Streaming is big business in 2024. Every company and their dog has a streaming service. You know how some people get a dog for their dog to keep them company? The second dog also just launched a streaming service. The market is that flooded. So, it only stands to reason that there would now be a flood of companies wanting to take your money to organise your streaming services and find out something to watch. Searchr.tv takes on this challenge in an interesting way, but it might not be ready for everyone yet.
What is Searchr.tv?
Given it lacks the second e, one would be forgiven for thinking it was a Tumblr, Grindr, Flickr, Blendr, Pixlr, Readr, etc era app. But it’s actually a brand-new web app that allows you to search for TV shows, movies, and other miscellaneous content spread between your various services. You click on the show you want to watch, and it opens in your desired service.
What sets it apart is that you can search by more than just title/actor/genre. You can say that you have a 30-minute lunch break, and want to escape into a musical just to feel something, then it will only show you musicals that are 30 minutes or shorter. You can then further narrow that by IMDb rating, or other genres.
At the moment it’s only available as a downloadable app for Chromecast devices, but apps for the big TV brands, mobile, and Apple TV are expected to launch in the next six months. For now, most users will access it via the website, which is fine if you watch on a laptop, but adds an extra step if you’re watching on TV.
How does Searchr.tv compare to the competition?
There are two main competitors to Searchr: Hubbl, and Just Watch. Well, there’s also the landing page for most smart TVs, and the Apple TV app on Apple TV, but the Apple TV app is restricted to, well, Apple TV and other Apple devices, and landing pages for smart TVs never quite lived up to the hype.
Compared to Hubbl, Searchr is the clear winner. Searchr costs around $2.50 a month, whereas Hubbl is free once you own one of the devices. But Hubbl’s main aim is to sell you more streaming services, so you can’t narrow by just the services you have. Searchr will soon introduce the ability to view only the services you have.
Hubbl does offer separate profiles and watchlists for different users, which go across platforms, which is good. However, in my experience, Hubbl is not great at actually remembering what should be on those watchlists. Searchr will let you save items to a single watch list.
Searchr won’t remember where you’re up to on particular shows, then again, neither does Hubbl in my experience (though, that is supposed to be a feature Hubbl offers). I also find Hubbl’s search abilities to be lacking.
The main competitor to Searchr.tv is Just Watch, which has a free tier (which you’ve probably been using for years, as it’s always been the best way to find where certain shows and movies are currently hosted), and a new premium tier. The premium tier costs $3.50 a month, and does exactly the same things Searchr.tv does, only in a smartphone app which is more convenient than a web app.
The extra $1 a month for Just Watch over Searchr is bothersome, but if you’ve already been using the base app for years, and already have a watchlist, then Just Watch is easier to transition to. Once the Searchr.tv TV app is available and can launch you directly into the platforms so you can watch the shows on your watchlist, it will be a more attractive prospect. But, again, that’s six months away.
Is it worth signing up to Searchr.tv?
This is the question I have wrestled with in the weeks I’ve been using it. I honestly don’t know. It depends on how important to you it is to be able to search by length and IMDb rating. Most of my favourite shows do not rate well on IMDb (Legends of Tomorrow, for example, is the greatest TV show of all time but is rated 6.8), so I don’t trust those ratings. I don’t yet have a child, so narrowing by length isn’t as important when I can just search for series versus movies.
However, your taste might line up with that of the unwashed masses who flock to review things on IMDb, and you might only have an hour to watch something after the kids go to bed. Searchr.tv really does make it easy to find what you need when you have strict parameters.
But the lack of personalisation is frustrating to me. The genres in the search list aren’t ordered in any way that makes sense, they seem to just be there in the order that the programmer thought of them. I’d like to be able to rank them based on my personal importance, or at least sort them alphabetically. It’s also just a bit clunky to use.
And, sure, it seems to be unfair to rate the product of a new, small, Australian company against companies that have had more time and money to make their product. But, unfortunately, the user experience is what matters most in a product that is supposed to save users time and help them find things quickly. Just Watch is hard to beat when it offers the same features in an easier-to-use way.
In 6 months, I would love to revisit Searchr.tv, once it’s been updated and is available on more platforms. But I can’t review the future just yet.
So, in short, if you’re not already using Just Watch, you don’t mind using a web app, and you’re ok paying an extra $2.50 a month to narrow down your choices spread across your other paid services, and you want to be able to narrow by runtime or IMDb rating, then Searchr.tv is a great choice.
But, for everyone else, you can probably wait until the company behind Searchr.tv develops the product a little more.
Image: Alice Clarke/Gizmodo Australia