but also integrate a social community.
What’s also interesting is that Reelgood now has seven team members who previously worked on Popcorn Time – the not-quite-legal service once dubbed the Netflix for pirated content. Reelgood is actually trying to solve a similar problem to Popcorn Time – namely, simplifying the process of finding something to watch by offering a sort of one-stop shop.
When you click on Reelgood to watch a show or movie, a new window will open that will take you directly to the target service’s page so you can start watching.
Currently, the company is not making any money from the service. Instead, the team recently closed a $3.5 million funding round led by August Capital with participation from Social Capital and Harrison Metal. This brings the startup’s total raised to date to $4.5 million. The funds will allow the site to optimize the user experience first before it needs to focus on revenue generation.
