TL;DR

Most people prefer to use virtual browsers to watch movies and TV shows together with friends online because they're more reliable than video sync apps or screenshare, they allow any authorized users to take control, and they require the least hassle to set up and use.

If you’re looking to try out virtual browsing for your next watch party, then we recommend giving Tutturu’s free virtual browsers a try!

There's...another way?

Watching movies and TV shows together with friends online is something more and more people have been looking to do as social distancing restrictions continue and work becomes more remote than ever before.

So how do you host the best watch parties possible with all the options available today? Let’s take a look at the most popular options for hosting watch parties and see why most people prefer to use virtual browsers to watch stuff together online.

Video Sync Apps

Who’s it for? Friends that primarily just want to watch a few short videos together on a popular site.

First up on the list are video sync websites and extensions. These applications require everyone to open up the same video in their own browsers, and then the app synchronizes the video players by overriding everyone’s video controls. You can think of it as an automated alternative to counting down from three and then pressing play.

Video sync applications can be great for quickly sharing a short video with a friend, or when all you plan to do is watch a public video on a popular site like YouTube. They’re also relatively simple to build, so you can typically expect to use them for free. However, video sync applications do have a few downfalls as well:

1. Restrictive - They require everyone to have access to the content being streamed.
2. Inflexible - They typically only sync content on a few specific websites.
3. Unpredicable performance - Differing internet connections and personal computing can lead to video players pausing sporadically to re-synchronize everyone. Depending on the platform, you might fall out of sync without even knowing.

All in all, if you’re looking for a quick way to share short videos on popular sites, then video sync applications may be the way to go. However, if you’re looking to do more, then read on to learn about even better options that are available.

Screen Share

Who’s it for? Hosts who aren’t concerned about privacy, and have a very reliable internet connection.

Ah, good ol’ screen share. Screen share requires the host to access the video on their own computer and then upload a stream to everyone else in the party. While screen share is used in a variety of applications nowadays, some people figured out they could also use it to host watch parties!

Screen sharing can be a great option for watch parties when you want to stream videos that are stored locally on your computer, or when the host has a very good internet connection and a fast computer. However, as many people have probably experienced at some point—screen sharing does have its fair share of issues:

1. Host-dependent - Screen sharing is never fun when the host has a poor internet connection—nobody likes a blurry and laggy stream. Since the entire watch party relies on them to stream the video this can lead to a variety of issues, as well as stress for the host!
2. No multi-control - Sometimes your friend wants to take control of the screen to show you something, or maybe you need to run to the restroom. Most screen share applications lack multi-control support which means no restroom breaks!
3. Lack of privacy - Ever leave an embarrassing tab open by mistake? Or maybe you forgot to turn off desktop notifications? Screen share streams everything from your monitor to everyone else in the party, so say bye bye to privacy during your watch party.

Overall, screen sharing apps can certainly get the job done—but a lot of the experience depends on the host and the quality of their internet connection and computer. For those that want the best experience possible, however, read on to learn about the next big thing when it comes to watch parties—Virtual Browsers.

Virtual Browsers

Who’s it for? Anyone that wants the most dependable, interactive, and hassle-free watch party experience available today.

Lo and behold—the holy grail of watch party technology. Virtual browsers have become all the rage when it comes to hosting watch parties as they’re easy to use, they offer very precise video synchronization, and they let you pass around control of the browser.

Virtual browsers are essentially internet browsers that run on powerful remote servers that all members of the party can connect to. The server then uses its resources to stream the video in unison to every member of the party. The party host accidentally disconnects? No problem. Virtual browsers keep working, making them the most dependable watch party solution available today.

Because virtual browsers are...well...browsers, they’re capable of syncing any website. Want to watch TV shows? Check. Movies? Check. The big game? Check. Anything you can think of, virtual browsers have you covered.

Finally, you might be thinking that given all of the benefits of virtual browsers that they’re probably difficult to set up and use—but that isn’t the case! On the contrary, virtual browsers provide one of the easiest ways to host watch parties today.

So what’s the catch? While virtual browsers can provide a great watch party experience, the need for remote servers means that they can be expensive for the website owner to run. However, some virtual browsing services such as Tutturu provide free virtual browsers, along with a premium subscription if users want access to extra features. If you want to know what you’re missing out on, we highly recommend giving Tutturu's free tier a try.

Conclusion

Nowadays, watching movies and TV shows with friends online can be a super fun way to just kick back and chill, or even spend some quality time with loved ones while apart. To get the most out of your experience though, it’s important to know what watch party tech exists, and what type is best for you. While we may be a bit biased at Tutturu, it’s really a no-brainer to us and our hundreds of thousands of users—virtual browsing is the way to go.

Dek

Virtual Browsers have many benefits compared to screen sharing, but one of the unique challenges they face is a direct result of their primary strength—the fact that they are located on a remote server. Many websites (especially subscription-based ones) use location data to determine not only what content is available to the user, but sometimes if the site is available at all! Because of this, a user in the United States expecting to see certain catalog items on a website may only see German options because our servers are currently located in Germany. The conventional way of overcoming this problem is to use a VPN service to change locations, however, VPN services are typically blocked by sites for this reason.

So how do we ensure that you can always access the sites available to your home location when you use Tutturu’s virtual browsers? To solve this, we created a built-in proxy available in our downloadable desktop application in early May! It lets you use your home location by functioning as a sort of ‘reverse VPN’.

Normally, a VPN works by just creating a new location for you to connect to before connecting to a website. Technically speaking, you could think of the servers that our virtual browsers are hosted on as VPNs, and they are often detected as such even if that is not their purpose. The proxy feature of our application instead flips things upside down. Instead of you accessing the web through our server’s internet connection, our servers will attempt to access the web through your internet connection! This means any supported website will see your correct location, instead of the location of the virtual browser’s server. This sort of feature was only possible with a downloaded application, so unfortunately, it is not available on our web application.

The original version of the proxy only worked for specific websites, because we were still trying to tackle the issue of minor input lag increases when enabling it for all data and all websites. With our most recent update as of August 19th, users can now enable the proxy for ALL websites!

The best part is, this feature is free for everyone forever! The way we see it, being able to access any website your normal browser could is one of the most important aspects of our virtual browsers. They need to be as close to the normal thing as possible, just a regular browser that everyone can see!

A few months ago, we released the Proxy feature on our desktop app that lets you access the right websites based on your real location. This feature was well received by you, our community, and it set a precedent for the new features we release to be both intuitive and useful. One such heavily requested feature was the ability to save the current state of your room so you can get back to it quickly the next time you watch something together again. We got to work on this and now, we're proud to show you our latest premium feature, Save States!

Using Save States, you can pick up right where you left off in your binge-watch session. All currently open websites, and installed extensions can be saved on your system using localStorage, ready to be loaded back up anytime you start a new session with our new drop down menu. You could also use this to save websites and extensions you always want to open to avoid having to type them every single time you return to Tutturu.

Don't like to manually save your status every time you are about to leave? Well, we have you covered too! We also have an option you can enable to automatically create an auto save of your session. With this on, any page open, or extension installed is automatically saved to the "auto save" slot. Without any effort, you can continue your previous browsing session, even if you forgot to manually save before leaving. This option is off by default in consideration for the people who may not want to use this feature.

What is saved from the Virtual Browser

• The website URLs in every virtual browser tab
• The extensions installed to the virtual browser

What is NOT saved from the Virtual Browser

• Cookies
  • This means you will always need to log in to websites on new sessions
• Browsing History
  • You will also be unable to use the back or forward buttons on the virtual browser on the restored tabs

As stated previously, Save States save to your localStorage and not on our servers, hence they are not accessible by anyone but you. We do not include the cookie data or login status of the virtual browser for security and privacy reasons.

Other updates

All room owners can now upload icons for their rooms! You asked for it, so we added it!

Last week, we added Markdown to the chat, which enables you to customize your messages a lot more! We also added the ability to ping your friends with either the @here message, or even just a direct ping using their username!

Lastly, we are starting the process streamlining how users request extensions to be enabled on the Virtual Browsers. Instead of only being told you are not able to install an extension that has not yet been white listed you will get a prompt asking if you would like to request support for that extension. It will not be instantly supported, but it is much easier than emailing or directly messaging us to request support! This is not totally complete, but it’s getting there!

That's all for now!

Thank you for using Tutturu!

We have been very busy, and a lot more quiet than we would like to be. Talking to our community is something we heavily enjoy, because community input is what we shape our service around. We hope to soon incorporate things like newsletters and regular blog posts to keep our users informed of changes, both mundane and exciting!

In this post we are going to recap the past few weeks, a few updates, and some issues that users experienced. Most importantly, this post outlines how we addressed those issues, and our plans moving forward. This blog will be long, so if you want something shorter, you can find a quick TL;DR at the end.

Queue System

We noticed that quite often, new users didn’t get a chance to try the site because of heavy traffic. As a new user, being hit with a wall saying there is no space for you, is just no fun. With this in mind, we worked on a queue system that gives priority to free users who haven't used the site in the past day over other free users who have used it a lot on that same day. Subscribers still get highest priority as always, and bypass this queue system entirely (big shout out to our subscribers who make Tutturu possible)!

This system we created worked great, and we released it after quite a bit of testing. The queue worked flawlessly in our testing, but we didn’t anticipate the sheer number of issues that would occur with the rest of the code on the website at scale. Tutturu had some less than ideal code from its early stages that was just waiting for the right moment to crack. Little did we know, each update was getting us closer to that point, and the moment we released the queue system, we passed that point, and were subjected to full crashes every few minutes. Shortly after release, we rolled back the update, and began to fix the issue.

Full Code Refactor

The only fix was to rewrite all of the old code, a task that took quite a while and put all other updates essentially on hold. We had everything ready, and after three weeks of testing, we finally decided to bite the bullet, and release the update. We anticipated some issues may arise, because the code had never been put under the stress of traffic from our main website, but the issues with our old code were not tied to just releasing new features, but people accessing the website in general. With our ever expanding growth, getting the update out became increasingly urgent. Without it, we would eventually hit a point where our natural traffic could threaten to take the website down every few minutes.

Upon release, the new code had its fair share of issues. We did address many the same day, but others took some investigation and planning to fix. We made efforts to provide nearly 24/7 support to any user experiencing issues, often manually fixing them at all hours of the day. Each time we received a complaint of something broken, it gave us more info to track it down, and fix it for good. Because of this, we owe a lot of thanks to our community for assisting us in finding the causes of so many problems, proving our issue reporting system really is an asset to our overall ability to address issues with the website.

So what is next?

It has been a bumpy few weeks, but now that this is complete, we will never need to do such a large scale rewrite of the code, so further issues should never be as widespread. Many lessons were learned that will influence our next important tasks.

One thing became clear in all this—interrupting a viewing session is the absolute worst thing we could possibly do, and unplanned full crashes do that for everyone. As bad as that is, we also need to take the website down to apply new code as well. We originally used low traffic moments in the early morning to send out update alerts, to interrupt as few people as possible, but emergency updates could ruin the experience for many more than we anticipated.

Our next goal is to make changes that will allow us to update code on the website without interrupting any ongoing sessions. There may be some types of changes— particularly code related to the VMs—where this will not be possible, but overall the goal is to apply any updates we can without taking the entire site down.

TL;DR

• We Introduced the Queue system
  • Queue worked, but it unveiled underlying issues with the website's code, causing it to crash repeatedly.
• We rolled back the Queue update, and began rewriting all of the code related to the website to address issues related to crashing.
• After weeks of testing, the new code alongside the Queue system was released.
  • Three weeks of testing was clearly not enough; there were many site stability issues involved.
  • We provided nearly 24/7 support on the issues involved, manually fixing problems for users, but the experience was not ideal for users for quite a few days.
  • In spite of daily crashes we managed to quickly fix many issues with the new code, and have fully patched each issue we discovered at long last!
• Moving forward we will no longer need to do such large, drastic rewrites of code, so such large scale issues should be a thing of the past!
• Our last major design flaw requires us to take the website down for any moderately sized update.
  • Our next task is to change this so that only very specific types of updates need us to take the site down. Minor updates will be applied without interrupting a viewing session.