Content Walled Gardens: Subscription Access

One of the biggest hurdles in hosting seamless watch parties is the content level “walled garden”—the barriers that keep users within individual streaming ecosystems. For instance, if one person has a subscription to Disney+ but another only has Netflix, enjoying the same movie or series together isn’t possible without access to the same streaming service. This content fragmentation complicates the idea of a shared viewing experience, relegating most watch parties to content that all participants have access to.

Some solutions to this issue are emerging. Streaming providers are testing friend passes and other options to enable guests to temporarily access content without a direct subscription. Additionally, the availability of freely accessible content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok could help overcome this barrier, allowing users to host watch parties without needing multiple subscriptions. Generated videos are another promising avenue here. Even if they don’t necessarily get you access to all the shows you’d want to watch with someone else, it’s a content format that will lead to more experimental product development, which will in turn catalyze further development around mainstream content. 

Hardware Walled Gardens: Platform Incompatibilities

Another layer of walled gardens exists at the hardware level. Different TVs, operating systems, and streaming devices make it challenging to provide a consistent technical solution for watch parties. While web-based watch parties are easily accessible from laptops, smartphones, or tablets, the experience is significantly limited on these smaller screens, missing the immersive quality of a large TV screen.

However, with technologies like Kosmi—a web-based platform that supports casting to smart TVs—these challenges are starting to be mitigated. As streaming devices and TVs continue to standardize around Apple, Android, and HTML5 among other web technologies we will see more accessible solutions for large-screen viewing.

Technical Improvements: AI and Beyond

The technical aspects of real-time synchronization, latency management, and audio-visual quality have also been challenging for watch party solutions. These issues are magnified when participants are spread across different geographic locations, each with their own internet speed and latency. Fortunately, advances in AI and machine learning are helping to create smoother and more synchronized experiences. Machine learning algorithms can dynamically adjust playback and buffering to optimize synchronization, which is crucial for ensuring everyone is watching the same moment at the same time. Moreover, audio technologies have improved to the point where keeping an open microphone while watching and listening to content is now feasible. Even in the case of solutions with a single microphone, the ability to separate a target user’s voice from background noise or the content itself has advanced to a point that technology is no longer a blocker – it’s just an engineering challenge. 

As walled gardens at the operating system level continue to consolidate, with fewer and more universally compatible systems like Apple TV, Android TV, and cross-platform web apps, developers can deliver more cohesive experiences without building individual solutions for each device type.

Lessons from Lockdowns and Early Watch Party Experiments

The lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated interest in shared viewing experiences, leading to a period of rapid experimentation. Large platforms like Disney, Amazon, and Hulu explored ways to let users share viewing experiences within their ecosystems. Similarly, startups like Kosmi brought innovative solutions, tackling the challenges of synchronization, user experience, and content access in different ways.

These experiments provided valuable insights, laying the foundation for future watch party innovations. The trend toward consolidation in streaming platforms and improved web-based solutions hints at a promising future where users can more easily overcome content and hardware barriers.

A Glimpse into the Future: Consolidation and Open Collaboration

As technology advances, and as barriers fall, watch parties will become ever more immersive and accessible. The dream of shared media experiences across diverse devices and content providers may soon be a reality, with improvements in open content and multi-device compatibility making it easier for everyone to join in on the fun.